by V J Webb

Created on: June 11, 2009

The United States needs universal health care. We also need to make it a Medicaid single payer system. The Medicaid administration costs are four to six percent. In comparison an HMO has administrative costs of 8 to 12 percent. A well-run commercial insurer pays 15 to 20 percent in administrative cost. We spend more than double what is spent in Canada on administrative costs. We pay more for health insurance than any other industrialized country. However, we are number 37 when it comes to quality of health care received.

The United States has between 35 and 46 million uninsured people. These individuals go to the emergency room when they need medical attention. This practice escalates our health care cost. Those that say that they don't want to pay for the uninsured don't realize that we are already paying. Hospitals raise their costs to the insured to cover the costs of treating the uninsured.

Insurance companies are making excessive profits. However, they still raise the rates and lower the service each year. For example, the Anthem customer service number gets one to an agent on their help desk. The agent may or may not speak English fluently. The agent doesn't always understand how the insurance policy works. I had an agent at the Anthem Wellpoint help desk tell me that the co-pays don't count toward out-of-pocket costs. If that were true, a policy would not have an out-of-pocket maximum amount.

This year Anthem managed to charge me $174 more than my maximum out-of-pocket costs. So, far I have spent approximately six hours on the phone with them and with our insurance agent. Our agent has spent an equal amount of time. In addition, Anthem has wasted as much time as we have. All of this because they have so many disconnected systems that when something goes wrong they don't know how to fix the problem.

It is highly unlikely that this mistake was an isolated case. We can probably pay for universal health care by eliminating the nonsense and redundancy in our current system. Another way to save money and trees is by changing the HIPAA laws. To comply with HIPAA, everyone entering Saint Agnes Hospital in Fresno has to sign three pages of paper (even if it is only for lab work.) This is a waste of time, money and resources. We should be storing these documents electronically. California runs commercials advising us to save and recycle. Then they pass laws that waste paper.

As usual, the pharmacy and insurance company lobbyist are driving the health reform bill on which Congress is working. We need to decide if health care is a vehicle to keep our citizens well or if it is a vehicle for making money for its shareholders.

Our Declaration of Independence guarantees life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Without basic health care, these goals are very hard to obtain. It is time that we treated basic health care as a right and not a privilege.

The United States is the greatest country in the world. We need to start taking care of all of our citizens. A little preventive maintenance goes a long way in preventing the escalation of a health problem.

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