By Richard Magee, Vicki Simons and Cathilia Flores
In his July 21 column “We can make our health care worse,” Michael Swickard gets at least two things right:
• We can make our health care worse – something we have been doing quite effectively for quite some time, resulting in more than 47 million Americans being without health insurance at a cost that is projected to reach 17.7 percent of gross domestic product by 2012. That’s up from 14.1 percent in 2001.
In the other industrialized nations, everyone is covered, and the costs as a percentage of gross domestic product, on average, are less than half that of the
• It is indeed a good idea to wear a hat when in the sun.
That’s the positive side of Dr. Swickard’s column. The negatives include being long on ideology, short on facts and non-existent on compassion and understanding.
Dr. Swickard argues that establishing a system that guarantees universal access to health coverage is somehow akin to aping the “Canadian method,” proponents of which are captive to “the notion that governments are best suited to take care of people because they operate more ‘fairly.’ Our government is tasked to make sure we all get equal treatment. But what if you want more of different treatments? Socialism does not work… because humans have different aspirations.”
Proposed system isn’t socialized medicine
It seems that Dr. Swickard is thus captive to a delusion that a health-care system that guarantees universal health-care access is socialized medicine. In
While guaranteeing coverage to all New Mexicans, the proposed legislation would exempt certain groups, such as federal retirees and the military, and would make it optional for American Indians and self-insured companies. The Health Security Act would be a self-insurance system for New Mexicans, not unlike the cooperatives people in ranching and agriculture have long found quite effective.
Please beware of anyone using labels such as “socialism” as a substitute for reasoned discourse. Take a close look at what is actually being proposed.
Participants would have total authority to choose their physician, hospital and pharmacy, and could not be denied care for any pre-existing condition. Likewise, physicians would be able to negotiate fees with the system – unlike the current “take it or leave it” fee structure of the myriad insurance companies. The cost of the system would be much lower, with a target of no more than 5 percent going to overhead – in contrast with the insurance companies, which spend upwards of 31 percent on overhead while denying coverage to an alarming number of people who mistakenly thought they were adequately insured.
But even though everyone would be covered under the New Mexico Health Security Act, proponents would not, as Dr. Swickard seems to suggest, pretend that people are “getting something for nothing.” Everyone, including employers, would pay premiums on a sliding scale based on the ability to pay, and the premiums would be capped.
Physicians would have less hassle
Swickard, in addition to using the “socialism” bogeyman argument, also tries to instill a fear of doing anything to fix the current, broken mess: “Eventually, future doctors may not go to medical school. Or, maybe the very best future doctors decide not to go. We will lose if great doctors do something else.”
Perhaps some doctors will leave, and perhaps some people who might have become doctors will decide against going to medical school. But that already happens under the current system, in which each physician in private practice must confront, on a daily basis, a bewildering array of insurance plans, each with a different network of providers, each with a different list of approved medicines.
The current system has actually increased the overhead of physicians, thus indirectly affecting the cost of health insurance. The New Mexico Health Security Act would eliminate the confusion and would give physicians the freedom to practice medicine without as much hassle. Our suspicion is that, were the act approved, doctors would be attracted to the state.
Magee, Simons and Flores are volunteers from