Health Care Reform

Economist and Princeton professor Uwe Reinhardt was on Fresh Air with Terry Gross last week. Some of what he said really hit home and expressed my gut feelings about why health care reform is not an option. He was talking about the simple fact that in a nation like ours it is unthinkable that people who need health care won't get it because they can't afford insurance.

Here are some quotes from the last part of the interview when Reinhardt got passionate.

You lose your job, you lose your income, you lose your health insurance. It's an accident of World War II that we have it the way we it is...

I grew up in a tool shed and I know how good it was that when we were paupers we had health insurance like everyone else in Germany. I would like the American people to have what I had as a kid.

Stay away from people who try to solve with cliches, ike this is socialized medicine and then you don't have to think about it anymore. Try to think through- what kind of country would you like to live in? Do you want to live in a country where someone who loses his job loses his insurance?

Do you want a system where kids get out of college and can't get insurance for ten years?

Do you want it that when a family member gets cancer you lose house or car?

We have that now. Lose insurance with job, lose house and go bankrupt over medical bills. No one in Canada or Germany has that happen.

What kind of country do you want to live in?

I had never heard someone put it so personally, passionately and succinctly. I had never had someone ask that powerful question:

What kind of country do we want to live in?

Some have criticized President Obama over his trying to tackle health care (and other issues) when the financial crisis is so deep. Well, as unemployment goes up, as more people are out of work, as income goes down for many, they can't afford health care. That is not an idle issue separate from others.

The health care system is as important to our national economy as auto or finance. (In some places like here in Rochester, MN, it is the center of our economy.) So what happens....

• All of a sudden more people don't have insurance.
  
• They don't go to the doctor for important check-ups.
  
• They get sick and go to a clinic or emergency room.
  
• They can't pay but rightly get treated.
  
• The institution eats the cost or gets minor reimbursement.
  
• The health care system loses money. They cut back on services or employees.
  
• And the cycle continues.

This is not a fantasy. It is already occurring. It will get worse. What if we get a flu outbreak or the dreaded bird flu pandemic? Even without that, the system is as tenuous as the financial system was 18-months ago, fragile, vulnerable.

What kind of country do we want to call home?

I don't know what such a system would look like. There are far more brilliant minds than mine working on it. Health care systems are working on it because they are already seeing the early signs. It is part of the spiral of recession and needs to be ready to be handled well, or we will all pay the price- literally with our health, the health of our children and communities, and the health of our nation.