The health care debate waged by Democrats and Republicans in Congress and by the White House has been dragged into the weeds. Democrats and Republicans are crafting a politically horse-traded health care plan that has winners and losers based on which lobbyists have the attention of the people putting the plan together, all of them wrangling for benefits for one group at the expense of another group. Under any of the existing proposals, there is no way to find enough money to be fair, give the middle class high quality health care they can afford, keep the insurance companies happy, not cut benefits for the elderly, avoid rationing, stop the soaring cost of premiums and health care and bring market forces to bear on health care providers, suppliers and vendors. Why? Because both Democrats and Republicans refused to put single payer on the table, whether government run or run by a private sector independent commission. And once the details are understood, the public will realize that the “public option” is a toothless option. Obama compromised the chance for ever getting support for a true single payer system in this country by making it an “option” from the outset. Congress will never let a so called public option replace the insurance companies while Congress receives massive campaign financing from these companies and while Congress has an exclusive Blue Chip health care plan which depends on these companies staying in the game. Part single payer for a few and part high cost insurance company run health care for others won't produce the real benefits of single payer. The primary discussion on mainstream and cable television, whether the liberal or conservative talk shows, from Hannity on the right to the Ed Show on the left, has been spent on heated arguments about public option versus no public option. They ignore the elephant in the room — the fact that a single payer system doesn’t have to be government run. Again, single payer does not have to be government run! The most influential talk show hosts and journalists have avoided telling the public about the way single payer solves most of the problems that the plans currently before Congress can’t solve. Liberals are the most responsible for this failure since they claimed to be the champions of single payer. They blew the chance for single payer by their arrogant insistence on a government run system come hell or high water instead of first focusing on the benefits of single payer and discussing the alternative methods of running it second. We were entitled to a fair discussion by Congress and by the influential political talk shows of the benefits of single payer and the option of having it run by an independent private commission if a government run approach created gridlock between those on the right and the left. Only a few blogs on the Internet have covered the full story about single payer.
The debate has made voters believe that single payer can only be done through government run health care. Consequently, many voters are opposed to single payer while many other voters believe government run health care is the only way to stop the spiraling costs of health care and guarantee them coverage. That is not true. A single payer system can easily be run as a non-government PRIVATE sector system. It solves the problem for those who oppose government run health care and for those who want a single payer system. Its time that Congress stop the rhetoric, stop the political posturing about a public option, stop propping up the insurance companies and enact a non-government private sector single payer system. Such a system does not have to be government run, government controlled and can be free from government interference. It ends employer provided health insurance. It takes health care out of the hands of insurance companies. It would be a uniquely American solution to health care, a historic bipartisan solution as opposed to government run health care and health care systems in Canada, Europe and elsewhere -- and being single payer it can dramatically reduce the costs of premiums and health care for all Americans by spreading the costs over the total population of payers nationwide, make coverage of the uninsured affordable, lower middle class premiums significantly, and put an end to the control of health care decisions by government bureaucrats and insurance company bureaucrats. It is run by an independent commission. How it would operate free of government influence is explained below.
Neither political party has seriously dealt with the real problem affecting all of us even if we like the insurance we already have. How do you permanently stop and reverse the spiraling cost of health care and create real competition among suppliers, vendors and providers and afford to cover the uninsured? No one has proposed a solution that works yet they all say the current situation is going to go broke. Ironically, a private sector single payer system is actually how you bring market style competition to the health care industry for the first time! How that works is also discussed below. We don’t have to spend 1.2 trillion dollars or ration health care when a private single payer system can squeeze down the cost of premiums and medical care for those with coverage and cover uninsured Americans as well.
Government run health care won't work because Congress will do the same as it has done with Social Security - spend the health care money collected on something else and leave a stack of IOUs to be repaid by the taxpayer. And other than Medicare, European style government health care is not a part of the American experience. If enacted, it would become a politically horse traded system with politically appointed bureaucrats running it.
THE POLITICAL BENEFITS:
The political benefits of a private sector single payer system are enormous for the political parties and for the taxpayer. It resolves the health care dilemma. It is a uniquely American solution. It is a total solution, combining all the well documented cost savings of a single payer system with a non-government system. It will also end the archaic, needless system of health care run by insurance companies, a system which drives the cost of health care up and up with no end in sight. With a single payer system run by a private independent commission, there is no serious argument left for a "public option" or government run health care. It ends the double standard between Congress’ health care program and the rest of us. And Congress will never dare let it morph into a government run health care system because Congress and federal employees will be included in the same single payer system. Bureaucrats will no longer stand between you and your doctor. Ending employer provided health insurance ends one motivation for employers to avoid hiring the over 55 worker. It doesn't "drive out" the insurance companies. It chooses to take them out of the business of health care as a matter of good business practice. Do you really believe your premiums and taxpayer subsidies should be used to keep in business hundreds of insurance companies, thousands of bureaucrats and multi-millionaire bean counters when they are not necessary to collect your premiums and pay medical bills? They have been a costly anomaly in health care for far too long. Health care can go off the table as a 2010 election issue. Both parties can claim credit for a historic bipartisan solution. Everyone will be free to continue debating every other red meat issue between now and the 2010 election.
WHO THE TAXPAYERS REALLY ARE:
This is the most overlooked reality about the average American taxpayer. This is the reason why average middle class Americans are entitled to the highest quality health care at the lowest cost that can only come from a single payer system. Because for much of the 20th Century and this decade, through the taxing power of government, taxpayers have been turned into a new investor class, like a gigantic venture capital fund, subsidizing the health care industry and business in general and pulling its fat out of the fire in economic meltdowns. The heresy has been not paying taxpayers a return or a share of the profits all these years on the massive investment as private sector venture capitalists would have been paid. If they had been, we would not have a crisis in health care today. Using the taxing power, government and business did an end run around the basic notions of capitalism and the market system. It isn't Roosevelt's "Forgotten Man" who has been forgotten, it's the Forgotten Investor -- the American taxpayer.
The real solution to health care has nothing to do with a "liberal" or "conservative" solution because the taxpayers who finance the health care system are made up of conservatives, liberals, Democrats, Republicans, Boomers, the middle class, young, old, small and "mom and pop" businesses, people from every racial, ethnic and religious group, people who are pro gun control, anti-gun control, pro life, pro choice, and pro and anti whatever other red meat issue you can think of. The cancer patients who are denied treatment, the patients who lose their jobs, the patients under hospice care -- they cut across the entire political spectrum.
Taxpayers are entitled to it because they earned it the old fashioned way, they already pay for it, they finance it, they subsidize it. They subsidize Medicare, federal employees health care and the health care industry. For decades, taxpayer money has financed interest free and dividend free the medical breakthroughs, the construction of hospitals, teaching hospitals and universities, new equipment and technology, pharmaceuticals, the Genome project, medical research, subsidy of employers' premium contributions, government contracts for companies like Boeing Co, Lockheed Martin Corp, Northrop Grumman Corp and Raytheon Co., the business developments that generated spinoff businesses and new business products and that continue to spin off new businesses that make billions from new tecnologies, the space race and its medical technology spinoffs, biotechnology and nanotechnology, which will spin off trillions of dollars in revenues over the coming decades, just to name a few. The middle class has become a new critical capitalist engine in our modern economic system! They are VIPs so they are entitled to the kind of health care that the VIPs and privileged of our society get.
WHAT ABOUT THE ELDERLY?
The greatest health care system in the world and all the accomplishments described above were create in part by the elderly over 40 to 50 years with subsidies from taxes paid by the elderly during their working years. They paid their dues. They did their part. They are VIPs of the 20th Century as well, Forgotten Investors whose money created our unrivaled medical facilities that people from all over the world come here to use. They have earned the right to top notch health care coverage just as much as Congressmen, just as much as young workers who have started to pay their share of the taxes that subsidize the health care system the seniors built. The elderly are entitled to that hip replacement, that liver transfer, the expensive cancer treatments no matter how short their life expectancy, not as a handout, but because they earned it. Its their payback for their lifelong investment. There is no justification for paying for health care reform by rationing health care to the elderly or by government limiting the kinds of treatment they can get.
ITS TIME FOR SOME REALITY:
Its time to acknowledge that the health care industry gives huge amounts of money to both Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, who sit on all the committees who are deciding what kind of health care we taxpayers who pay their bills can have. They are exempt from whatever health care system they mandate for the rest of us. And after a couple of terms in office, they get a broad set of health care choices from the private insurance companies for life. Their judgment is compromised. They don't want a private sector, single payer system either because it ends the enormous flow of campaign money they get from insurance companies and it ends Congress' exclusive Blue Chip health care program.
Like the old Harry and Louise ads, we don’t want the government in our medicine cabinets, but we don’t need 1,000 insurance company bureaucrats in there either.
The chickens are coming home to roost on the Boomer generation and the elderly.
Without single payer, neither the current employer provided insurance nor a so called public option or government run health care will stop the spiraling costs of health care. Either system will take a bigger and bigger toll on our incomes and become an unbearable burden, ultimately resulting in rationing and denial of treatment as the primary way to cut costs in the future and will pit older and younger generations against each other.
Both private health care and Medicare are taxpayer subsidized systems, not market driven.
Both insurance company bureaucrats and bureaucrats in a government run health care system stand between you and your doctor.
Most Americans favor competition. But Insurance companies have never competed over costs. They've had over 20 years to do it. Instead they divide up the market and control it through employer provided health care. A so-called public option won't make them compete to lower costs because they are in business to make as much money as they can. We don’t need eight giant health insurance companies and hundreds of small health insurance companies and consultants and multi-millionaire bean counters just to collect our premiums. They take out expensive administrative costs and a profit, and then pay our medical bills with the left over money. Its like an arbitrage business. It's not good business for the premium payers.
Health care is big business. So as a matter of fiscal discipline and good business, the business practices of big business should be applied to health care - downsize, spread the costs as wide as possible, use huge market power to squeeze costs out of vendors, drug companies and suppliers, get rid of all the bureaucrats in hundreds of companies doing the same job. Its time for a hard-nosed business approach on behalf of those who pay the premiums and subsidize the health care industry.
HOW IT WORKS:
A private sector, single payer system is run by an independent commission, not by government or the insurance companies. The commission would be made up of doctors, financial advisors, accountants, nurses and others serving on a rotating two year basis - people who are “roll up their sleeves and work in the trenches” types, not political appointees or lobbyists. The lobbyists' influence becomes irrelevant when you have a private single payer system. The members are chosen at random from a list of qualified professionals who demonstrate their expertise and their absence of political connections. The commission bids out to one low bidder a 2 - 4 year contract just to collect premiums and pay medical bills for a fee, not to make medical decisions or deny coverage. The premiums and taxes that pay for health care, Medicare, VA and Federal Employee insurance programs are instead put into one investment fund managed by the commission, not touched by government or by insurance companies. The funds are invested and managed by the commission. It's not a perfect system. But neither are the proposals before Congress. The choice is between an imperfect system like this versus the imperfect systems proposed by Congress for government controlled health care rationed by political bureaucrats or the uncontrolled, skyrocketing cost of health care run by insurance company bureaucrats.
WHERE DOES COMPETITION COME IN?
1. The independent commission hires people, including former insurance company employees, whose job is to negotiate down prices with health care vendors, suppliers and pharmaceutical companies, making them compete against each other for the first time on costs and pricing. Major companies and companies like Walmart have done this for years. This is how market based competition finally comes to the health care industry.
2. The costs of medical care are spread over all the premium payers across the country instead of hundreds of smaller groups in employee based pools. Keeping the costs separated among hundreds of separate groups is fiscally irresponsible, administratively cost prohibitive and is another reason why premiums are so high. Big business spreads their costs over the widest possible network because its smart business.
3. Instead of government mandated fees, for the first time doctors’ and hospitals’ fees and charges are regulated by market forces because patients can switch from doctor to doctor and hospital to hospital at the drop of a hat. This competitive, market based system free of government interference is what conservatives say they want and provides the single payer benefits that liberals say they want. Its win/win for everyone - except insurance companies, ideologues who want government run health care no matter what and Congressmen who won't give up campaign finance money from the insurance industry.
