Editor’s note: This commentary is by Keith Stern, who is the owner for 30 years of Stern’s Quality Produce, a retail and wholesale business in White River Junction. He was an independent candidate for U.S. Senate and participated in the Republican primary for U.S. representative. He served many years on the Design Review Board in Springfield, where he lives.
We all agree there is a problem with the high cost of health care. The solutions create much controversy.
Single payer is an idea many want and I am one of them, but a government-run system is wrong minded. We could have a company hired to run a billing and collecting system funded by a one-time lump sum amount which the company invests to pay bills, make a profit, and keep the money fully funded. This is a better way than putting out money yearly to pay for it because there is no issue with profits, increasing costs, and budgeting for this continually.
Establishing a uniform set of insurance policies among the states and allowing all insurance companies to provide policies in all states and customizing of policies for different demographics, competition would help drive down policy costs.
This company would eliminate the need for health care providers’ expense for billing and collecting which reduces the cost of health care. The health care provider would send this company a statement of services provided and the company would then electronically make payment. This company would collect deductibles and co-pays from patients, collect from insurance companies and governments, and negotiate health care costs. A feature of this is that it could monitor pharmaceutical costs and the cost of procedures and room costs among other things and make through the insurance companies a percentage of savings for going to a less expensive provider or pharmacy for cost cutting measures. This could easily be expanded to more states and more services provided with no increase in costs to taxpayers, health care providers, or health care customers.
The idea of subsidizing insurance policies is a terrible idea. What is really happening is the government is usually subsidizing the insurance companies who are selling unreasonably high deductible policies and getting paid for selling policies to a majority of people who won’t use their insurance for many years. Instead the money being used to subsidize the policies and the government agencies running these programs could be put to better use providing catastrophic coverage on a sliding scale so lower income people can buy policies they can afford without the high deductibles. The money could be available to insurance companies to withdraw from as needed or, even better, through the company I discussed.
We have a need for a complete overhaul of our tort system. (I will detail changes at a later date.) The threat of the high cost of litigation causes insurance companies to settle even when the health care provider did everything wrong. I was told that the Mayo Clinic spends $3 million on malpractice insurance which is passed along to all patients. With the number of patients it isn’t much per patient but then you add the cost of insurance to pharmaceutical companies and medical equipment and supply companies, it all adds up. When you include tests and procedures that are run to CYA, you should see that tort reform can be an important part of health care savings.
Finally, but not all that can be done, establishing a uniform set of insurance policies among the states and allowing all insurance companies to provide policies in all states and customizing of policies for different demographics, competition would help drive down policy costs.
We don’t need tweaking of ideas that aren’t working, we need visionary and creative solutions for effective change.
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