Banker and Tradesman Opinion

EDITORIAL OPINION
BANKER & TRADESMAN NEWSPAPER
PUBLISHED JUNE 30, 2008
By: Peter P. Casey, GRI, CRB

More Health Care – Less Government!

On December 19, 2005, in a similar piece, I urged Senators Kennedy and Kerry to lead the Senate in passing the then proposed Small Business Health Fairness Act which, it is estimated, would have made affordable health insurance available to over 8 million small business owners and employees, at no cost to taxpayers. Now, nearly three years later, debate continues, compromises have been made, other votes have occurred and still no relief for small business is in sight.

The cost of health care continues to rise, health insurance for individuals and small businesses is either considerably more costly than for unions, government entities and large companies or is simply not available to those who need it most. How can we allow the Congress to block such obvious solutions to such serious problems?

How indeed when according to Senator Kennedy, “The United States must also join the other industrialized nations of the world in granting every citizen the right to affordable and effective health care.” How can he and others block the very thing they purport to believe is mandatory? Why, as citizens, do we allow this “my way or the highway” approach to any legislation? Over the more than twenty-five years this issue has been on the table, many partial solutions like The Small Business Health Fairness Act have emerged. Had some of these been adopted at the time, it is likely that many of the millions currently without coverage would be happily insured.

Can it be that this is just not important to the average person? Not likely! Health coverage is one of the highest priorities for most Americans polled in this election cycle. In a recent poll of likely voters and Realtors®, sponsored by the National Association of Realtors®, health care was the number one domestic policy concern of both likely voters and Realtors® and second only to Iraq when included among all policy concerns. In fact, voters and Realtors® agreed on most of the eleven leading health care reform proposals and were either skeptical or divided only on a government run single-payer health system, on mandatory individual insurance and on requiring employers to contribute to the cost of coverage. All agree that the system is broken and must be fixed.

So, given that affordable health care available to everyone is desirable and given that neither the insurance industry nor our Federal Government have been willing to allow it or able to provide it after trying for more than twenty-five years and given that health care costs are escalating far faster than general inflation, what is the solution?

As the result of overwhelming frustration and utter helplessness growing out of a recent family illness, I have come to recognize that greater than 50% (probably more) of the cost of health care is purely administrative; that is to say, simply rear-end covering paper pushing. I was at the same time astonished to see it first hand and furious that the care required by someone I love frequently waited while the paper pushers completed their often redundant piles of paper. This could only get worse if our government, among the worlds leading experts on paper pushing, ran the system.

How about telling the Congress to get out of health care altogether, save for paying the medical bills of those who are truly in need. This would surely be the single most effective paperwork reduction act of all times, it would save the forests and significantly reduce the administrative costs of medical care. We all win!