An Important Issue - Health Care Reform - Obama's Deception.

I very rarely comment about politics or public policy. Though I am inundated with news all day, being on the Internet constantly at work and at home, I form a general opinion by assimilating information without paying attention to the details. In other words it is not a scientific but rather an intuitive process.

The current health care debate in congress and the approach of both sides to pinpoint where the problem is and how to solve it has been very disappointing. I expect politicians in congress to be cynical. I see congress as a necessary evil and I have very little respect for our senators and congressmen. The president on the other hand is another story. With few exceptions (Jimmy Carter for one), I believe they are patriotic leaders who try to do their best for the country as a whole. I may not agree with their policies but I do not see them as cynical self serving politicians. When President Obama came into office, I had a lot of foreboding because of his stance towards Israel and Iran. Though I did not vote for him because of that, I thought he probably would be good for the country. He looks intelligent, is eloquent and has the capability to be a good leader. His Op-Ed article this Sunday in the NY Times however dispelled all illusions and his dishonesty or worse for a leader, creating a straw man and blaming the innocent, comes through loud and clear. Here is the article.

The President has cynically set up the insurance companies as the scapegoat for all that is wrong with the current system. He pays lip service to the problem of rising health care costs and proposes to legislate some form of cost control. As we know all these approaches will not work. Every time the government tries to outsmart and set limits to the free market, it falls flat on its face. Legislators don't have a chance against businessmen who will eventually find a loophole to circumvent whatever restriction is imposed. After all they are there to make money. To control the insurance companies he proposes government competition. Good luck! When was the last time a government entity managed itself well enough to be a long term competition to private enterprise? Look at the post office!

The problem with the President is that for some reason, which I suspect is not innocent, he ignores one of the major contributors to the elevated cost of health care in our country and that is malpractice insurance. See here for an overview. The cost of malpractice is very insidious. Think about the doctors, the hospitals, the drug companies and every other entity that supplies or has anything to do with the health care industry. Think about the direct cost such as insurance and the indirect cost such as unnecessary procedures just to insure that the provider is not sued. Addressing that issue by changing the law and disallowing any punitive payments, limiting compensation for error to what is necessary for the recovery of the injured patient, would drastically reduce that cost. It would bring down doctors and hospital bills dramatically and thus insurance costs. The free market will make sure that all these costs will find a rational level. When we compare the cost of health care in the USA to that in other countries, our higher cost, I am convinced is directly attributable to our malpractice law. Approaching the problem from that point of view would not interfere with the free market and the open system we are used to. It would affect the judicial system, which is where the government should be active. Free market and a fair justice system foster great economies. Leave the markets to its participants and afford them an attractive playing field by putting in place fair laws.

Some will argue that reducing the threat of malpractice would foster negligence and carelessness by health care providers. That to me is nonsense. A free market will take care of it if the information channels are open. The government could play a role in monitoring and publicizing outcomes at each provider. A provider will not afford too many mistakes. He would have no patients very fast.

Once cost have been brought down and insurance rates are now affordable, a much larger portion of the population will be able to afford purchasing insurance. The government then can step in by providing a safety net for the few who could not for whatever legitimate reason, afford it. Medicare and Medicaid costs would rapidly decline and maybe some of the savings could go towards closing the social security gap.

There is another issue that makes health care costs stay high and that is corruption. Hospitals in general are not the most efficient organizations and corruption is more common there then in other private businesses. I suspect that it has to do with the way hospitals are reimbursed which feeds into this practice. I will hopefully address it in a separate post.

The fact that Obama and both his supporters and opponents in congress have not brought this out, makes one wonder how much the interest of the US population, their constituents who they are supposed to represent , is the underlying reason of this debate. I cannot but feel that they are all cynical politicians who hopefully will be voted out of office at next election together with the disappointing President Obama.