Health: USA: Govt-backed report calls for universal health care, catastrophic-costs insurance
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A leading online health site, WebMD carries a report (Sep25,2k6) by Todd Zwillich about a policy group is calling for universal protection from catastrophic medical costs in the USA, within a year's time. The Zwillich article was screened by a medical reviwer before publication, Louise Chang, MD.
Americans should have universal access to health insurance by the year 2012, a congressionally mandated report concluded Monday.Of course, Cato Institute's reaction is entirely predictable. American medical professions are utterly capitalist, and the entire system would shudder for years if everyone were entitled to care. But, basic care is one thing. Catastrophic costs cannot be paid out for everyone under every circumstance, especially when the population ages in ever-incresaing dependence on the medical system to advance longevity, while at the same time medical advances and technologies address ever-more esoteric diseases that afflict only the tiniest of minorities that no one lived long enuff to contract in the past. The array of specific-disease minorities sky-rockets costs. Obviously the state has a role in supporting medicine financially, and all those who can buy insurance have a respnsilbity to do so. But where to draw the line on what the state must finance for whom and when is a matter of delicate balancing. What Catovists don't acknowledge is that the larger community that embraces all members of a given society has a responsilblity for all its sick, a principle that justifies public medicine and urban public-health departments. That general community thru the state provides for accomplishing tasks of prevention, preparation, and pro=active response against potentially epidemic/pandemic diseases when they arise. Indeed, in this age, the process of mutation can undergo rapidization beyond any easy identification of the new variant of a virus with deadly consequences for huge populations.
The report calls on Congress to move by next year to pass insurance reforms protecting all citizens from catastrophic medical bills using either market-based insurance policies or taxpayer-funded methods.
It then calls for new laws guaranteeing universal access to affordable health insurance to be in place by 2012.
The report was issued by the Citizens' Health Care Working Group, which was directed by Congress to hold a series of public forums nationwide on how to reform the health care system. Congress is required to hold hearings on the report next year.
"The overwhelming majority of Americans that the working group heard from … want health-care system-change to begin now," the report states.
Approximately 46 million Americans are estimated to lack health coverage. Meanwhile, the cost of private health insurance for a family of four now tops $10,000 [a year, I presume - Politicarp]. The report does not endorse a particular policy for expanding coverage, though experts acknowledged that progress would likely end up encompassing a combination of private incentives and government expansions.
Statewide Efforts
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who co-authored the bill creating the working group, pointed to recent bipartisan reforms in Massachusetts that spread insurance coverage statewide with a combination of market incentives and coverage mandates.
"That's the kind of mix that can produce some common ground," Wyden tells WebMD.
A report released last week by the Commonwealth Fund think-tank gave mostly dismal scores to the US health care system for running high costs without enough attention to efficiency and quality care.
That report's authors acknowledged fundamental reforms would likely have to be incremental because of the electrified politics of the $2 trillion-per-year American health care system.
Congress has recently moved to expand access to tax-free health savings accounts. Supporters, including President Bush, say the accounts can increase efficiency by allowing individuals to save and spend more of their own money on medical care. The accounts have been taken up by more than 3 million people, according to health industry estimates.
Michael Cannon, director of health policy at the Cato Institute, a free-market think tank, criticized Monday's report for pointing the way to an expansion of government's role in health care.
"Their 'market-based' model would increase taxes and increase spending. This is not free-market stuff," he says.
SOURCES: Health Care That Works for All Americans, Citizens Health Care Working Group, Sept. 25, 2006. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies, Cato Institute.
A public health system must set hard-choice priorities. The state alone cannot do everything that can be done to help those who suffer illness, or may suffer illness, even catastrophically expensive illness or injury. The state has some very real respnsiblity in making sure that plenty of emergency care facilities are available on immediate notice, and systems of response to natural disasters as well as terrorist attacks are well in place. But not everything can be done for everybody, emergency or no.
-- Owlb
Further Research:
Editorials, Opinion Pieces Address Massachusetts Health Care Bill (Apr12,2k6)
Mandating health coverage for all -- Massachusetts experiment built on political compromise (Apr5,2k6)
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