HEALTH CARE, what's it all about?

                                                HEALTH CARE

FOOD FOR THOUGHT:

Does everyone have an altruistic “right” to health care, and, if so, why?

Does a society have a pragmatic economic rationale to provide health care for all its citizens?

PROBLEM: Escalating health care costs, and the insecurities of the populace regarding health care.

PROVENANCE: Greed, inefficiencies, ignorance, etceteras

1)     Greed includes fraud on the part of providers and patients: controls and severe penalties should be legislated to mitigate.

2)     Inefficiencies include, but are not limited to, inefficient utilization of personnel, equipment and facilities, administrative overhead, and profit motive on steroids.

3)     Ignorance on the part of providers and patients can be mitigated by a massive computerization of information, i.e., the “mind” of the computer is vastly superior to providers and should be made available to patients and providers.

4)     Etceteras to include, but not be limited to, better nutrition, responsibilities and behavior of recipients of health care, and preventative care.

RESOLUTION: To be determined, subsequent to analyzing the problem

                                                DISCUSSION

I believe that the Obama Administration is correct in recognizing that the accelerating cumulative costs of health care in our nation must be addressed.

Since we know where we are regarding this problem, most energies should be devoted to determining where we should be.

We must analyze the logistics and economics for the purpose of determining the most efficient and effective method of delivering health care, cost effectively.

First, a decision must be made as to who will bear the burden of the costs of health care.

The possibilities include businesses, the recipients of health care services, or the government.

If it were determined that all costs should be borne by businesses, the good would be that employees would receive health care at no cost, whereas the bad would be that the costs of providing health care would be included in the costs of goods and services produced, which would necessitate higher selling prices for those goods and services than if there were no health care costs.

For those businesses that compete against similar businesses in other nations, their ability to compete would be adversely affected versus if they did not have the burden of those health care costs.

Within a competitive world economy, the United States of America should be considered as U.S.A., Inc. and would be competing against Japan, Inc., China, Inc., et cetera, thus it would make pragmatic economic sense to mitigate costs of goods produced. 

If it were determined that all costs should be borne by the recipients of health care services, economic pressures would be placed upon businesses to increase employees’ remuneration to enable them to pay for their health care, thus whether the costs are paid by businesses or employees, the cost to produce goods will include the cost of health care.

If it were determined that all health care costs should be borne by the government, the good would be that all employees would have health care, and businesses would have their costs to produce goods and services devoid of any health care costs, while the bad would be that the government would inherit the obligation to fund these massive health care costs.  An incredibly important benefit would be the sense of security of the populace, which would affect all other aspects of their lives.

The transitioning from where we are to where we should be would cause serious upheavals and dislocations, e.g., employment reconfigurations, but subsequently we will have sophisticated and fine-tuned our current disparate montage of health care to an efficient and cost-effective system for the delivery of health care.

Our leaders are involved in the process of searching for the correct paradigm regarding the delivery of health care for our nation.  Unfortunately, they appear to be in a triage quagmire effort rather than resolving to discover the appropriate paradigm.  They are attempting to reconfigure a condemned edifice, rather than tearing down the walls and allowing the light of day to expose truth.

Economics, rather than politics, religion, et cetera must be the leading factor directing our leaders to the correct paradigm, i.e., where we should be.

QUESTIONS:

1)     Should we have a comprehensive economic environmental impact study done regarding any potential solution?

2)     Should health insurance benefits be taxed, e.g., is it equitable to have two “theoretically” identical employees working for two different companies doing the same work, making the same remuneration, being charged with the same taxable income, when one has $14,000 of health insurance and the other does not?

MZ

Last modified: 02/25/10