Common sense is the best medicine

Want to fix the high costs of medical provisions and the inherent shortcomings of the Veterans Administration, Public Health Service, military health program, Medicaid, Medicare, Indian Health Service, and Federal Employees Health Benefits?

Think collective bargaining — the strength of 325 million customers, paying directly to providers of medical care rather than to insurance companies, and doctors freed up to provide care without a thought of pre-existing conditions or financial limitations of private coverage.

Forget about deductibles, co-pays, refusal of service, and mountains of paperwork to prove that you qualify and are covered. Forget the need to hold fundraisers to cover patients’ costs; bid goodbye to Wounded Warriors-type charities.

Taxes going up to cover the cost? I think not. The more than 30 developed countries with single-payer programs spend on average a little more $3,200 per person per capita for all medical treatments. The U.S. government alone spends more than that on all of the programs listed above — much of it paid to private insurers rather than directly to hospitals and doctors.

At this moment, I am receiving Medicare coverage that I have paid into for more than 50 years. Yet my coverage has several limits, four of which are the requirement to: pay additional money to the federal government; pay a private insurer for supplemental health insurance; pay a private carrier for prescription coverage, and make co-payments.

The additional fees, not counting co-payments, exceed $4,000 annually and account for more than 20 percent of my Social Security income. They’re going up every year and still don’t allow me the extent of coverage those other developed countries provide without question, without redundant paperwork and without argument, for an average of about $3,200 per person.

And what of those insurance packages your employers provide? Instead of paying that $18,000 or so per year to a private insurance carrier, maybe that money could be going into your pocket, minus the additional income taxes accruing due to the $15,000 to $20,000 in pay, of course.

Those countries with single payer systems, which include many underdeveloped countries, too, also provide nearly limitless wellness and fitness programs at no extra cost.

The most telling thing about their health care systems vs. ours are the wellness statistics: lower infant mortality rates than those in the U.S., longer lifespans than Americans, and happier citizens than ours. And that’s despite our average per capita medical costs of about $11,000 per person being more than three times the costs in those countries, costs that are driven even higher here by our insurance rates.

Losing interest in Medicare for All? Go figure.

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Alan Sorenson is a retired newspaperman from Havre.