Health care column was too simplistic

The commentary titled “Being a smart health care consumer isn’t easy” was a big disappointment [May 1]. It was nothing more than a superficial, anecdotal complaint about a system whose flaws are well known to almost everyone. Who does not know about the cost and complexity of our current system? 

The particulars which Mr. Morris cites as being hard to deal with are the features which have made the U.S. system truly nightmarish. We have the most expensive and inefficient system by far in the industrialized world. Because of pervasive access barriers, it also is responsible in part for our abysmal public health status.

He does not even venture into the morass of shareholder-owned private insurance plans with discounts, subsidies, pharmacy benefit managers, and dozens of other unnecessary intermediaries, companies that are the value-less middlemen which most other industries are trying to eliminate.

He rightly complains that there is little transparency in pricing. Health care has never been an effective free-market activity and never will be. You cannot have transparency when your consumers are unable to predict with any accuracy their needs, the timing of these needs, and the value of the activity or products which will satisfy those needs. 

While transparency will always be elusive, the expense and inefficiency of our system need not continue.

The for-profit insurance industry with its burdensome general and administrative overhead, and the associated peripheral activities currently take approximately one third of the health care dollar. With our national health care bill nearing $3 trillion, we are wasting close to $1 trillion!

Taxpayer-funded federal programs such as Medicare and Medicaid operate with a 3-5 percent overhead burden while delivering quality care to the oldest, sickest and poorest Americans.

Several years ago, I was a panelist on a health care Power Breakfast put on by IBJ. The details of a “single payer” system (such as the expansion of Medicare to cover all Americans) were discussed. Recent general opinion polls show that over 60 percent of Americans favor such a system. HB 676 (the Medicare for All bill) now has more than 105 cosponsors, more than any time in the past. With the future of the ACA unclear and the business community continuing to struggle with ever-increasing costs, IBJ could serve its readers better with a current, wide-ranging, evidence-driven discussion of all options being considered. We would all benefit.

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Dr. Christopher Stack