Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Can We Trust Private Health Care? Public Would Be Better.

In January, I suffered a blinding headache. A simple visit to the local emergency room turned into a helicopter trip to a major teaching hospital and emergency neurosurgery. The event cost well over $100k - far more than my basic medical insurance covered. So now that burden has fallen directly on my shoulders, even as I struggle to support my family with an underpaying job after earning a college degree, working hard all my life and meeting obligations to the extent possible.

Additionally, my father-in-law experienced a life-ending illness this month. A veteran of WWII, he was dependent on Medicare, Medicaid and VA benefits. As his condition deteriorated at the hands of incompetent private providers, they daily pressed us for a Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) order. We refused to sign a DNR, yet he ultimately secumbed anyhow to their incompetence.

It doesn't take a financial genius to recognize that unbridled greed of providers and payors has caused a meltdown of America's businesses and government by placing disproportionate emphasis on covering health care in employee benefit programs. It is apparent to me that threats of declining quality if the system is nationalized are ludicrous.

Nothing turning the system public likely will degrade health care like the greed of private providers and payors has already done.

The fallacy of the argument for opposition to health care reform is that the status quo is working. It is not.

Even when you have payed for insurance for years, payors either don't cover your costs - or cancel coverage - when required to actually pay. Yet we are asked to believe that the marketplace will better care for us than the government.

Did we learn nothing from deregulation of banking and Wall Street - and the resulting financial sector meltdown?

Can anybody still maintain a straight face while assuring us that private care can be trusted more than public care?