It’s hard to talk about certain subjects because even those people who agree with me have fears that change their politics. We all recognize that people have different issues they cling to, so you’re not going to be “all conservative” or “all liberal”. One that I see a lot of uncertainty over is healthcare.
We see rising healthcare costs and we panic – after all we’re conditioned to believe things never get cheaper, they only get more expensive (despite some examples to the contrary like gas). And most of the time we have the same reaction when something gets expensive. “How are we going to pay for that?”
I would like to look at the other side of this issue. There are two parts to healthcare that cause huge bills, and they both boil down to abuse. Abuse of the legal system, and abuse of coverage.
The problem is, whenever a sensible conservative starts to talk on this issue, people jump to conclusions and put words and concepts into the conservative’s mouth. I believe overzealous trial lawyers cause incredible damage to healthcare costs. Does that mean I feel nobody should be able to sue for malpractice? No, it means I believe it has gotten out of hand. I believe people use their healthcare coverage for the wrong things. Does that mean I believe nobody should have healthcare coverage? No, it means that they’re using their coverage for things they shouldn’t.
What are the results? The money has to come from SOMEWHERE. Illustration: Doctor performs surgery and makes a mistake. Patient sues doctor. Patient and their lawyers get large compensation packages. Doctor needs to get the money back from somewhere, supposedly they have insurance to cover the claim. Whether it’s the doctor themselves or the insurer who pays, that money that went to a very few people has to come from SOMEWHERE. Insurance companies don’t mint money. They take it from you in the form of premiums. So let’s say your insurance company, which has been slowly building up its cash buffer, has to pay out $50 million to this patient and their lawyers. Let’s use example numbers and say they’ve got $40 million in the bank. They borrow the extra $10 million and raise your rates in order to not only fill their reservoir back up (hopefully faster this time so they don’t have to borrow to pay out) but also to pay interest on their loan. So... who paid that patient and their lawyers? Did the doctor pay? No. YOU paid. Your insurance rates went up. You didn’t pay the whole $50 million, you just paid a little of it. You and everyone else at that insurance company just paid “punitive damages” two one patient and a few lawyers.
I do not have health insurance. I have rarely had it. I paid for two of my children’s births (please realize that my wife and I are a unified team, so “we” might be a better word to use, but may be confusing). I have had two “procedures” and have paid for them both out of my own pocket. I went into debt, and paid it out.
It is not easy. It is always frustrating. And it’s bloody expensive. Now, if healthcare were more commensurate with, say, auto repair – your regular needs cost you like oil changes and tune ups, and occasionally you had a $200 or $500 or even $1000 job you needed done – we could all pay for it as it came up. We’d grumble, just as we do when our car isn’t working and is going to cost a lot to fix, but we’d deal with it.
I don’t want to do away with healthcare coverage. There are actually many things that a “regular Joe” (not schmo) can’t afford. But if healthcare covered those things, in full or with reasonable deductibles, and we put a cap on what a lawyer could make as a fee (make the cap huge, but put it on there) the overhead we’re paying, not for quality care, not for quality facilities, not for necessary procedures, but to patients and particularly their lawyers (who were not injured or damaged by the malpractice) would stop coming out of OUR paychecks.
Yes, this entire illustration works for taxes too. Perhaps that’s a future post, so you can see it written somewhere that a conservative (looking more and more archetypal all the time) WANTS taxes. But that he wants reasonable taxes, and them spent on reasonable things.
You see, in both cases, this is the ultimate thrust: I support the government looking out for “the little guy” (defining “the little guy” is a whole topic by itself) but I do not support the government trying to turn “the little guy” into “the big guy”. The fact is that turning the little guy into the big guy is almost always done at the expense of other little guys. They make it LOOK like the “big guy” is being hurt, being chipped away at, but when you actually follow the money you see it doesn’t come from so-called big guys. It comes from you and me. And to feed the system, proponents of it must accelerate the attrition.
Then there’s the “moving doctor” phenomenon. Doctors leaving places like Canada and Mississippi in droves because they can’t afford to work there. When the cost of insurance overshadows the fee you charge, becomes your number one expense, you move to where it isn’t so bad. When was the last time you looked at just how much you’re paying in homeowner’s insurance and taxes? I looked at my bill. More than 35% of what I pay in my monthly mortgage is taxes and insurance. On a mortgage of $1000 that means you’re actually only paying $650 for your house, the rest is insurance and taxes. Extrapolating this analogy, the mortgage I pay here would be $1500 in Canada or Mississippi. For the same $650 house payment. At that point I move back to Texas. That’s what it’s like to be a doctor today.
Again, I’m not against insurance, or healthcare, I’m against the swelling leech that sucks the blood out of our economy so that we’re all a bunch of people paying more for the extras and overheads than the actual services themselves.
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