Five Ideas for Real Reform in Health Care

The health care system,as is, is busted. Everybody knows that. It's unfair, it's corrupt, it's expensive, it's intimidating, it's exclusionary...we all know that change is necessary.

But not the change that the Republican/Democrat Regime in power is trying to force upon us. You hear members who pretend they're from the Republican "side" of the Regime who say they want things like Tort Reform and that they want to enable insurance companies to sell their products across state lines. It's not hard to deduce why the corporations in the health care industries would take a fancy to such proposals -- no fundamental changes or reforms except a few tricks to help protect giant corporations in the health care industry from customers' right to sue and seek justice and to help the biggest vendors gain yet more market share by subverting states' rights to regulate the industry.

And you hear those who pretend they're from the Democrat "side" of the Republican/Democrat Regime who say they want things like universal coverage that will be contracted out with taxpayer funds to giant corporations and that everybody who earns any reasonable living in this country will be forced to send thousands of dollars a year to giant government-approved insurance corporations. It's not hard to deduce why the corporations in the health care industries would take a fancy to such proposals -- no fundamental changes or reforms except a few tricks to help giant corporations profiteer on the government bureaucracies doling out trillions of taxpayer money and to coerce millions of private citizens into becoming paying customers.

Here's some real reform ideas. I invite any free-thinking American individual to send these ideas to their representative and ask them to explain why they're against any one of them:

1. Enforce anti-trust laws against health insurance co’s

This is one of the clearest paths to reform as it simply calls upon the government to enforce important pro-competitive laws that keep corporations from becoming overly powerful and abusive.

Back in 1944, the insurance industry was found to be subject to federal antitrust statutes by the Supreme Court, in US v South-East Underwriters Association. But the insurance industry went ahead and did what big biz always does to circumvent such pesty little things like federal law and they paid the Republicans and Democrats in power back then to pass a new targeted trick, er, law that exempted the insurance industry formally from the very laws that were created to stop the industry from being as powerful as it is today. That was courtesy of the McCarran-Ferguson Act.

This all matters very much today, and not just because it leaves us mostly powerless against the massive amounts of money funding the passage of new laws like "health care reform" that are actually now written by the lobbyists for these clearly overly-powerful special interests. Don't take my word for it. The American Medical Association explains how outrageously powerful and hurtful these health insurance companies have become in their 2007 Comprehensive Study of Competition in the Health Insurance Industry:

The DOJ has recognized that monopsony power—which is
the health insurer’s power over purchase of physician services —is an important consideration in evaluating the competitiveness of health insurance markets. In the past 12 years, out of more than 400 mergers, the DOJ has challenged only two. Both of these challenges were based in large part on the health insurer’s potential to exercise monopsony power over physicians to the detriment of patients.

So even though the Department of Justice knows that allowing health insurance companies to consolidate is a "detrement" to patients, they've only bothered to challenge 0.5% of the mergers in the industry in the last dozen years. Why does that matter to you?

In its 2005 challenge to the United/PacifiCare merger, the
DOJ recognized that where a health plan accounts for more
than 30 percent of a physician’s practice revenue, the health
insurer can have monopsony power to the detriment of
patients.

That means in any market where the health insurance company has a mere 30% of the business results in detrimental treatment for the patient. And guess what --

In 299 of the 313 markets the AMA surveyed, one health plan accounts for at least 30 percent of the combined health maintenance organization (HMO)/preferred provider organization (PPO) market.

Yup, 96% of you are suffering detrimental health care treatment because your health insurance company has been allowed to circumvent the anti-trust laws that govern every other industry in this nation.

Want competition in health care insurance? Enforce it! Sheesh.

My next few ideas are much simpler to grasp...

2. End all targeted tax subsidies for big biz, small biz, middle class people and everybody else

It's like the Republicans and Democrats who are coming up with all these gimmicky health care "reform" plans think they can tell everybody that they'll benefit from them and nobody will have to pay for it. Poor people get it free, middle class people get tax subsidies and credits, small biz gets other targeted tax subsidies and credits and of course, the big corporations are in on the fix. Rather than making our already overly complex and anarchic tax code even more convoluted with all these gimmicks and then sneaking in new taxes elsewhere, how about we just keep it real and tell the people what the new taxes are gonna be for actual reform.

3. End all centralized rules for health insurance companies

How can you have innovation when every rule for every product and every service is controlled and regulated by a central government? This means though, that fraud and consumer abuse must actually be prosecuted and punished and that "settlements" with prosecutors will no longer be an option. Yeah, imagine that -- I'm advocating rule of law once again.

4. Give all minors full preventive and catastrophic coverage

Let's get every kid covered right here, right now and then talk about how to help poor and suffering adults next. Nope, I'm not a Libertarian.

5. All payments from govt must be direct to caregiver

The government's throwing around a trillion dollars year in the health care industry, almost all of which goes to corporations in the health insurance industry, hospital industry and pharma industry. Only the hospitals and doctors and other private caregivers and the actual pharmacies should get paid by the government...no gaming the system with ponzi services. And once again, if any caregiver or caregiver corporation ever gets busted for defrauding the government and/or gaming the system...you get prosecuted and punished and denied any and all future business with the government payment system.

I won't pretend that implementation of these ideas would create a Utopian health care system in this country. But these are some real step toward real reform, which is all the more ironic in that I'm mostly simply calling for enforcement of the existing rules of law in this country.

Before we let either the "left" or the "right" vote on any pretend reforms to the existing health care system that they themselves created, maybe we outta ask them to consider enforcing the laws of the land against their biggest corporate donors. Send them one or any of these bullets if you think they make sense and ask 'em to explain why they aren't on board with it.

Health care reform isn't the enemy. The Republicans and Democrats and the Corporations that call the new laws and taxes they're writing together "reform" are the enemy. Help me fight them.

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