Letters: Here’s how to fix health care

When the nation debated the Clinton health plan in 1994 and the Affordable Care Act in 2009-2010, a huge talking point for politicians and special business interests opposed to reform was, “The American system is so good, why change it?”

Easy for the president to say: He has his health care coverage; if the ACA dies, millions of Americans will lose their insurance.

For $57.8 billion annually – less than half of one percent of our current health care spend – a host of social investments, all health-producing in themselves, could be made.

The ACA is working well in most places and premiums under the ACA have grown more slowly than prior to the ACA.

It is time to get serious about the cost of healthcare in America.

Recently, governors from every state received a letter from Tom Price, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, and Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Numerous health plans have stated publicly that they would seriously consider pulling out of the insurance market if those payments disappeared, said Chris Sloan, a senior manager at Avalere Health, a Washington, D.C. -based consulting firm. This is not always true. What I know now, though, is that having every provider in health care “owned” by a single organization is more likely to be a barrier to better care.

Our goals are mutually inconsistent. Doctors and patients should make medical choices, not meddlesome insurance companies or government bureaucrats; they might deny coverage as unneeded or unproven. If everyone is covered for everything, spending will skyrocket.

Medicaid does not have to be gutted to control spiraling costs.

Competent governance would promote preventative healthcare and balanced diets.

Even most Americans who support some form of public health coverage for the poor shudder at the thought of a Canadian-style system where everyone waits in the same line and no one, regardless of income, gets to jump the queue. The ACA’s entire gain in coverage would be wiped out, and then some. Hammond says that would cause instability in the insurance market.

The Republicans have had nearly eight years to come up with a workable health care plan.

Career training could be provided for one quarter of all unemployed people (cost: $18 billion). Basically, this gives big tax cuts to a few by denying health care for millions. This is over-the-top rhetoric that discourages honest debate. The savings of those multiple commissions would greatly reduce health care costs, allowing more funds to be directed to actual health care instead of company profits. This year alone, we’ve seen too many private insurers take steps that may save them money, but leave patients with unreasonable – and in some cases, unsafe – burdens. Keep in mind, they would also be expected to pay 2 percent of their income toward this insurance, which, unless they’re were involved in a vehicle wreck or got cancer, they’d likely never use.

Ironically, since the November election, popular support for the Affordable Care Act has increased, and polls show a majority of Americans now view the law favorably. The issue is what we all, as a group, “need” and how we are to pay for it. But this future is impossible without a shift in public opinion that legitimizes imposing limits on health spending. Do we have any sense of what’s going to happen in the next year? The compassionate impulse overwhelmed the rational instinct. Repeal will remove access to affordable health care for tens of millions and will not make access to health care more affordable.