Healthcare-The Problem

Most Americans do not expect something for nothing. Even among our fellow Americans who receive public assistance there is the realization that the payment for such assistance is loss of dignity and adherence to the whims of government bureaucracy. However, what most Americans suffer from, especially in the area of healthcare is an unrealistic expectation of what the piper should play for what the piper is paid. We think “good’ health insurance means the “best’ drugs (brand-name, not generic”), the “best” diagnostic tools (CAT scans, MRI’s, all the blood tests known to man. and the latest surgical procedures and implants at the “best” hospitals (New York, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Houston.) We see a drug or device commercial on TV and we point and say “I want that” like children responding to a toy ad. We imagine that today’s ache or pain or itch or other minor discomfit is some new serious “syndrome” or “condition”. We rush to the Internet and, sure enough, find we have pamfafiliosis or Quirt’s Disease (not real) or some other disease of the month. Meanwhile we consume too much fat and sugar, smoke like chimneys drink like fishes and hope a pill will solve the willpower problem. And we wonder why our “good” insurance is costing so much.

The insurance paradigm, to be successful, requires a large and diverse population of contributors, either unskewed, or better yet, skewed in favor of the young and the healthy. Our population is getting older (sorry Boomers) and even the young are growing less healthy e.g. fatter. Couple this with average administrative costs of insurance plans of 20 % and it is no wonder that more and more companies and individuals can’t afford health insurance.