[Speed Gibson,
Monday March 31, 2008 at 11:44pm]
You Will Be Healthy ... We Insist
Not that we're short of them, but there is a big lie circulating, underpinning in fact the DFL's attempt to take over health care in Minnesota. They claim this will cut health care costs by 20% in just 3 years. How? By promoting healthier lifestyles that will reduce the need for medical care. The smoking ban is just the first step.
I've heard this before, when the HMO concept first came to town about 30 years ago. Routine expenses like annual physicals and vaccinations were now covered, practically free in fact. We now had no reason to avoid them. We would get physicals and flu shots. We therefore would detect maladies sooner, before they became expensive to treat, not to mention life threatening. We would not even suffer influenza. Most prescriptions were now more affordable, too, meaning we would indeed take them when prescribed, again avoiding the more serious and more expensive consequences of not taking our medicine.
It wasn't a bad idea. Great minds had studied it. It was intuitive. It provided for a better division of labor. It was easy to implement. No doubt some of the health goals were realized. But the bills still had to be paid, and within 10 years we found that financially, the HMO model was no better than the classic insurance model it replaced. By then the change was permanent. The HMO was here to stay, favored by corresponding changes to state regulations and the tax code.
Now the great minds have put that old wine in a new bottle. If we just switch from Big Macs to wild hickory nuts, we won't be fat and we won't have the corresponding heart attacks and arthritic joints. If we just trade butter for omega-3 fish oil, we'll avoid strokes and memory loss. If we ingest lots of anti-oxidants swimming in non-fat yogurt, we won't get cancer. Cut the salt and we can throw away our our blood pressure medication. There will be no smoking, no drinking, no bleached flour, and no refined sugars. We'll let you eat some red meat for now, but don't even ask about foie gras.
The flaw of course is that we're all going to die no matter what. And, we spend about half of our lifetime health care expenses in our last six months on average, whenever that happens. That being a given, the rest is largely a function of how long you live, much of that genetic. Look at Medicare. If everyone died by age 70 or so, it would be solvent into the next century. But most are making 80 these days and Medicare is therefore broke.
Don't fall for this - again. The government will get bigger. Its employees will get the first bite. The rest will be rationed.
I've heard this before, when the HMO concept first came to town about 30 years ago. Routine expenses like annual physicals and vaccinations were now covered, practically free in fact. We now had no reason to avoid them. We would get physicals and flu shots. We therefore would detect maladies sooner, before they became expensive to treat, not to mention life threatening. We would not even suffer influenza. Most prescriptions were now more affordable, too, meaning we would indeed take them when prescribed, again avoiding the more serious and more expensive consequences of not taking our medicine.
It wasn't a bad idea. Great minds had studied it. It was intuitive. It provided for a better division of labor. It was easy to implement. No doubt some of the health goals were realized. But the bills still had to be paid, and within 10 years we found that financially, the HMO model was no better than the classic insurance model it replaced. By then the change was permanent. The HMO was here to stay, favored by corresponding changes to state regulations and the tax code.
Now the great minds have put that old wine in a new bottle. If we just switch from Big Macs to wild hickory nuts, we won't be fat and we won't have the corresponding heart attacks and arthritic joints. If we just trade butter for omega-3 fish oil, we'll avoid strokes and memory loss. If we ingest lots of anti-oxidants swimming in non-fat yogurt, we won't get cancer. Cut the salt and we can throw away our our blood pressure medication. There will be no smoking, no drinking, no bleached flour, and no refined sugars. We'll let you eat some red meat for now, but don't even ask about foie gras.
The flaw of course is that we're all going to die no matter what. And, we spend about half of our lifetime health care expenses in our last six months on average, whenever that happens. That being a given, the rest is largely a function of how long you live, much of that genetic. Look at Medicare. If everyone died by age 70 or so, it would be solvent into the next century. But most are making 80 these days and Medicare is therefore broke.
Don't fall for this - again. The government will get bigger. Its employees will get the first bite. The rest will be rationed.