Three things Governor Jerry Brown could do to help California’s Hospitals, Doctors, Patients, and Economy
December 23rd, 2011I’m a conservative, gun toting, small government Republican who mostly aligns myself with the Tea Party’s values. And, I absolutely believe that a federal healthcare mandate is a violation of the 10th amendment of the constitution. I also feel that Obamacare should be removed from law. Yet, when I look at the severe problems in California’s healthcare system, I feel some serious changes are in order…
1) Legislate a Health Care Mandate
Let’s face it, you go to an ER these days, and wait 5 - 6 hours for a doctor (unless it’s heart related), and the doctor spends 15 minutes with you. Then you leave with a $750 bill, and realize a few things: a) The hospital feels the necessity to make you wait so long for care, not because they are understaffed, but in order to justify the price of your bill. b) Because 75% of the uninsured don’t pay their hospital bills (and hospitals don’t see efficiency or political expedience in enforcing payment), the hospital can not afford to charge you less than $750 for your visit, even if it was only a 30 minute ER visit.
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By creating a health insurance mandate in California, three positive things will be accomplished: a) The cost of health insurance will go down. b) California’s hospitals will be able to successfully emerge from their nearly bankrupt state. c) The time and cost for ER visits will be DRAMATICALLY reduced.
Do I believe a health care mandate is appropriate for every state (such as Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota)? No. Yet for California, since there’s a major ‘entitlement problem’, something serious needs to be done.
CAVEAT: Every citizen of California must have health insurance. It will be required by law, same as car insurance. I’m sure that California’s government can put together a temporary low income program, and a program for the chronically unhealthy, just like they did for drivers during the first years of California’s auto insurance mandate.
2) Remove all California employers from the health care process
This one is HUGE. Freeing employers from the health care process will to reduce thousands of hours of HR red tape, and free California’s employers to become more profitable and more philanthropic with their employee pay increases to help offset the cost of the new healthcare mandate.
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CAVEAT: Large corporations can often be greedy, especially in such a competitive workforce, as the one we have today, so their should be some regulation to ween the employees off of employer healthcare through pay increases over a five year period.
3) Eliminate IPA’s, and replace them with one clearing house for all California doctors and hospitals.
Most people do not realize there’s a serious problem with managed healthcare. There are some big fat cat, cigar smoking doctors (not the regular every day doc’s) that are making millions of dollars as they continue to increase the number of lives under their management. Let me make this clear: More HMO, Medicare, etc patients = more $$ per patient. That’s right. The current HMO/Medicare system is setup to reward greed. I can tell you this with authority because I am an accountant to a number of doctors, and I’ve been privy to behind the scenes contracts that award this kind of greed.
Every IPA in California needs to be replaced with one California clearing house. This will: a) Eliminate the political turf wars, and power grabs among doctors. b) Reduce the greed in the medical community, putting the greedy doctors (not the regular doc’s, but the ‘head honcho’ types) back in their place. c) Put the power back in the hands of the patients and every day doctors. d) Lower the cost of health care (again LOWER THE COST OF HEALTHCARE). e) Reduce the need of the power hungry doc’s to feel like they need to forcefully bankrupt the local community hospital in order to consolidate their power.
There is no reason a doctor that controls an IPA should be making upwards of $5 million per year. I don’t care how many degrees they have, or how many years they’ve been to school, these types are all about greed, power and control. Rewarding the greed needs to stop.
CAVEAT: There is no potential downside to this. It will help patients, doctors, and hospitals.