Harris offers wrong fix for health care
By Dr. Taro J. Adachi
Letters
The Baltimore Sun
Oct. 7, 2009
Dr. Andy Harris has made a misdiagnosis of the underlying problem in U.S. health care and his suggestions for treatment are off (“Reform, not overreach,” Oct. 6).
He’s shared a misconception that competition among insurers would bring down the cost of health care insurance. That was the original concept before the industry went to a for-profit model. Since that time, the annual cost of care for individuals and families has risen steadily.
The 2009 Kaiser Family Foundation’s annual survey of health benefits notes that despite these hard economic times and the focus on health insurance costs, the average annual premiums for employer sponsored health insurance are $4,824 for single coverage and $13,375 for family coverage — a 5 percent increase from last year alone. Workers contributions, annual deductibles and copays all went up.
These are the real costs that are affecting the economics of companies large and small. On the patient side of the economics, even families with supposedly good coverage are just one serious illness away from financial ruin. According to a Harvard study from this summer , illness and medical bills contribute to 62 percent of personal bankruptcies — a 50 percent increase since 2001. And three-quarters of the medically bankrupt had insurance, at least when they first got sick.
Coverage that families bought in good faith failed to protect them. Some were bankrupted by co-payments, deductibles and loopholes. Others got too sick to work, leaving them unemployed and uninsured. Now Congress plans to make it a federal offense not to purchase such faulty insurance.
Dr. Harris and I do agree with things we want in health care reform. We want coverage for all for medically necessary care at a lower cost. The real solution has become evident to most Americans. Most physicians and patients now want national health care. The single-payer bill HR 676 will come up for a promised vote on the floor of the House this month. This bill is publicly funded and your care is delivered by the physician or institution of your choosing. Everyone is covered — really. Politicians have called this impossible, but the Congressional Budget Office says it would save at least $350 billion a year, partly by cutting out the expensive, profit-taking health insurance companies. At the very least, your representatives in Congress need to hear your voice now. Let them be led by their constituents and not their campaign budgets funded by the very health insurance industry that they are supporting with other proposals.
The writer heads the Maryland Chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program.
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