Restoring Healthcare to Our Suffering Economy

My take on the presidential candidates health care reforms: McCain, no real plan, no change; Obama, the country's financial collapse trumps any consideration of health care reform in the immediate future.

Our economy is sick. People, whose homes have fallen in value, whose retirement savings are rapidly shrinking as bonds, stocks and saving wane, feel poorer. American jobs (not already lost) are in jeopardy. Families' confidence in their abilities to pay mortgages, credit card debt and other obligations has diminished. Trips to the supermarket and gas station reveal prices which are substantially higher than they were a year ago. The unemployed, uninsured, underinsured, poor or about-to-be poor, or those depending on (federally subsidized) state Medicaid will not have access to, or be able to afford, necesary and appropriate health care. Is this really the time to ignore the health care system crisis because we have a national and international financial crisis?

Our country needs to ask whether the enormous resources being spent today on health care buy health care. Do dollars spent to offset insurance company or health plan marketing costs buy one doctor's office visit or one school nurse's office, or one vaccination for a child, or one bottle of insulin for a diabetic? Health insurance sales commissions don't buy health care. Does 25% of the health insurance or plan dollar buy health care? No, it buys administrative overhead, and no administrative overhead has ever cured a sick father, delivered a newborn, or taken care of a child with cancer.

Our federal employees, including Congresspeople, have an excellent menu of health services from which to choose. These plans are not burdened by high marketing and commission costs. Medicare is efficiently run and does not need high administrative overhead to get its job done. Let's piggyback onto these systems, providing accessible lower cost insurance, which provides needed, professionally accepted standards of care to all. Let's start by providing access to insurance through existing mechanisms which have proved track records.