Health Insurance Options

This is a politically charged issue. Conservatives don’t think government should be involved in this consumer decision. Liberals think standards and consumer protection are important. Of course opinions vary widely and track closely with various variables of political ideology.

Me? I take a simple approach. Here’s the argument.

I see doctors and have medical issues. As I age those issues become more critical and require attention. This takes medicines, doctor office visits and occasional lab work and hospital visits. Overall my health is stable. Inconvenient but stable! Not a whole lot different from anyone else my age. Your body ages and you adjust to the new normal!  Pretty simple.

The trouble comes when paying for the medical attention. In previous times you paid insurance premiums, you paid the doctor bill once received and the insurance benefits had been paid. Later the bills got larger, much larger; and insurance payments became much more relied upon.

Eventually the partnership between insured, doctor and insurance carrier became overly complex and medical providers worked directly with the insurance companies. As time progressed expenses soared as new technologies were brought to medical practices. Medical care became hugely more expensive. Insurance premiums soared. Employer costs were increasingly shared with employees. Finally the government got involved because many people were being excluded from adequate medical care, and employers wanted to shift rising costs for insurance to someone else. Anyone else.

Politicians entered the conversation. Ideologies revved up. And now we have a political slug fest that avoids the real issues.

Affordable health care accessible for most people if not all.

Private insurance carriers seek to avoid risk to protect profits. That is their motive. Medical providers seek to deliver health care consistent with their Hippocratic oath, but also to preserve their operating profits! Doctors are getting lost in this discussion because increasingly they do not own their practices or hospitals in which they perform their services. Medical groups are the management darlings of modern day health organizations. And hospitals are now owned by investor groups seeking to do business as non-profit agencies for tax advantages while protecting profits and capital accumulation.

Politicians are not owners in these professions. But they do have something to sell – power and influence in exchange for legislative coddling that protects investors while shifting the entire cost burden to the public as individual citizens and as deep pocket ‘owners’ of government units.

It is easy to see how we got into this mess.  But wait, the story gets worse!

A politician saw a way out of this by designing a role for the federal government. It would protect the major players in the medical profession AND protect insurance carriers while lowering the costs to all through centralization and standardization. The politician is Barack Obama and the solution is the Affordable Care Act.

Problem is other politicians didn't want any one person to get credit for fixing the huge problem. So they turned the Affordable Care Act into a political football so complex as to make it a liability in any form it took. That’s right; congressmen added more tweaks and clauses to the Act before passage that they could slap blame on any aspect of the program should it fail, yet gain recognition for success if that were even possible.

Such were the antics of politicians of old when the federal income tax law was first implemented. Same for Social Security and Medicare. Opponents to those legislations were everywhere. Against their wishes the enactments survived. They provided much needed benefits then and yet today.

I think the Affordable Care Act will be seen similarly in time. But first we have to get it fully implemented and then tweaked and improved. It will take time.

Meanwhile, the complainers and political hacks need to be ignored. The media has sided with the complainers because it makes good news copy for their ratings. But is their coverage accurate and fair to the public?  Most likely not.

So what to do? Live with ACA as best you can for the short term. Insist that improvements and corrections be made when the needs become known. Keep a cool head and keep living your life while others attempt to do the right thing.

Currently the right thing to be done is a crap shoot because of unfair interference.  And politicians wonder why we hold them in such low esteem! Truth is, they get away with it because too many of us are too stupid or lazy to understand the issues and vote intelligently. If we kept our elected officials truly accountable, we wouldn't have this problem.

Oh well! I've done my bit. And I've shared it, too. What are you doing about it?

December 19, 2013