Oklahoma State Senate
Senator Jim Wilson
Senate District 3
For Immediate Release: June 16, 2009
The Myth of Health Care Cost
Every politician and pundit has an opinion about
health care reform and the effort to cover the uninsured. Most
of them would have us believe that universal care will cost more
and be less productive. We seem to have forgotten during this
discussion that every other industrialized country has a universal
health care system which costs anywhere from a third to three-fifths
of our cost. The data shows we have more than enough money in
the system to accommodate comprehensive health care for all citizens
with better outcomes.
The first note of importance is that health care and health insurance
are two separate entities. The second is that Medicare and the
VA, both government systems, outperform the private health insurance
community both in cost and outcomes.
Currently, health care providers and insurance companies are constantly
at odds because of their respective profit motives while the health
care consumer suffers from their lack of ability and coordination.
Perhaps a strong consumer protection effort would be useful.
Hospitals have taken it on themselves to manage risk by cost shifting.
Keep in mind these are people that have an 80 percent error rate
on bills, have one medical error per patient day and charge the
uninsured up to 308% of Medicare reimbursement. If they were doing
a good job of cost shifting, we wouldn’t see such drastic
disparities in outcomes for the uninsured. Are they really qualified
to underwrite risk?
Health insurance companies, on the other hand, have little community
ethics and seem to be only responsive to the profit motive. There
probably is a role, but it’s unlikely that it includes providing
medically necessary health care in a universal system.
Some legislators tried this year to increase the percentage of
premiums used for health care from 60 to 75 percent, but failed
to get the votes. It’s hard to imagine that a health insurance
company needs a 40 percent margin when Medicare gets by with 2
percent. Another measure some legislators tried to pass this year
was prohibiting insurance companies from paying bonuses to employees
who can figure out how to cancel a policy when the insured individual
needs to make a claim. Again the votes weren’t there.
For the highest priced health care system in the world, we should
expect the best health care in the world. Sadly, we rank 15th
out of 25 industrialized countries at twice the cost. As we continue
to hear about reform, it’s important to keep in mind that
special interests will try to convince us health care delivery
will somehow be worse if they don’t make big money. The
truth is the special interests have to manipulate voters in order
to continue a system which is too disorganized to be financially
or medically efficient. That’s not fair to the rest of us.
For a full report on the waste and inefficiency in the health
care system go to www.oksenate.gov/Senators/biographies/wilson_bio.html
and scroll down to the press releases.
State Sen. Jim Wilson
Senate District
D-Tahlequah
(491 words)
For more information contact:
Sen. Wilson - (405) 521-5574
