The economics of health care...not

"Economics" and "health care" should never be used in the same sentence

The only time I listen to the radio is in my car, and I seldom listen closely; I keep it on for background noise. But today one particular bit of background noise caught my ear; an NPR program had an Ivy League professor (I didn’t catch his name) going on about how restraining medical costs (like any meaningful health care reform would) would be a Bad Thing for the economy, since the health care industry is one of our only growth industries right now.

Now, I never caught his name, so I can’t look him or his writing (if any) up on the web; I really don’t know if he had anything else to say, perhaps something I might agree with. I don’t know his credentials or bona fides, so I can’t say if they’re worth a damn. I can say that I’ve heard this song before, from far-right commentators and the odd loony-toon on the web, but they were easy to dismiss. This guy’s Ivy League credentials put him in a different category, that of one who should know better.

I will admit that he’s probably right. Health care is a growth industry in the U.S., and making sweeping regulatory changes in any growth industry right now could very well exacerbate a dismal situation. From an economic standpoint, he’s right.

So the fuck what?

Yes, health care is an industry in the U.S., one that’s in a state of growth when other industries are suffering. That’s the problem; health care in this country is in the control of Business (with a capitol B), with decisions made always with an eye toward the bottom line, the balance sheet, the ledger. Decisions that should be left to the patient and his or her doctor(s) are left in the hands of people with MBA’s rather than MD’s, of managers rather than healers.

So as I am listening to this joker I am wondering just how many deaths are acceptable in his quest for the bottom line. Just how much bad health care do we have to suffer because it’s more cost effective? How many poor people have to do without adequate health care because it’s not economically viable to provide them with something better? If he addressed any of these questions I didn’t hear it, and I don’t have time to find out who he is or what else he might have said, whether he addressed any of these concerns or not. I had to stop and buy gas, and by the time I got back in my car the program was on to something else. But I didn’t get the impression that the health care needs of the poor were much of a concern for him.

I got the distinct impression that Mr. Ivy League was not at all concerned with keeping people healthy; I felt that his primary concern was in keeping the health care industry healthy and profitable.

Health care shouldn’t be something we look to to turn a profit. This statement may seem un-American to some people; hell, I’ll even admit that it is un-American to an extent. It is un-American, in the sense that it’s not the way we do things in America, to provide health care without a built-in profit incentive. In fact, it’s thought of as un-American (or downright communist) to do ANYTHING without an eye to profit. And this is the problem; we need to look at health care as something everyone should enjoy, not something for sale to those who can afford it and the rest can make do.

And speaking of making do, there’s Medicaid, the government’s alternative to pay-for-play health care that is available to the poor. Now, this space was originally filled with two paragraphs describing Medicaid and its shortcomings, my personal financial woes and my main Medicaid complaints, but those paragraphs were getting awfully long and I decided to cut them. Suffice to say that Medicaid is about as efficient as a beat-up ’63 Ford pick-up with a wonky carb and no muffler. But, hey, it keeps me alive, if not running much better than that old Ford. But I digress; perhaps Medicaid is a subject best addressed in a later article.

Health care is too important, too basic a necessity, to leave it in the hands of those who worship the bottom line. People’s health is something that we as a society should be working to preserve, without figuring out a way for very rich people to make a profit off it. All other industrialized nations have some form of "national health" and if they can do it, I don’t see that America alone needs to keep health care in the pockets of the wealthy. If you continue to keep the wealthy in charge of health care (and I don’t just mean the insurance companies) then you’re going to continue to get health care that provides primarily for the wealthy; the rest of us can take Medicaid and learn to like it.

We have got to stop thinking this way; a lot of people’s lives depend on it. Insurance companies and health care managers are all trained in the business of business, and health care is their product and their responsibilities are to their stockholders. That’s how things are done in capitalist America. We need a change, and I can’t believe that there’s anything un-American about heaping people healthy.

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.