Sunday’s "60 Minutes" had a segment on a convicted violent felon who was sent for a heart transplant. The cost was $1 million. The patient was non-compliant with the treatment after surgery and died.
The federal courts have determined that we must give our prisoners access to health care, but our nation still feels that health care is not a right for the rest of us. The more I study this issue, the more misguided it appears we are. We offer health care to the elderly, but don’t totally cover our workers or our children. The workers are paying the taxes to care for the poor and the elderly, but many can’t afford care for themselves or their families.
We all pay the same taxes to Medicare, but because reimbursement varies, we have just 1.1 doctors for every 1,000 people in Snohomish County while some counties in the East have 20 doctors for every 1,000 people.
In Washington, D.C., the government spends three times per Medicare recipient what it does in Washington state. We get less and still pay the same Medicare tax. Our government claims it provides care for the elderly and the needy, yet we don’t have enough providers in Snohomish County to care for them.
Boeing is having difficulty competing with Airbus. The company cites medical benefits as one of the problems. Airbus doesn’t pay medical benefits, because Europeans have national health insurance that is supported by individual taxes. In this manner, entire nations are in the same benefit pool, reducing the cost of care to everyone.
When asked if we should have a national health plan to cover the population, the American Medical Association says it is afraid that such a plan would "interfere with the prompt delivery of care." In Snohomish County, there isn’t an adequate supply of care to be delivered. U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen is opposed to a national health plan. That’s fine, but what is his alternative?
It is time we looked at our priorities for health care in the United States. It is time that in the richest nation on Earth, we provide care to all. There can be no excuse for the 46 million lives without coverage. There are also the under-insured, people covered by Medicaid and Medicare but who can’t find a provider.
We can avoid 20 percent of all health-care costs by having a single-payer system. Every other industrialized country but ours has a national health-care system. The system needs to provide all the care we can afford. The benefits need to be prioritized by a group of providers and consumers, based on relative worth and effectiveness. It should not deny those who wish to purchase more services than the basic plan would provide.
We need to develop a plan for medications that is rational. Having seniors making decisions between food and medicine is not acceptable. The costs of care would be determined by how much we put in our health-care budget. In that way, businesses would remain competitive in a global market. We can then rationally deal with new drugs and technologies that currently are so expensive. We might even be able to come up with a more rational method of compensation for victims of medical malpractice, instead of the current "lottery" system.
Those of you who have seen your doctors leave your community or retire early, those who cannot find care outside of the emergency department, those who have to wait for weeks for appointments, or cannot afford to buy medicines, call your representatives in Congress. Tell them you have had about enough of our inadequate health-care system.
Those of you who currently are well covered: consider your neighbors, your family members and your future, and do the same thing.
Dr. Anthony J. Roon is director of trauma services at Providence Everett Medical Center.
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