Our View: It’s time to revisit national health care
Idaho, like virtually every other state, can’t figure out how to cope with the black hole of Medicaid. The state’s Medicaid spending has grown 935 percent since 1990 with no end in sight for escalating costs. Lawmakers recently refused to pump an added $15 million into the program for health care of the poor and disabled until reforms are enacted.
Ā But what reforms? Stop paying health care providers is one option; another is to tell them they cannot accept any new patients. Too drastic, by far. It is not just the poor who are running up bills for health care.
Some 4,500 personal bankruptcies resulted from unpaid medical bills in Idaho last year. And many of those were people who thought they were protected by having health care insurance, only to find that high deductibles and co-pays cost them several thousand dollars out of pocket. “The people out there who are middle class and have health insurance believe that it will keep them from financial ruin if they should get sick,” says Dr. Bill Woodhouse, a physician for Pocatello Family Medicine. “The reality is that ain’t so.”
And when people can’t pay medical bills, they may wind up in the Bannock County indigent office -some 400 to 450 cases a year. That’s a hardship not only for local government, but for individuals, who can find a lien placed on their property to repay the county.
Furthermore, about one in five adults in Idaho does not have health insurance because of its cost. Typically, the young and healthy members of the population drop out. As a result, the rest of us -who are more likely to be sick or laid up-pay ever higher premiums for insurance. Some small employers find they cannot afford insurance for employees, or they skimp on benefits.
Not surprisingly, the federal government is not immune from the problem. Within a decade, the government will be footing the bill for nearly half the nation’s medical costs, its share propelled higher by the hugely expensive Medicare drug legislation enacted in 2003. To win its passage, the Bush administration told wavering lawmakers that the program would cost $400 billion; the latest estimate of costs when the program goes into effect next year is more than $720 billion.
The president has touted health savings accounts, which in theory would work in conjunction with a health insurance policy to help pay off the deductible, co-pay or services above a coverage limit. But that would not help the growing number of people who cannot afford medical insurance.
The administration of President Bill Clinton pushed hard for a national health insurance system a decade go. Vested interests torpedoed that effort, making Hillary Clinton the scapegoat for its demise. But that was then, and this is now.
Here’s what Dr. Woodhouse says in a well-written, thorough Journal story by reporter Elizabeth Ziegler:
“While many claim that we have the best health care system in the world, I know of nobody who believes we have the best way of paying for health care, as evidenced by the high number of the uninsured and medical bankruptcies,” Woodhouse says. “I feel our health care financing system has failed everyone, including the providers. It’s an extractive industry right now. I’ve reluctantly come to believe in the single payer, national health program. I am a pretty conservative person, but this is one thing in which the free market has failed.”
The mounting evidence, in doctor’s offices, in legislative halls, in the bankruptcy courts, and in households shattered by medical debt, is that this doctor knows best.
