It’s the Taj Mahal of Health Insurance Schemes
By Susan Dentzer (health correspondent for “The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer” on PBS)
The Washington Post – October 31, 2004
Following are excerpts from Susan Dentzer’s response to a Washington Post news story of an uninsured carpenter from Durham, N.C. who outsourced his own heart surgery to India, at a cost of $10,000, including transportation. He could not afford the $200,000 his surgery would have cost in this country.
Good grief, why didn’t someone think of this earlier! Forty-five million americans lack health insurance, and covering every one of them would be costly. Why not outsource them all to India?
Opponents will immediately say this idea is impractical. I say, don’t be health coverage girlie men! First, not all the uninsured would have to travel to India to get health care. For example, when an uninsured person first got the sniffles, he or she could pick up the phone and talk with someone at a call center in, say, Bangalore. An Indian nurse making $10 a day would listen (sympathetically, of course) and offer advice.
For those uninsured in need of hands-on medical care, here’s an idea: What if some of those failing U.S. airlines converted to running medical air shuttle services between, say, New York and New Delhi, or Boston and Bombay? Uncle Sam could hire them as private contractors, then pay them to ferry the uninsured back and forth.
The more I think about this idea, the better I like it. Just imagine all the problems it would solve: No more overcrowded emergency rooms choked with uninsured patients. No more worries about a nursing shortage; by transferring our patients to India, we’d outsource nursing care there, too. Hospitals and doctors here would be freed up to do what makes most sense for them economically: treat well-insured patients at steep prices — even to the point of giving them care that they probably don’t need! Perform the most lucrative elective surgeries on relatively healthy patients, rather than giving high-cost care to the sickest loss leaders!
We all know the uninsured are a terrible problem, an embarrassment, really, for such a rich country as ours. Every other major industrialized nation has figured out how to provide health coverage to most, if not all, of its citizens. At last, here’s a twist on globalization that could really work for everybody. So let’s get started. Who says Americans can’t take care of their own?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A11196-2004Oct30?language=printer
Comment: Susan Dentzer’s proposal certainly should embarrass us all. The $1.8 trillion that we are already spending on health care is more than enough to provide high quality, comprehensive health care for absolutely everyone. Her facetious proposal stands in stark contrast to well understood and effective policy solutions that would provide us with an affordable health care utopia. When we already have the resources, we should be ashamed that we continue to allow them to be frittered away when there is so much unmet need.
Appropriate are comments from today’s USA Today editorial on the president’s challenge to unite the nation:
“Almost every expert agrees that the (health care) system is not sustainable, and 70% of voters polled Tuesday said they were ‘very concerned’ about the availability and cost of health care.”
“The first step toward a bipartisan approach is to agree on universal coverage as a goal and be honest about its cost.”
“Only with a common starting point is there any hope of fighting off the lies spread by the interests that profit from the weaknesses of the current system.”
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2004-11-03-our-view_x.htm
(Being honest about costs includes being completely honest about the advantages and disadvantages of government versus market mechanisms of controlling costs.)