Hospital fees are the wrong answer
The revelation that Colorado Governor Ritter is conspiring with the Colorado Hospital Association to levy fees on hospitals to fulfill his political campaign promise to deal with the uninsured is a massively bad
idea. It falls short on three points.
First, there is no proof that hospitals have excess profits. Such fees
would be internally cost shifted to patients and represent a hidden and
covert tax. Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements are fixed and insurance
companies negotiate discounts. That means only the sick, self-pay
patient, who is already billed 27% more than the average would bear the
brunt. It’s regressive. We are trying to reduce cost shifting, not
increase it.
Second, any extraction of additional monies so as to channel it back to
pay for the costs of care of the uninsured is inflationary. Health care
hyper-inflation is directly related to the steroidal injections of
financial subsidies for various “needy” groups. It has distorted and
destroyed any semblance of a marketplace in health care.
Finally, either mandates forcing people to buy health insurance or
tax-based subsidies avoids the real need in health care reform. We need
to re-institute disciplining forces, be-it competition or regulation,
take your pick, to reverse the seemingly never-ending upward trend of
health care inflation. In a time of recession we need the health care
system to become more productive and efficient. Their costs need to
decline, not superficially inflate.
The political establishment and the trade association lobby, continually
obfuscate and avoid the real need in health care. There is no magic
bullet. It is old fashioned efficiency improvement and quality. Maybe we
should be consulting Toyota on health care.
The author can be reached at francismiller@comcast.net
