Healthcare Policy in America: Perpetuating a Vacuum of Failure

A recent article in the Detroit News reported that, according to key findings obtained from a survey of 203 local company executives by John Bailey & Associates, a majority of businesses in Southeast Michigan expect to either scale back on health insurance coverage for their employees or eliminate them entirely. Over 60 percent of the companies surveyed are considering reductions in future health care benefits for employees while another 27 percent may eliminate medical insurance altogether.

It's no secret that the burden of skyrocketing healthcare costs has become too much for small business (and their employees) to bear. As unclearness and anxiety over the issues would have it, there is no lack of finger-pointing to go along with it, either. In an interesting turnabout, the tone of the Detroit News article and statements of the executives interviewed were wrought with indicting concerns over the issue of unhealthy employee lifestyle and its effect on the high cost of health insurance coverage. This is only a mirror of the incoherent healthcare message emanating from Washington that has America in the grips of frustration and inertia. No one seems to really know what's wrong, how it all went wrong or how to fix it. The worst of it is that no one really seems to want to try. The consensus in Washington is, there is no consensus.

Most in Washington are determined to selfishly tend their little plot of political/ideological real estate, at the expense of a simple little thing called common ground. Meanwhile, the vast adjoining American landscape is littered with the healthcare plight of the medically unattended, uninsured and disenfranchised. If only there were a few in Washington with the undiluted vision and conviction to lift their eyes toward the horizon and view the collateral damage.

President Bush would like America to become an "ownership society". All well and good, however, those words will continue to ring ironically impotent until Washington resolves to take ownership of America. The recently expired Senate "Health Week" dissolved in unmerciful scorn of the ever-widening procession of the sick and lame, while America helplessly looked on in hope of some political higher power ascending to "stir the waters".

The runaway cost of health insurance in America requires that two major issues be honestly and urgently addressed: the untenable pricing of network-wide healthcare services that is the result of too much provider-milking of the proverbial health insurance "cash cow" and the cost driving nightmare of having to purchase and manage health plans through an entangled mess of no less than 50 various state-imposed insurance code packages.

American workers have been precariously hostage to a healthcare system that has navigated them on a course of steadily evaporating choice and access; a system pirated by an unholy alliance of politics and provider imprudence. The money has been easy, something along the order of shooting fish in a barrel, the American worker and his disposable income being the savory target. The easy-money politics of inertia have kept the dollars flowing, but, the incredible folly is that network providers have royally out-priced the market resulting from years of network-wide "gravy train riding" and the system is collapsing, like a house of cards, under the weight of its own acquisitiveness. Network prices have exploded......More>>>