Thoughts on the Health Care “Crisis” and the President’s Push for Payment Reform

As everyone knows, the president is pushing for a comprehensive program to overhaul how health care is paid for and to make sure everyone is adequately covered. Unfortunately, the solutions being advocated are going to cause an increase in spending by upwards of $2 trillion. This is only going to fuel inflation, further hurt our weak economy, and, actually, make it harder for people to get the care they desire.

Part of the problem is that health insurance has changed over the years. Insurance is meant to help people pay for sudden catastrophes. Health insurance should be used only for accidents and hospitalizations, similar to car insurance, but has developed into a service to pay for all aspects of health (doctor visits). This is equivalent to using your car insurance to pay for fill-ups and oil changes. We think car insurance is expensive now, but can you imagine what it would be like if it paid for the everyday things too? Well, that’s what has happened to health insurance. People expect it to pay for everything, and now the government agrees. And it is going to cost us.

That being said, let’s look at some of the costs. According to Drs. Bob Hoffman and Jason Deitch in "Discover Wellness", the cost of health care, from hospital to doctor bills, drugs to medical equipment, insurance to nursing homes and home health care, doubled from 1994 to 2004. In 2004, the country spent $140 billion more on health care than it did the year before. Overall, the tab for health care spending in this country is $1.8 trillion a year, which is four times the amount spent on national defense. 15% of America’s gross domestic product is spent on medical care, amounting to $6,289 per person every year! Is it any wonder that they are calling for some kind of change?

But let’s understand something. This is not money spent on “health care”; this is money spent on "disease care". The cost of keeping people healthy is negligible, because healthy people do not need hospitals, prescriptions, medical equipment, nursing homes, or home health care. Sick people do, and it is the cost of treating illnesses that is skyrocketing. So far, in all the discussions on Capitol Hill, not one mention has been made about lifestyle. It is all about how to pay for treating the ill people. If people took more responsibility for their health, wouldn’t that make the costs go down?

Some illnesses are inevitable, but people can do a lot to help themselves avoid illness, too. The two leading causes of illness in this country, for example, are smoking and obesity.

It is no secret that smoking tobacco causes heart disease, lung disease, and cancer (cancer of the mouth and throat, the pancreas, and/or the intestinal tract). Yes, some people can live a full life of smoking without getting these illnesses, but they are the exception, not the rule. If you smoke, you will become ill. Heart disease costs the U.S. more than $400 billion a year in medical expenses and lost productivity, and is responsible for almost six million hospitalizations each year! If the cost of treating it is added into all the goods and services that we spend our money on, it is costing each family of four $460 a month!

Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the U.S. today. In 2004, more than half a million people died of cancer, which amounts to about 1,500 people every day! It is estimated that tobacco use is responsible for more than 170,000 cancer deaths alone. In 2004, cancer cost this country $60.9 billion in direct medical costs and $135 billion in indirect costs due to illness, for a total of almost $200 billion! How much is this costing you? Every person in this country has to contribute $719 each year ($240 a month for a family of four). So far our little family of four is spending $700 a month to treat cancer and heart disease. That could pay many mortgages.

Obesity has also become a major problem in this country. Obesity rates have increased by more than 60% among adults in the last 10 years and it will soon overtake smoking as the leading cause of preventable death. Since 1980, obesity rates have doubled among young children and tripled among adolescents. Obesity is a contributor to many chronic diseases, including Type 2 diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, stroke, breast cancer, colon cancer, gallbladder disease, and arthritis. The yearly bill for treating these conditions is: $98 billion for Type 2 diabetes, $8.8 billion for heart disease, $5.3 billion for arthritis, $3.2 billion for gallbladder disease, $1.3 billion for colon cancer, and $1.1 billion for breast cancer. Overall, the total health bill for treating these diseases and others related to obesity is about $137 billion. This costs a family of four $1,027 a year, or another $86 a month.

If we add up the costs of treating the health effects of diseases linked to smoking or obesity, our tab comes to more than $700 billion a year! Is it any wonder that it is becoming more and more difficult to pay for illness care?

The problem is that smoking is a choice. And most of the time, not always, obesity is too. If people want to have affordable health care, they have to stop doing things that make themselves sick and expecting the doctor to fix them. If more people were to adopt healthy lifestyles, the need for this expensive system would go down, as would the costs. Remember, healthy people do not need hospitals, prescriptions, medical equipment, nursing homes, or home health care.

The government can’t fix this. Anything they get their hands on costs more. Before Medicare and Medicaid, everyone could afford their health care, no one went without. But now those programs, as well as the corporate takeover of health care in the form of PPO’s and HMO’s have served to drive up costs. Combine that with the unhealthy choices people make, and here we are. What we can do is adopt healthy choices. You can ‘opt out of the system’ – be healthy!