There's No Health Care Reform Without Cost Control
Who doesn’t remember those Wendy’s commercials with the curmudgeonly matron angrily asking “Where’s the beef?”
We are feeling similarly caustic as the health care debate rages on in Congress, except we’re left asking “Where’s the cost control?”
For all the provisions in both the Senate and House versions of health care reform, there’s woefully little in the way of controlling costs, which is the only thing that is going to truly fix our broken health care system.
Businesses in Massachusetts are looking at double-digit increases in health plan costs again this year. That steep of an increase spells disaster for small business owners.
The facts are simple: We as Americans have allowed a bloated health care system that feeds on expensive tests and procedures. We spend approximately 16 percent of our gross domestic product on health care, according to the most recent data compiled by the international Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
That’s nearly double the 8.4 percent of GDP the United Kingdom spends. In fact, the United States’ health care spending as a percent of GDP outpaces all 30 member countries in the OECD.
Now is the time when we must cut the head off the health care monster and put measures in place so it doesn’t grow back.
Death panels are a ridiculous idea cooked up by conservative whack jobs to scare older Americans into fighting reform. There will never be death panels in America. But what there will have to be is health care rationing. Rationing has been a dirty word during this entire health care debate. But it’s time to stop cowering and take “rationing” out of the shadows and put it on the table for discussion.
It seems likely that some form of health care reform will be signed into law on the federal level. But it’s very likely that law, while extending benefits to millions of currently uninsured Americans, may bypass the cost issue entirely. Such a result would be a tremendous waste.
Spending money on so-called reforms, while ignoring the fundamental flaws in our health care system (like the skyrocketing cost of medical malpractice insurance and the over-use of million-dollar surgical gizmos) would be a giant disservice to the American taxpayer, business owners and the memory of Ted Kennedy, who during his lifetime worked so hard to make health care reform a reality.
Our message to Congress is simple: Don’t forget cost control. Without, we’ll all be out of business.
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