07 August 2009
The Prognosis for National Health Insurance
Arthur Laffer’s report on National Health Insurance makes a good argument in favor of a system that is similar to the one adopted by the government of Singapore. Both systems rely on the consumer to control the cost of health care by placing responsibility for paying for it in their hands through medical savings accounts that they dispense and contribute to in whole or in part.
However, owing to the dominance in American values of monetary gain as the measure of professional fulfillment, there is a basic contradiction between the profit-maximization goals of many health care providers in the U.S. and the cost-minimization goals of their patients. Although this contradiction may only apply to a minority of health care providers (and to not all health insurers either) its distortions have infected our entire health care system. The process has certainly been abetted by the America’s medical liability practices.
The weakest solution to our health care system’s faults stated by Mr. Laffer is “Reduce the number of mandated benefits that insurers are required to cover.” It’s not insurers (private or public), or consumers for that matter, who should determine which health care procedures are needed and, therefore, should be paid for by an ideal health insurance system. That is the job of a dedicated profession of health care providers, who are in some way released from the encumbrances of a perverse legal system and an ambivalent societal structure that separates material reward from professional competence.
As our population ages, thanks in great measure to advances in our medical therapies, it will become more and more essential that our society compensate the developers and practitioners of those therapies according to their great value to each of us. A political decision must be made to designate that profession as a kind of priesthood so that it and our common health are not contaminated by a striving for material gain.
Arthur Laffer’s report on National Health Insurance makes a good argument in favor of a system that is similar to the one adopted by the government of Singapore. Both systems rely on the consumer to control the cost of health care by placing responsibility for paying for it in their hands through medical savings accounts that they dispense and contribute to in whole or in part.
However, owing to the dominance in American values of monetary gain as the measure of professional fulfillment, there is a basic contradiction between the profit-maximization goals of many health care providers in the U.S. and the cost-minimization goals of their patients. Although this contradiction may only apply to a minority of health care providers (and to not all health insurers either) its distortions have infected our entire health care system. The process has certainly been abetted by the America’s medical liability practices.
The weakest solution to our health care system’s faults stated by Mr. Laffer is “Reduce the number of mandated benefits that insurers are required to cover.” It’s not insurers (private or public), or consumers for that matter, who should determine which health care procedures are needed and, therefore, should be paid for by an ideal health insurance system. That is the job of a dedicated profession of health care providers, who are in some way released from the encumbrances of a perverse legal system and an ambivalent societal structure that separates material reward from professional competence.
As our population ages, thanks in great measure to advances in our medical therapies, it will become more and more essential that our society compensate the developers and practitioners of those therapies according to their great value to each of us. A political decision must be made to designate that profession as a kind of priesthood so that it and our common health are not contaminated by a striving for material gain.
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