THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, September 3, 1994 TAG: 9409020032
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: Medium: 58 lines
The Random House Dictionary defines the word ``reform'' as ``The improvement of what is wrong, corrupt, etc.''
What is ``wrong'' or ``corrupt'' in our present health-care system? Simple:
1. It costs too much.
2. It is not available to all.
Consider:
The doctor bill for my first child in 1950 was $100 when my salary as a starting engineer was $3,000 per year. My niece's doctor bill for her expected child will cost $10,000, 100 times as much. Are starting engineers making $300,000 per year now? Not by a long shot.
The private insurance companies are skimming 24 percent off the top of our health-insurance premiums to cover their administrative costs and profits. A ``single payer'' system would cost 1 percent to 3 percent to operate. To add injury to insult, the insurance companies are telling the medical profession how to treat patients.
The private insurance companies will cover you only if you are healthy. All others can go to a corner to suffer and die.
The vicious attacks on health-care reform by the insurance companies include all kinds of false claims about ``single payer'' systems in other countries, such as Germany and Finland. I've talked with people from these two countries who defend their health-care system, saying they wouldn't give it up for the world.
The insurance companies claim that quality would go down with health-care reform. WRONG. My correspondent from Finland can't understand the discrepancy in the United States between ``high-'' and ``low''-quality providers. In Finland, professional pride forces competition, and all hospitals are considered good. If our system is so good, how come the United States has one of the highest infant mortality rates of the industrialized world?
The health-care ``industry'' consumes 14 percent of our gross domestic product and is growing. If the present trend continues, our paychecks will go to the insurance companies and they will ``give'' us an ever-decreasing ``allowance'' from our earnings. If you were making as much money as the insurance companies, wouldn't you be tempted to lie and cheat on a grand scale to protect your ill-gotten gains?
To me, the answer is simple. Set up a quasi-government corporation, with incentives for performance. Establish one national computer system to automatically process claims, computer-to-computer with no paper, with payment being made directly to providers' banks via EFT. Provide strong rules, audit capability and a medical committee to set standards. Instead of paying the insurance companies my monthly premiums, I'd rather pay 76 percent of my current bill to the national ``single payer,'' with a reduction each year due to improved efficiency.
WILLIAM BECK
Hertford, N.C., Aug. 27, 1994 by CNB