This New Yorker magazine article examines why McAllen, Texas has the second highest spending per person on health care in the nation despite having the lowest per capita household income nationally.
Health care is less expensive in Rochester, Minnesota, home of the Mayo Clinic than in McAllen. The care provided is not as good as El Paso according to Medicare analysis.
I think the article is revealing ...
... and can be a basis for discussion of what our health care system needs. The Congress is currently debating a health care bill and the insurance and pharmaceutical companies are lobbying heavily to poison an option for a public provider. Read Robert Reich's take at the preceding link. Our congressional representatives are supportive of the public option and are leading the Congress on health care issues.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Why is health care so expensive?
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Officials across the country are using Mass. as a poster child for why we should not go to national health care. They claim that because Mass. has made health insurance mandatory, more people are now insured and that the system is working. What they neglect to add is that many people were forced to change the insurance they already had because Mass. would not accept it. I myself had sufficient coverage but my plan would not qualify under Mass. regulations. Before I had to switch I could choose my own doctors. Now I have to pick from a list. My old insurance covered the basics and was a 80/20 plan. My new insurance covers the same and pays the same but I am now paying three times as much as I was for my old insurance. Making health insurance mandatory has just given certain insurance companies more business and forced people to buy more expensive insurance than they need to.
National health care scares people because they believe the government will control their health care. What do they think the insurance companies are doing??? Insurance companies demand that you use their doctors and the insurance companies choose what tests, treatments etc. a patient will get. Patients no longer have much say once they are in the hands of their insurance companies.
Pharmaceuticals!
If you think health care is expensive now, wait until it is free!
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