Dear fellow Americans, we can do much better!
I am writing this on the day after Massachusetts residents used their God given rights as articulated in our Constitution to exercise their sovereignty in this country, to make their wishes known to our representative government. A main issue, of course, was health care. The current bills are running at a low ball price of $ 1 trillion annually that is over 1000 billion! Most Americans have educated themselves that this is a number created not on a pragmatic approach to health care, but rather behind the door in an attempt to control the people and take over one sixth of our economy. This is a significant change from the time tested U.S. free market to an un-American government control system.
The current price tag, at least $1 trillion, is based on ideology, not objective pragmatic reform of our health care delivery system. I have heard from Democrats in Congress that capitulated that they were told “you will support this, or you will lose support from the White House and DNC.” Think about it; if the bills in both the House and Senate could stand on their own merit, we would not see the most corrupt and unconstitutional bribes such as the Louisiana and Nebraska kickbacks as well as teamsters’ exception. All the afore mentioned at the expense of the American taxpayer. These backroom deals were all approved by the White House and rank as the most arrogant examples of governmental corruption in U.S. history.
Based on my 30 plus years in health care as an executive in both the VA system and private sector, I recommend four simple improvements that will allow the American free market (envy of the world ) to operate . The current price tag is officially $900 billion annually and we know that is a low estimate. Please review the humble recommendations knowing there are other multiple incremental reforms that could be enacted in time to improve our system and increase access. Here are just a few.
1. Provide health care to the legal citizens uninsured. The average cost per person is $7,700.00. The actual numbers of legal American citizens without coverage is 17 million.
Let’s round both numbers high, at 20 million people and $8,000 per U.S. citizen, the total, $160 billion annually.
2. Introduce legislation for malpractice or Tort reform. This would cap awards to within reasonable limits. These caps assure that if someone is truly harmed due to negligence they have reasonable recourse for remedy. What this also does is reduce the number of radiation-based imaging tests used to defend the physician from unreasonable claims. In other words the physician knows the patient does not need a CT or MRI in addition to an X-ray but will order it so as not to be vulnerable to an attorney in the discovery process. This reform reduces the excessive costs of unnecessary exams, and more importantly, eliminates the practice of over exposing our population to excessive radiation. A CT or MRI introduces the radiation of 4,000 X-rays into the bodies of our brethren.
3.We can allow the free market to control costs by allowing competition across state lines that allows for groups of small businesses and individual families to buy insurance. For example, a citizen residing in Connecticut could purchase insurance from Blue Cross or Aetna in California or other states. This would allow for true competition and lower the cost.
4. Finally we can deal with the pre-existing conditions issue by legislation that mandates coverage and portability as a shared cost between the insurance company that is losing the client and the insurance company gaining the client we need to identify the payers to assure no one falls through the cracks.
We, as the people who hold the sovereignty of this nation, must put an end to the arrogant and ignorant approach of this administration and current Congress. We must stand up for ourselves and America. We do not have to settle for this un-American approach to health care and government control. We do not need to make the mistakes of Europe, Canada and former soviet countries. We should understand we have the best system for quality care that simply needs incremental reform rather than being tossed away and replaced by socialism. What we should demand of our representative government is ethical incremental reform. These four improvements can cover previously uncovered lives if the citizen opts for coverage, and in aggregate could be implanted for about $200 Billion, a significantly lower cost for America and future generations.
Ron Porzio
Maple Valley
