HEALTH CARE
Our law makers are creating a health care package that will be effective, efficient, inclusive and affordable. WOW, I can hardly wait. How do you think this will be put together and how do you think it will be funded? We are now beginning to see and hear glimpses of the package. I expect our health care providers are going to be just as excited as I am. They will have to provide more care for more people for less money. Businesses will be thrilled as well. They will be required to provide more benefits with less payment by the employee. I don’t suppose they will have to raise their prices to pay for the extra expense. The customer will pay more for their products and the employees will get fewer and smaller pay increases. Oh! I guess the customer and the employees are the same people. I should of said that U. S. citizens will earn less and pay more to live. Not to mention that taxes will be increased to cover the government portion of the new costs. Sounds like a win for everybody.
How about the health care itself? Already in place are many qualifiers for receiving health care. I have a friend whose mother has advanced kidney failure. Her kidneys are functioning at 12% of normal. Without dialysis she would die in about two weeks. She is in her early 80’s. She is not eligible for kidney transplants because of her advanced age. In-home dialysis care is very expensive and extended care facilities are even more expensive. I wonder how many older citizens have similar conditions. I’ve been told that a very high percentage of the nations health care costs (perhaps 80%) occur in the last several months of life (perhaps 3 months). Do you think this is true? As the end of life approaches many of us will get desperate to find a cure for the disease or condition that is killing us. Some folks have said that they want no heroics to stay alive when approaching the condition of a less than quality life style.
Why not devise a system for health care qualification that encourages healthy living and helps to control the cost when healthy living is no longer an option. Here’s a rudimentary , simplistic idea that folks in Washington might want to consider. It has been said that we should live three score and five years of a very healthy and productive life. So, if age 60 were set as a target we could make sure that a very high percentage of the people reach that age and that for those who cannot afford to pay for their own health care our government could pay for them. Perhaps in order to qualify for those payments they should consider living a healthy life. Like suppose we imposed some weight and diet guides. And, maybe we insisted that folks don’t smoke or drink excessively. To encourage this we might impose a physical fitness test beginning for everyone at age 60. For people who are spending too much on health care the physical fitness qualifier might be applied at an earlier age. I would suggest an easy qualifier like walking five miles in two hours or less. People who don’t qualify would have to pay for their own health care. They would not be included in any insurance groups. What would the cost impact be if we only had healthy people in the insurance groups? Some of you might want to invest in spas and fitness centers. Beer companies and cheap booze manufacturers might want to duck. Tobacco control would be more or less automatic. Recreational drug use would greatly reduced. People would in general walk and bike more and drive less. We would have proportionally more sidewalks, hiking trails and bike trails than roads. I suppose we would have fewer people wanting or receiving heroic life support. There are some things about this type of plan some people would not like. But, I suppose that is true of all the plans suggested and/or used to date. It is much like the old native American Indian health plan. Once we get old and not able to function well we just take off into the wilderness. What are wilderness areas for anyway?
