In an e-mail newsletter, former U.S. Senator David Durenberger (R- Minn.), now head of the National Institute on Health Policy offered some perspectives on health care in 2006:
“…the tragic truth is that the health system is making too much money and demanding more, while consumers, employers and taxpayers are looking at going bankrupt or bare. Since I first became involved 35 years ago, policymakers have been complaining that the system costs too much. But now, for the first time, we are recognizing it also produces too little. Miracles? Yes. Good health and consistently high quality medicine? No.
…How much is enough? It appears that no one cares about finding the answer. We are too busy laying the future of cost containment off on the consumer and on pay-for-performance. Everyone (even public employment) is now moving to high-deductible, catastrophic insurance in which the seller sets the rules and the buyer is left to figure out how to pay for ‘what’ because there aren’t any ‘prices’ to compare in the medical market.
National insurance monopolies are right around the corner fed by national employers buying national accounts and all playing by a dizzying number of local rules. As we all get more of ‘our skin in their game,’ these health insurance plans are becoming banks and credit card companies with profit margins swelling even beyond that of their usurious commercial financing counterparts. …
What’s puzzling to people like me is why we would turn the Medicare and Medicaid programs over to an industry which has shown so little inclination to cover the uninsured. Instead they create uninsured with pre-existing condition exclusions or premium pricing. They require most hospitals to take all comers whether they get paid or not. Many doctors do the same.�
And, yes, he writes: “The 2006 election does have a lot to do with health policy.�