Now that Scott Brown has defeated Martha Coakley in the Massachusetts US Senate race, the Democrats' super-majority in the Senate is a thing of the past. There could be an attempt to have the House pass the Senate version of the health care reform bill. Or, the Senate could try to pass a Conference bill and let the Republicans stop the wheels of Congress with a prolonged filibuster. And, I'm sure there will be attempts by the Senate leadership to cajole Senator Olympia Snow into a "Ben Nelson" kind of play for pay compromise. Stay tuned.
But what is clear is that the American people are unhappy with the content of the proposed health care reform package. It was a major issue in the Massachusetts Senate race. It wasn't the only issue, as Coakley also ran a lousy campaign. The results in Massachusetts also point out that when no candidate in a primary (or for that matter, a general) election gets more than 50% of the vote (Coakley got 47% of the vote in the Democratic primary), there should also be a runoff election between the top two vote-getters. Coakley wasn't properly vetted by the electorate and further, took the general election for granted.
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(courtesy, Albany Times Union)
This blog describes a middle ground alternative between a publicly financed single-payer health care system and the present patchwork quilt of public insurance, private insurance and a vast army of the uninsured.
(courtesy, Albany Times Union)
Health care should't be a growth Industry
As an obstetrician-gynecologist practicing in Upstate New York, I’d like to suggest an alternate path for reforming health care in this country. As a hands-on clinician, I practice in Troy along with five other OB-GYNs, two nurse-midwives and a nurse practitioner. We care for a wide range of patients, from those on Medicaid or less, to the elderly served by Medicare, to state employees, who are blessed with outstanding private health insurance. We have delivered thousands of babies at our local hospitals and have tried our best to stay ahead of the ever-increasing patient load, demanding new technologies, declining reimbursements and the ever-lurking trial lawyers.
The main concern in reform issues has been to contain costs while providing better health care for all Americans. The major argument regarding reform is whether some modest variant of the present health insurance system should be instituted or whether a single-payer system should be imposed by the federal government. In May of this year, Senator Charles Schumer, offered a “middle ground.”
Schumer has laid down some good ground rules, saying that any public plan should be voluntary, fairly funded and self-sustaining, as well as administered by separate managers and regulators, but the debate about alternatives has become protracted.
One day, when sitting with my checkbook and looking at my ever-increasing electric utility bill, I got an idea. It wasn’t a grand, elaborate idea, but rather a simple one: Years ago the power industry in the U.S. was heavily regulated. Those days are gone, of course, swept away in a fury of deregulation. But back then, a state like New York was divided into geographic regions and each electric utility had a regional monopoly, such as Niagara-Mohawk upstate, Consolidated Edison in the New York City and LILCO on Long Island.
These companies couldn’t just raise electric rates on a whim. They spent years, justifying to regulators even a modest increase in the rates that they could charge to the consumer. Every aspect of their business model was thoroughly inspected and restricted. They couldn’t build too many power plants or invest in risky or unrelated capital projects. As a result electric rates remained stable for years. In addition, everyone who invested in the stock market always kept some low risk, utility stocks in their portfolio, to cushion the blow when there was a recession. But the utility company CEOs complained loudly to the politicians. In a matter of years, that stable system, designed for the public benefit and run by private entrepreneurs, was dismantled.
Now what does this have to do with health care? It has lot to do with it. The debate over health care reform has degenerated into sloganeering and as Schumer suggested, someone has to propose a middle ground. Lest we continue to only hear that a single payer system is “irresponsible, heavy-handed socialism” and the present system is “rampant, self-serving capitalism.”
I have another proposal.
Under my proposal, private health insurance companies would bid to the federal government on obtaining a regional monopoly for a specific geographic area. Within that area, there would be no other purveyors of health insurance; no Medicare, no Medicaid and no other private insurers. For those patients who are employed, the employer would pay the geographic insurer. For those patients without employment, the federal government would reimburse the insurance company on a capitation basis at the private employee rate. In exchange for their geographic monopoly, the government would heavily regulate health insurers’ profits and limit the annual increase in profit to either some small percentage or the rate of inflation, whichever was greater. It would be up to each “monopolist” to set insurance costs and provider reimbursement rates within its geographic region, within some guidelines established by the federal government.
In addition, these private insurers would pay no federal, state or local income tax. The private insurance company would also bear the burden of paying out any malpractice claims, as both legal liability and malpractice insurance would be eliminated for individual physicians, hospitals and other health care providers. The federal government would monitor various health care metrics within each geographic region, to assure some measure of consistency in the quality of care throughout the country. If no private insurance company wished to bid on a particularly "risky" geographic area, the federal government could step in with a subsidized public insurance entity.
The health care sector is referred to as “a growth industry.” Investment advisers and economists proudly point to its continued vigor during our present recession. The problem is that it shouldn’t be a growth industry. It should be a stable system, designed for the public benefit and run by private entrepreneurs.
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- Naomi Bloomfield MD
- Naomi Bloomfield, MD is a board certified, obstetrician-gynecologist in group practice, based in Troy, NY, which serves the Albany, NY metropolitan area. Dr. Bloomfield is also an Assistant Clinical Professor at Albany Medical College.
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