Much Ado About Health Care

The other day I went to Dianne Feinstein's office to talk about health care with a staffer. There were about 15 other people there. It was a depressing event. Basically, it's clear that health care isn't a big issue with Senator Feinstein. Her main concerns are that whatever gets passed shouldn't cost too much money and especially should not create programs that end up costing California money that it doesn't have.

We have created a bizarre and byzantine system in this country concerning health care. It's expensive. It results in high infant mortality and low life expectancy relative to other industrialized nations. It's crap. The only thing it's good at is treating people with exotic problems using fancy equipment at a ridiculous cost. When it comes to basic care, it's junk. It ought to be scrapped completely.

Why we won't admit that our health care system is junk is unknown to me. But I think it may be because we have created a system that reflects the ethos of this country. We hate government. So our system is private. We love toys. So hospitals buy millions and millions of dollars of fancy equipment. We love to sue. So we allow people to collect millions for wrongful medical practice in courts of law. We hate taxes. So we have companies provide medical benefits tax free. We are fearful of dying from some exotic disease so we're all for ridiculously expensive procedures that solve the one in a hundred thousand case of illness.

Our health care system is like a Harley. It's expensive. It's wasteful. It doesn't handle or ride well. But it looks impressive from a distance. It's great for the occasional times you want to go to 0 to 100 in a hurry. Like a Harley, our health care is distinctly American. And it's junk.

To attack our crappy health care system is essentially to attack the American way of thinking. Boundless optimism is always a good thing except in the case of health care. It leads to boundless costs.

This year our president decided to try and reform health care. It was a noble idea, but he made a few blunders along the way. First and foremost, he decided to let Congress write the laws for reform. Congress has been unable to create significant social welfare legislation in over thirty years. Time Magazine's Joe Klein says their ineptitude is due to the fact that this country is getting old. Apparently only fresh democracies can do anything right. But that's ridiculous. Did Congress have a "best used by" date of 1978?

No, what has happened is that lobbying money has completely corrupted Congress. I don't know how many hundreds of millions of dollars the health care industry has given Congress over the last several years. But asking them to write laws reforming health care is like asking the American Association of Prostitutes to right a manifesto on the value of marital fidelity. Neither has a clue.

Plus no one wants to raise taxes, which means there is no money for big programs. What you get are things like George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind Act. These are unfunded mandates, laws that reflect what we'd like to do if we had dough. The corruption of Congress by money and the taxpayer revolt of the late 1970s has left this country running on fumes. If we wouldn't work so damn hard in comparison to other countries, we'd be in one huge mess. We scrimp on education, which hurts our economic competitiveness. We let health care be catch as catch can, which leads to major holes in treating our public and preventing disease.

Obama should have never let Congress near a bill until he had figured out what he personally wanted. The end result was that the GAO looked at what Congress was proposing and pronounced it unworkable. It would cost 100 billion a year of government money and do nothing to curtail health care costs. From that moment on, real health care reform was over.

Instead, what we now have is the theater of Obama trying to save face, the right wing trying to take advantage of Obama's misstep by demonizing him, and seniors scared to death that health care reform will come out of their hides. It makes for great news. But we aren't talking about reform anymore. We're just engaging in rhetoric.

A bill will be passed no doubt. More people will be insured than before. That's a good thing. Seniors will get less health care than before. That's a bad thing. But in the end our health care system will be much the same as it was before, crap.

Let's go from the general to the specific. I currently pay about 10K a year for my health insurance and doctors visits. My sweetie and I are perfectly healthy, lucky us. Our deductible is 5K per person. Our health insurance includes one annual exam less lab expenses.

Our costs are roughly double what they were five years ago despite being elevated to the lowest cost tier of health insurance (due to our lucky good health) and doubling our deductible. My routine urine analysis from my last annual exam was 700 dollars, up 500 percent from five years ago. When all is said and done with health care reform what will I be paying five years from now? I'd bet anyone 5K that my costs will be over 20K five years from now. My health insurance costs will be dramatically up. Because I'm older, I'll have more "issues," which means more doctors visits. I'm convinced that despite all of the rhetoric and shouting, this debate about health care is much ado about nothing.

As someone once said about academia, the fights are so vicious because the stakes are so small. That's what's happening with heath care today.