Bean 1 Bryon Bean Soomin Choon-Hess POL 111 American Government 4 January 2012

Health Care in America I try to keep my head above the misinformation and propaganda that Im constantly bombarded with thanks to the media, but it was hard not to be completely stunned by the revelation that both CEOs of Kaiser Permanente and Americas Health Insurance Plans, a health insurance industry lobbying group, are uninsurable through private insurance (Palfreman). Either this was truly a brilliant ploy by the health insurance industry or I have profoundly misunderstood the motivations of that industry. Hoping that I can still count on PBS and Frontline for some semblance of truth in reporting, albeit liberally skewed, and not being so naive as to think that insurance companies dont have a bottom line, with that information I was wont to believe that the world just became a more hope-filled place to live. A few weeks ago it seemed to me that health care in America suffered from precisely the same maligned influence that infects the same Congress responsible for creating the comprehensive solution to Americas health care woesthe influence of corporate greed. Yet the documentary Sick Around America paints a rosier picture with significantly less wicked catalysts to the problems in health care in America. In addition to the ironic revelation that CEOs for major insurance industry players are uninsurable through the individual market, Sick Around America garners a number of scenes that convince me that with this issue of corporate greed plays second chair to a genuine desire by all players to fix the system. I say this with a caveattheyre all pointing the finger at each other. Strangely enough, it wasnt any of the unfortunate stories of people struggling to stay insured in Sick Around America that I most related with. The so-called ah-ha moment for me

Bean 2 came from Robert Laszewski, a health care industry consultant. In the program Laszewski makes the point that in his experience nobody is willing to take less; the doctors already feel like theyre not fairly compensated, good luck trying to get the hospital administrators to agree to work with smaller budgets, and even the patients are not willing to accept anything less than the most exceptional care available (Palfreman). This may sound like a no-brainer but at the heart of his experience is the ever so subtle selfish nature of the American attitude. We really have to recognize that to make this work were all going to have to give a little something. I dated a girl from Scotland for a few years and while she acknowledged that having to wait, sometimes for long periods, to see a specialist in the UK was an annoyance, it was worlds beyond better than being uninsured in the US. It is said that a system like that of the UK could not work well here in the US (Palfreman and Reid, Sick Around the World) but I believe that were we to create a system modeled like that of the department of Veterans Affairs and institute market competition between the health care providers Americans would be given superb health care. But this is an example of what the patient isnt willing to give up, being able to see a specialist immediately despite the fact that those in the UK have somewhat better health statistics and health care costs are about half of those here in the US. To boot, those in the UK virtually never have to pay a medical bill (Palfreman and Reid, Sick Around the World). It sounds odd to associate the word selfishness with health care insurance companies typically we call it corporate greedand I am unable to see any other reason than corporate greed for an excuse as to why we cannot persuade insurance companies to relinquish profits on basic health care services as is done in Germany and Switzerland (Palfreman and Reid, Sick Around the World). My solution to this scenario would be to implement a government based health card system such as the one instituted in Taiwan (Palfreman and Reid, Sick Around the World) with a goal of reducing administration costs to a mere 5%, such as they are in Switzerland (Palfreman and Reid, Sick Around the World) and exchange those savings for the profits made on basic care.

Bean 3 Tom Delblanco M.D. of Harvard Medical School states, Some of the doctors, I think, make too much money. Some of the institutions make too much money. Some of the pharmaceutical companies bring in too many dollars (Palfreman and Reid, Sick Around the World). I would add that the companies that build medical equipment, CAT scanning machines, X-rays, etc., these companies also make too much money. When Japan restricted and regulated its medical costs companies were forced to create machines for less (Palfreman and Reid, Sick Around the World), meaning that not only is it possible but its benefits certainly have the advantage of making the company more profitable through innovation and more importantly lower prices. I believe that forcing the rest of the medical industry to accept less will have the same effect of increased innovation and competitiveness. There too is a lot to be said about the extravagant costs associated with the education of physicians, and while the problem of the costs of education is a whole other ball of wax, I believe that the patients who ultimately pay taxes ought to absorb these costs. In the long-run it is to their benefit. The factors and the various possible solutions and their outcomes to our health care system dilemma are reminiscent of taking a child to the doctor to get a shot. At first there is a lot of anxiety and fear, followed by kicking and screaming, followed by an insignificant prick of the needle resulting in a protected and now healthy child who has forgotten about the whole ordeal by the time the lollypop hits his or her mouth. While I have renewed hope for a meaningful solution there is still the sickening number of seven-hundred-thousand Americans that are bankrupt by the health care system every year and twenty-thousand that simply perish because they cannot afford or are unable to attain health care insurance (Palfreman); these are ridiculous statistics for a little pinprick. I think that any of the systems, or combinations thereof from the other countries documented in Sick Around the World could work in the US, even the socialist-like system of the UK. The real problems lie in getting all of the stakeholders to sit still and take their medicine.

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Works Cited
Sick Around America. Dir. Jon Palfreman. Frontline. WGBH, 2009. DVD. Sick Around the World. By Jon Palfreman and T.R. Reid. Dir. Jon Palfreman. Perf. T.R. Reid. Frontline. WGBH, 2008. DVD.