Weekly Address: President Obama Calls for Real Health Care Reform

Obama mentions the Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic. Sounds like he read this article. From what I've read (and I read a lot on this topic), it would be in the country's best interest to eliminate altogether the profit motive from providing health care. The profit motive drives up health costs and at the same time, as I've pointed out, subjects patients to more risks and side effects than they otherwise would be subjected to if profit weren't a motive (thus making them less healthy). There are private, not-for-profit health care organizations in the U.S. that provide excellent care at low cost. They should be a model. Everyone knows the Mayo Clinic is probably the most outstanding health care center in the country.

See this ridiculous article in The New York Times that presumes we should worry about the fate of our health insurance companies should we possibly get a decent health care system that covers everyone. (What's more important: the companies' health or the people's? Isn't the people's health the whole problem now?) This made me want to cue up the mini-violins. (Emphasis added):

But critics argue that with low administrative costs and no need to produce profits, a public plan will start with an unfair pricing advantage. They say that if a public plan is allowed to pay doctors and hospitals at levels comparable to Medicare’s, which are substantially below commercial insurance rates, it could set premiums so low it would quickly consume the market.

Although the numbers are disputed by public plan advocates, the Lewin Group, a health care consulting firm, recently projected that a plan paying Medicare rates would prompt 119 million of the 172 million people who are privately insured to switch policies (while also providing coverage to 28 million of the 46 million uninsured).

“No one has ever put up a plan to compete that exploited the bargaining leverage that you have with Medicare,” said John F. Sheils, a senior vice president at Lewin, which is owned by UnitedHealth Group, a major insurer. “It’s never been done, and if it’s never been done there’s not much you can conclude from looking at these state plans.”

Mr. Sheils estimated that only 12 million people with private coverage would migrate to a public plan if Congress provided protections for insurers, along principles suggested by Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York. Seeking to broker a deal that might attract Republican support, Mr. Schumer is promoting many of Mr. Nichols’s proposals, including that a public plan be subject to the same regulations as private plans and that it pay providers at higher levels than Medicare. . . .

We don't need Republican support!

Contact Congress here. Contact Senators here.

(Of course there's a lot of waste in Medicare and Medicaid also owing to the profit motive, and that has to be eliminated.)

I myself am a very expensive person in the current health care system, and I don't need to be. Get the profit motive out of the system and get the drug companies to lower their exorbitant prices. They don't deserve the profits they're reaping on their cheaply-made, over-priced drugs. (And a lot of them are developed with money from the U.S. government.)