The nice UPS gal swooped in with a review DVD from First Run Films about the late Archbishop Oscar Romero. I’ll probably watch it tonight.
In our brief chat, I mentioned how impressed I was that UPS and FedEx can move everything so well and quickly. I suggested that they should run not only the post office but also health care “delivery”.
As she revved up the truck she shouted “If it wasn’t for health care, I’d be retired!”
We need solutions, but not the solutions that have been forced on us.
The Supreme Court is going to be looking at the health care legislation very soon.
May I suggest prayers to the guardian angels of the Justices, to help them with clear minds and without demonic attacks, study the issue well and prudently?
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I work a lot with these sorts of issues when I manage employee benefits. You are correct in your quip that UPS and FedEx, or at least someone focused on delivering what people want. Therein is the problem. FedEx and UPS are delivering things that people have decided they want and have sought out and purchased. The Government want to decide what you want and even how you get it.
The difficulty with health care is that it suffers from 50 years of (possibly well-intentioned) meddling by Federal legislators who believed they knew better than those whose business it has been for life to manage such things. We have a Congress filled with dilettantes, who never identified a “problem” they could not make dramatically worse.
Neither FedEx nor UPS could unsnarl the mess. What is needed is rollbacks of masses of Federal laws and regs, closings of departments, and so on. When the government mandated overheads are reduced, so will be the (real) costs.
As somebody who’s been involved in the insurance industry since 1977, and whose dad was an insurance defense lawyer before he went over to the plaintiffs’ side in the 80s, and whose grand-dad was an insurance broker, I absolutely agree with wmeyer.
Federal laws and regs, as well as state meddling, have distorted the health insurance industry beyond recognition. There needs to be a major, major housecleaning to remove all the perverse incentives that have all of us (doctors, lawyers, patients) wasting our time doing bureaucratic busy-work instead of providing and paying for health care. (With my idiotic insurance plan, which I must manage myself, it takes a law degree, an accountancy certification, and hours of time just to figure out the stupid claim forms, the HRA allowance, and the HSA claims. And even then I’m not sure it’s right. And neither are they.)
Once people are back to paying directly for their own routine health care, and paying direct premiums and making direct claims for major medical, it will be possible to get better health care AND provide charitably for those who cannot afford it. Mostly with all the money that is now being sucked into useless federal and state administration, never to be seen again by any patient (indigent or otherwise).
As a Physician, I call upon all of you to write, call, email, etc., your Congressional Reps TODAY & encourage them to Repeal IPAB [the Republican sponsored bill to do this is in debate NOW]. IPAB is the unelected, unaccountable, un-suable appointed panel opposed by the AMA & AHA, that will stand between you & your doctor’s ability to care for you. At least pray about it!
Independent Payment Advisory Board=IPAB
AnAmericanMother: My own painfully acquired awareness derives in part from having had to become much closer than I would ever have hoped to HIPAA docs. The arcana which are essential to the successful filing of even the smallest and simplest claim are most impressive. And depressing.
But worse, I am old enough to remember our family physician making house calls. And my parents paying–on their own–for my father’s very expensive surgery 60 years ago. No major medical, no bankruptcy, just honest shouldering of debt, which they were able to repay in about 18 months. It was a much different country.
But just remember, all this comes with a cost. I can send a DVD with some promotional material from my town (Eastern Washington) to Father’s area by Priority Mail for under $5.00 (2 day delivery or most likely on Saturday the 24th for under $5.00). It’s Under $3.00 for Media Mail and slower delivery (around the 27th or so.) And both are surcharge free. Not Like UPS.
Using my company’s UPS account (as Father mentions was used) is $6.98 for delivery on March 27. Oh, Father lives in a house, not a business? Add 3.00 for a residential surcharge. He lives more than 25 miles from UPS facility or in a “rural” area? Add another surcharge. You want that DVD delivered on Saturday because that’s the 4th day (and UPS said your shipment would take 4 days). Add a Saturday surcharge. Oh and you want the UPS driver to pick the disks up? Yeah, that’s at least an additional $10 a week.
UPS rates go up annually. USPS rates go up every couple of years., Yes, they should go up more often, but complain to your congressman. Except for non-profit type mail (and Congress determined that), postage charges cover postage expenses 100%. No tax dollars involved.
I was born in the 1960’s and my parents did not have health insurance – paid our medical bills – until I was 14 years old. The most expensive baby was me, and the cost was $500. What happened?
Amen, Frater. This is a biggie, to say the least. And thank you for saying “we need solutions”. We really do. People are hurting.
I’ll be honest– as a dyed in the wool conservative, I probably would not have liked any solution that Obama came up with. But I have thought all along that he squandered a great opportunity to come up with a uniquely American plan that might have worked. (He is a Harvard grad, right ?!) Instead, he gave us Euro/ Canadian-nonsense redux. Why is it that the same folks who always whine that we can’t export American democracy are the same ones who think we can import European socialized medicine ??!!
Pax tecum, Father, during this Lent.