
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, August 6, 1994                   TAG: 9408090014
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: THOMAS E. LINK
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

USE FREE-MARKET APPROACH TO REFORM HEALTH-CARE SYSTEM

OVER THE past three years, I've actively followed the health-care debate in the Roanoke Times & World-News, and by obtaining summaries of 109 of the health-care bills that have been introduced in Congress. Predictably, your newspaper has leaned toward Clintonesque approaches to the problem: more government, more bureaucrats, more waste, more taxes.

As with our education system, throwing more money at the problem and giving up personal responsibility isn't the answer. As with education, we'll have poorer performance and fewer results for more money. We'll erode trust between patients and doctors even further, just as the trust between teachers and parents has eroded in the face of grade inflation and learning dilution, while at the same time we destroy the neighborhood school in favor of overpadded magnet centers, thereby causing the de facto misallocation of high-tech resources to the tune of millions of dollars at the federal-grant slops-trough.

Will we destroy doctors and nurses by reducing them to ``robodoctors'' and ``robonurses''? If we rush to accept the current Democrat-sponsored health-care plans about to be rammed down our throats in Congress, we might as well say goodbye to any vestige of the ``bedside manner'' in treatment and rehabilitation of patients.

An Aug. 1 letter to the editor by Robert B. Feild (``Can anyone but government control health-care costs?'') leans toward big-government solutions. His arguments contain some rather large logical holes. He bemoans increasing costs of medical procedures, as we all do, but he fails to recognize that the federal government's social programs are the biggest reason for that. He fails to recognize that Medicare and Medicaid models drive costs higher while de-emphasizing actual care. He fails to recognize the enormous cost of bungling, ham-fisted, bureaucratic meddling in doctor-patient relationships. He fails to attribute the double-digit growth in medical costs to the real culprit - government.

He is correct that insurance companies are also contributors to this growth in costs. Insurance companies, too, have adopted the Medicare model by establishing their own ``remote control'' medical models that tie doctors' hands and prevent treatment that insurance companies deem as ``unnecessary.'' They have transformed the human patient into a statistical patient. That kind of treatment makes robots of doctors and nurses and ``meat'' out of patients.

The real culprit that must be attacked, if we're to have responsive and affordable health care for all who need it, is the third-party payer. So long as we think somebody else is going to pay for our medical treatment, we'll overutilize the system and suffer ever-increasing prices as a consequence.

If we want true reform in the quality and cost of health care, we must adopt a system that puts the control and responsibility in consumers' hands. Only then can market forces regulate prices and quality in such a way that a fair price will be charged for services rendered.

Of all the plans in Congress, only Republican plans have adopted anything resembling this approach. The best approach for maintaining the best-quality health care in the world at affordable prices for everyone is the free-market approach.

Government can provide valuable tax relief for families who save money for meeting medical expenses, and provide subsidy accounts for the truly needy to be used for preventive treatment, not just emergency treatment. Government can promote healthy lifestyles by rewarding them. It can authorize the rebate of medical-savings accounts and allocated subsidy funds not used at 10-year intervals as the reward for staying healthy. Government can control malpractice claims by setting limits on what lawyers can charge their clients. Get rid of the incentive for megamillion-dollar injury awards, and they'll go away.

Insurance companies can perform market-driven investment functions for the medical savings accounts. With these simple reforms, doctors and nurses can get back to the practice of medicine and caring for human beings in a way that doesn't reduce the patient to so much meat.

If we are to have better health care, we must accept the responsibility for it. We would do well to heed Thomas Jefferson's words: ``I place economy among the first and most important virtues, and public debt as the greatest of dangers ... We must make our choice between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy.''

Thomas E. Link of Roanoke is an independent insurance agent.

by CNB