Bob Lacher wrote a letter that appeared here on April 20 about our broken health care system and how being a rational consumer lowers cost. I agree that being a rational consumer is great when you have the option, but in many cases, health care is not like any other service. Health emergencies can strike fast and without you having any choice in the matter. Imagine your house is on fire and, as a rational consumer, you start calling fire agencies, comparing services, getting quotes from agents. You are quoted $56 a minute, $660 a minute, free if you live in a certain place: It looks like you have options. Meanwhile, your house has burned down. Now imagine trying to do this while unconscious in the back of an ambulance rushing toward crippling debt.
I have worked in the emergency room, and while we save many lives, we destroy them financially. I agree that the health care system is broken, but I suspect Mr. Lacher and I have different solutions to the problem. I am on Obamacare and would like it to go further. Even with my plan, I must shop around, for if I go to the wrong provider, my cost would be more than I earn in a year. I agree that the price of health care is inflated because it is often obscured by paying indirectly through public or private insurance. Health care services partly overcharge those who can pay to cover those who cannot, perhaps having a guaranteed payer as most advanced, affluent countries have would reduce these costs through the efficiency of certainty.
The administrative costs of private health insurance are around 15%, whereas Medicare has an administrative cost of 2%. That is substantial savings right there; add in the power to set prices of a single payer and this is how affluent, advanced countries halve their expenditure on health care relative to the United States. It is time we recognize that like the market for firefighting, supply and demand is majorly distorted in health care and it deserves to be a public right.
— Paul Butera
Anchorage
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