August 18th, 2009
Insurance reform is not health care
In what is called the big debate over “health reform” now approaching a climax around the country, the solutions offered by both parties focus entirely on insurance.
Republicans want tax breaks so people can pay for private insurance. Democrats want a public option or a co-op to keep insurance prices low. Even the President himself has taken to calling the issue “health insurance reform.”
But bending the nation’s health cost curve — we spend 16% of our gross domestic product (GDP) on health care and our government has the third-highest health budget based on GDP — has nothing to do with insurance, or whether the bills when we get sick are paid for by insurance companies or the taxpayer.
As Dr. Ralph (please don’t call him a salesman) Snyderman (right) has explained and demonstrated through his Proventys start-up, the key to cutting health costs is health care. Collecting the data and preventing chronic conditions saves money and lives.
Everyone needs a health coach they trust. True health care costs look like a bathtub, but that tub should never be empty.
The problem with America’s health care system is that it’s geared to cures, not care. We have too many specialists, not enough people doing primary care. Our market’s incentives are so out-of-whack that administrators who cut costs wind up getting fired because they are cutting revenue.
If you are seeing someone regularly as you get fat, someone who knows you, someone you trust, maybe you won’t get fat. Maybe you will quit smoking, cut drinking, start exercising. A good coach will help you find solutions. That’s what coaches do.
When employers or insurers offer this service, some employees will complain they are being nagged. When government offers it then the government is accused of being a nanny state.
No one likes being told to shape up and fly right, but that is how you prevent things like diabetes and the sudden heart attack that took one of my neighbors last year, at age 44.
The only reason I didn’t suffer the same fate is that a Jay Abraham conference when I was 44 gave me symptoms I could not ignore. I then made the effort to see a doctor, to get tested, and learned I had a cholesterol count like an Internet stock (before the Time-AOL merger).
I should have had my cholesterol checked earlier. My neighbor should have had it checked period. That’s health care, but because we have health insurance instead my care came late, and my neighbor died.
Multiply that experience about 200 million times and you see the problem. This whole health care debate has been a fight with alligators and no one — neither the President nor his critics — is even talking about the swamp.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist since 1978, and has covered technology since 1982. He launched the Interactive Age Daily, the first daily coverage of the Internet to launch with a magazine, in September 1994. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
Subscribe to ZDNet Healthcare via Email alerts or RSS.
| 08/18/09
