San Francisco Chronicle
January 31, 2002
By Victoria Colliver
“Blue Shield of California yesterday introduced a two-tiered system with hospitals on the ‘choice’ list less costly than those on the ‘affiliated’ list.”
“The tiered system is one of the most immediate ways insurers and employers can pass on to consumers some of the rising costs in health care.”
Larry Levitt, vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation:
“One of the real values of employer-provided health insurance was it was pretty simple for people. You signed up for a package and every employee –from the janitor to the CEO — got the same benefits. As we get into this tiering, low-wage employees are getting a different benefit than high-wage employees.”
Comment: The shifting of health care costs to individuals that have the greatest need for care is increasing with a vengeance. The inevitable tiering results not only in fewer benefits for lower income individuals, but it will actually prevent access to care because of lack of affordability.
With our great resources dedicated to health care, using global budgeting to fund facilities would contain costs for hospitals without the necessity of tiering access to care. It is time that we recognize the inhumanity of controlling costs by creating financial barriers to access. Instead, we should control the funds that create excess capacity in our system.
The $1.4 trillion that we are spending on health care would fund all of the capacity that we need, if we merely adopted the administrative efficiencies of a single, publicly administered insurance program, and dismissed the egregiously wasteful private health plans. $1.4 trillion amounts to about $5000 for each man, woman and child in the United States. For a family of four, placing $20,000 into a universal risk pool would provide very nice health care coverage indeed. And public funding with public administration would assure equity both in the way that we pay for and the way that we access health care.
Steven Wolfson, M.D. responds to John Baldwin, M.D., Dean of Dartmouth Medical School who said, “There are some things that aren’t businesses and that’s OK. I haven’t heard anyone talk about privatizing the Marine Corps.”
Dr. Wolfson:
Can’t you just see “Managed Marine Care”
Your request for a rifle is denied. Diagnosis does not fit this treatment.
No air support will be authorized unless applied for prior to use.
Our 800 line is always open for claims for reinforcements, ammunition, etc.
Sorry, our operators are serving other customers.
We do not provide M-16 rifles; crossbows are equally effective and less costly.