Skewing the Medical Supply/Demand Curve

As of yet, I have not addressed the issue of US Universal Health Care. I can only assume readers will be asking themselves as to my position of such a national offering.

Universal, or more accurately, nationalized health care will not work in the US. If you are a fairly cognizant person, emergency rooms now are overrun with people who have no need being there. For the most part, visitors of ER's are there because they have no regular physician for themselves or more likely their children. ER visits happen when the parent is not at work, which often is after 6 pm and before 7 am. As a result, ER's become overwhelmed with sore throats, minor viral infections and little boo-boos.

Now, consider the scenario of health care where the individual feels it their right to take as much of the resources as possible in order to get their 'fair share'. Consumers will see health care with the same concern as cheap gasoline which spawned the overly huge SUV's that get terrible gas mileage. At today's gas prices of $3.++ a gallon, SUV's are dying horrible dinosaur deaths.

The 'cheapening' of valuation of US Health Care would only drive the hypochondriacs out of the woodwork and choke the limited resources we have now. In a way, cheap health care insurance up until now, has cheapened US Health Care too. The process of cheapening a resource also drives up demand (refer to Econ. 101 for supply/demand curves). Artificially cheapening a good or service really screws up the demand curve!

The reality is that US Health Care is to be more expensive in order to allow the market to keep it scarce. But, why is the thought to raise the cost to the middle class and the working poor? And is making such an important service like health care scarce what this country really wants or needs? What makes it very hard to accept as an institution, is to see the very poor who are taking a disproportionate amount of the total resources because THERE IS VERY LITTLE OR NO COST TO THEM!

Really! Oh, some states have a small co-payment for their programs for children's health care, like $15 - $25 per child for total care coverage. California, I believe has a very generous plan which has people opt for a state run program that is totally inclusive rather than use a commercially available plan with co-payments of 10 - 15%. What happens? People will find ways to cheat the system by excluding specific information in order to qualify for cheaper, but more inclusive state programs and by-pass the higher costing, but more legally accurate market available health care insurance program.

US Census data can tell us that there is a huge number of uninsured individuals and it even may tell us of how many citizens qualify for extremely low cost or no cost health care coverage. And with that data, one will begin to see the amount of waste directly attributed to undeserving individuals. Indirect waste is the viewpoint that the service is worth less than it really is in the market, and the demand for service for boo-boos and runny noses is totally unnecessary, artificially taxing our US Health Care resources. (Thanks to intelligent triage nurses, most of the people who don't need to be in an ER have to have a very long wait).

No, we need to bring the concept of higher value (best administered by cost) to the ones paying the least illegally and artificially. We must attack the hit to US GDP at 16 - 18% for US Health Care by attacking waste in all areas. The waste Southwest Medical Bill Review & Recovery challenges is the $51 Billion in fraud conducted at the medical provider level and the over $220 Billion at the error and clerical aspect of hospitalizations. Hitting the problem from several ways will increase the efficiency of US Health Care to make it more market realistic.