We should dismantle obstacles to good health care

Ms. (Linda) Parker's recent letter about misleading congressional health care bill provisions needs amplification and discussion.

I think a lot of Americans would be happy to see a bill that simply stopped the insurance company practices of "cherry picking" only the healthiest people to insure, denying people insurance for pre-existing conditions, canceling insured people when they become seriously ill, or denying legitimate claims. Not only should these practices be stopped, but severely penalized, with jail time and fines for those who do these things, and damages paid to the (un)insured as well. Many people say they are "happy" with their current coverage. Wonderful. A lot of people aren't, however, and they feel the current crop of insurance companies are driven more by the crook's motto, "Your Money Or Your Life!" than the Hippocratic Oath when their health goes bad. A lot of people are under-insured, and others believe they are being held for ransom by the "healthcare-government industrial complex."

Some kind of regulation or supervision should be put in place to stop the rip-offs. Insurance companies are in business to make money, they aren't charities devoted to giving us health care when that starts to cost them something. (Perhaps converting them by law to non-profit businesses would help?) On the other hand, a lot of people are involved in insurance fraud, both against private companies and against Medicare — they claim they are sick or injured when they aren't, or they exaggerate their conditions. Others smoke and get fat, figuring everybody else will kindly pay for their irresponsibilities when they get diabetes, cancer and heart disease, then get on disability. This is apart from filing false or exaggerated claims in court, hoping for a nuisance settlement to cheat some money out of "the corporations" because "the system" lets them "get revenge" this way. (Don't forget the lawyers benefit, too!) All that does is run the costs up for everyone else – the "corporations" pass the costs on to you, the premium payer!

These parasites should be stopped, in all fairness. False claimers should see jail time and stiff fines, not nuisance settlements. Lawyers who feed this crookedness should be disbarred. Then there are people who demand "the latest drugs," even though these are much more expensive than generics and in many cases have proven to be no better than older, proven, cheaper medications whose patents have run out. Most of this "demand" is artificial, caused by advertising. It used to be drug companies were prohibited from advertising in the media, and prescription choices were left in the hands of your doctor, who is supposed to keep up with the latest pharmaceuticals in his specialty. Now that the drug companies can advertise, guess what? The prices go way up! Why? The companies have to pay for the fancy ads, and they pass those high costs on to you via higher drug prices. Then your insurance companies hike the premiums they have to charge. Duh! What about stopping this nuttiness and returning to the way things were? A family member of mine used to be in sales for a drug company. The company told him patients would get better in 90% of cases whether they took medication or not! Their meds treat symptoms so patients "feel better" while their bodies naturally do the healing! That leaves 10% for which serious medication is actually required. Ponder that next time you want a $150 antibiotic for a viral infection.

But as for covering all the "uninsured" in this nation, consider that in effect they are already covered! The "uninsured" walk into emergency rooms and get treatment, but pay nothing, and the rest of us — private citizens, insurance companies, state and national governments — pick up the tab by some crazy mix of means, often caused by layers of government regulation, existing laws and do-goodism. These uninsured also tend to cost a lot more, because they don't go to the emergency room until they are horribly ill and a lot more expensive to treat. In the end, everybody else pays, somehow, someway. The hospitals don't go broke. The costs are passed on to you, in higher taxes of some kind, higher insurance premiums, and higher prices for doctors, procedures, equipment and medications dispensed there. (The media laughed at the Pentagon for a $600 toilet seat. How about laughing at $20 for a 2-cent aspirin tablet, or other inflated charges for a hospital stay? You're just making up for the people who didn't pay.)

In my reading around, for a self-employed person to pay $12,000 a year in health insurance premiums for him/herself and spouse is about average (with a very high deductible, and no dental or mental health coverage). If you are employed, maybe your employer picks up half or more of this cost. You would look long and hard at $6,000 a year going out when you make $25,000 or $30,000 a year before income taxes. If Congress passes laws forcing everyone to get health insurance (or suffer fines), including these low income people, the law amounts to a non-negotiable tax, on top of whatever they and everyone else pays in income tax, real estate taxes, local sales and business taxes and fees. The average American already pays 40 percent of income in taxes in various forms, direct and hidden. You want more? (Forget the spiraling national debt for the moment, or the fact that health care costs have risen far faster annually than inflation for two decades!) I would like to know, what happens to the rest of us, who are already paying (one way or another) for the "uninsured" who go to emergency rooms, if "Obamacare" is passed? Even if they are given subsidies so they can "afford" it, will the taxes and premiums for the rest of us go down as a result, or up? Ideally, Congress should only be changing how these "uninsured" are covered and paid for, since they are already covered, in effect, and the rest of us are already paying for them. If they become "legitimately insured" and are treated in a more timely, less expensive manner like most of us, then the cost to hospitals, suppliers, and the rest of us paying customers/patients should stay even or perhaps go down, right? Will it? I'm not betting on it. Too many sacred cows are feeding at the Washington trough. The evidence from 1,000-page turgid bills leads me to suspect we'll all be hosed worse than we are now if we let them pass. Other countries have health care as good as ours at half the cost. What are we doing wrong?

There are some pretty good, well-run private health plans out there – nice if you live in their region or meet their group requirements. For starters, what if Congress and states opened up competition to let these better plans spread out regionally or nationally (including the self-employed on equal footing), giving the crummier, crooked-er companies some stiff competition? That would mean getting rid of laws that restrict market areas. (This means getting government out of the way rather than getting it more involved.) I think that might help a lot more to lower costs, making policies more affordable, so more people are covered than what I've seen from Congress so far. Most of the mess we're in was created gradually by "government." Dismantle the obstacles, don't make them bigger!

RICHARD K. ANDERSON JR.
Sumter