News & Commentary
The Right Health Care Fight For Women
by Carrie L. Lukas
September 30, 2009
Women have much at stake in the debate about our health care system's future. Aspects of the current system put women at a particular disadvantage. Today, health insurance is tied to employment, which means that women (who frequently take time out of the workforce and work in part-time positions that don't include health benefits) often face disruptions in their coverage. Yet there are many ways to address this problem and many other problems that plague our current system without dramatically expanding the government's involvement in health care.
The current, flawed system is largely the product of ill-conceived government policy. Right now, employers purchasing health insurance receive tax breaks while those purchasing in the individual market don't. As a result, those with employer-provided health insurance are shielded from the full costs of their coverage, encouraging the over-consumption of medical treatment and driving up costs for everyone. Policymakers should begin reform by changing tax laws so that individual and employer-provided health insurance operate on a level playing field. Such a reform would make it easier for women to continue coverage when taking time out of the workforce, and make insurance more affordable for those who don't receive health benefits through work.
Price is a significant reason why many young, healthy women don't purchase insurance. Policymakers could make insurance less expensive through a number of small reforms. Under current law, people can only buy health insurance from a provider within their state. Opening up the insurance market so that insurance could be purchased across state lines would provide individuals more options and lower costs. Instead of new government mandates about what insurance policies must contain (which drive up costs), women should be free to choose among a variety of insurance options - from high deductible catastrophic plans to specialized, full-service plans - that meet their individual needs.
What women don't need is a trillion-dollar government plan that threatens to strangle private health insurance, discourage much-needed medical innovation, put government in charge of determining the medical treatments, and add to our already exploding deficit.
This is what is being proposed by the President and his Congressional allies. Creating a "public" option (or health insurance "cooperative") would put private insurance at a competitive disadvantage, encouraging many employers to drop private health insurance coverage. As a result, millions of Americans who today are privately insured would join the government rolls. As the government seeks to control costs, bureaucrats would be asked to determine what treatments are most "efficient." Inevitably, this would put some treatments out of bounds for patients. It could also discourage investment in new medical technology, since investors would face a new risk that government may decide that any new treatment isn't worth the costs. The risk simply isn't worth it
7 Comments
geezermom | September 30, 2009, 2:53pm | #
I would like to see a study where 10 urban hospitals participate, 50,000 uninsured people are put on medicare, 5000 per hospital, and followed to determine their medical needs and usage. Additionally another 50,000 uninsured are followed as a control group. The participants can be promised to be made whole at the end of the study. The samples would have to be large enough and followed long enough to capture catastrophic events in both groups. It would be interesting to see which group costs more to the hospital, which group costs more to the government.
Personally, I would like to be on medicare, if I make on medicare, I'll probabally live to be a hundred!
The main reason our health care system is so expensive, is because it does not serve us, it serves the insurance companies. Insurance companies have huge profit motives to deny the claims of their sick insureds. They pay CEO's huge bonus to come up with fraudulent schemes to shirk their contracual obligations. Their days are numbered, the system is unsustainable. We are left with the public GOPtion: Be rich and don't get sick!
DD | September 30, 2009, 11:37pm | #
If we all went on Medicare the program would be broke long before any of us under 50 got close to 100. Alternatively, benefits would be reduced to calling the medicare helpline and being told by a canned voice to take 2 aspirin and call again in the morning.
geezermom | September 30, 2009, 11:43pm | #
no doubt the medicare program would have to be reformed, but it's infrastructure is already in place. If taxes have to be raised, so be it. 700,000 bankruptcies per year have an impact on the economy as well.
geezermom | September 30, 2009, 11:59pm | #
another problem with Medicare is its pool, nearly all, sixty-five over over. Elderly people go to the doctor oftener and take more medications than younger people. Even so, the premiums are quite low. If a bunch of healthy younger people were in the pool, the cost per medicare recipient would be much, much lower.
geezermom | October 1, 2009, 1:18pm | #
sorry for the bad grammar, my daughter kept me up last night. What women really don't need is out for profit health insurance companies that dictate what their doctors should prescribe, and insurance companies that drop them the minute they get sick and unprofitable to insure. Our exploding deficits will continue to explode until we get a universal single payer system. Our citizens will continue to go broke and die, until we get together and do something about it. How about a million mom march?
geezermom | October 2, 2009, 9:10am | #
Our current flawed system is largely the product of greedy unregulated insurance companies, who leave large swathes of the population out in the cold. I worry about our local county hospital that sucks up a lot of uncollectable debts. Our hospital has already gone bankrupt, and if it closes, it is an awfully long ride to the next county with a screaming, bleeding, dying child. This isn't just a rural problem, many big city hospitals are in the same boat. What will you do if your husand, the father of your children dies in an ambulance looking for an emergency room that hasn't been shut down or isn't full. We desperately need single payer universal health care available to everybody--if only to get the poorest of the poor out of the emergency rooms, and their uber-expensive health care off of the backs of hospitals, providers and everybody else.
Constance J. Archer | October 3, 2009, 10:34am | #
I have a illness caused by prescription drugs. My Aunt is on 11 drugs a day. The drugs alter the blood chemistry so they cause side affects and they treat the side effect with another drug this drug causes another side effect so they give them another drug and on and on this is why my Aunt is on 11 drugs a day. My Aunt is a prescription drug addic and she doesn't even know it. She is being exploited by the drug industry. I had to go to a doctor who treats with food and this treatment is working. The health care industry and the insurance industrys is being messed up by prescription drugs there drugs are causing problems with peoples blood. The doctors are not telling the truth about this they are covering up. The FDA is not doing there job one of the drugs has almost crippled me a antibotic called levaquen this drug is in the blak box and they are still selling it to The American people. It put a women of on disability and this drug has harmed a lot of people. There are 830 different drugs that are diffective and in the market place that harm people. Risperdal is one of these drugs it will give you Nueroleptic Malignant Sydrome this information is all over the internet you do not have to take my word for it. Go right on the internet and research Risperdal and see what it tells you about that drug. I have an enlarged splein caused by risperdal.