President Trump: Tell the healthcare lobby to get lost
Healthcare is a ruthless business; built on a foundation of political corruption.
On the morning of February 27, 2017, President Trump huddled with the nation’s top health insurers in a “listening session” and said to them:
I want you to know that it’s an honor to do business with you. It’s a great honor to have you in the White House.
As past president of a Florida hospital, Trump’s “thank you” to the industry was a knife in my heart.
The health industry is methodically bleeding the nation dry, spending more on lobbying than the defense, aerospace, and the oil and gas industries combined. In 1964 healthcare was one-third the cost of an average family’s housing and utility bills. Today, healthcare is equal to housing and utility bills.
Citizens are stunned by exploding premiums, while the industry laughs all the way to the bank.
The stock of the nation’s largest health insurer (United Healthcare) and largest hospital chain, HCA, are each up more than 300% in just the last five years. “Listening” to the industry is exactly how we got here.
Follow the money: If sophisticated investors believed “repeal and replace” meant the cost of healthcare would drop, then the price of stock in the largest insurer and largest hospital chain would not be sky-high. Those in the know are betting on future growth in revenues and profits (i.e. higher healthcare prices).
It’s official: Pricing of medical services is the problem
The U.S. government has officially determined that rising prices for medical services is driving faster growth in national health costs and premiums:
Throughout the 2016-25 projection period, growth in national health expenditures is driven by projected faster growth in medical prices.
Insurance premiums are just a mathematical function of the cost of medical services. Politicians spew nonsense about premiums and avoid mentioning the actual problem, the pricing of medical services, like the plague.
Ask any hospital, lab or physician the price of anything and all you get is a question: “What insurance do you have?” A simple blood test for cholesterol can range from $10 to $400 or more at the same lab. Hospitalization for chest pain can result in a bill from the same hospital for the same services ranging anywhere from $3,000 to $25,000 or more. If you are out-of-network or uninsured you pay the highest prices.
Make no mistake, the problem is not a mere lack of price transparency. The problem is far more diabolical – it is the lack of any prices at all. We have a purely predatory system. Your price depends on how much can be extracted from you on an individual basis, often at your most vulnerable.
The reason U.S. healthcare costs are uniquely sick is because the healthcare industry alone has managed to successfully eliminate legitimate pricing plus all consumer protections. Price competition does not exist.
Industry apologists claim that everyone is actually “charged” the same amount but that we each receive a different “discount.” In actuality, this is a sleazeball scheme that prevents comparison shopping and competition, rendering patients defenseless against overcharges.
‘Legitimate’ pricing would crush health costs overnight
In December 2016, I delivered to then President-elect Trump a Petition to End Predatory Healthcare Pricing along with a 3,263 page roster of more than 104,000 signers. This event was reported in print media and was the subject of two National primetime TV interviews: January 3, 2017 and February 21, 2017. The administration has never even acknowledged receipt of the Petition.
Legit pricing would reduce health expenditures by a minimum of 33% - overnight (and the USA would still have the most expensive healthcare on earth).
Congress must compel medical providers to play by the same rules that apply to all other sellers of consumer goods and services. They should remain free to set their own prices. However, providers must be prohibited from billing each patient a different price for the same service – thereby preventing consumers from being able to shop pricing.
Legitimate pricing would also mean networks are obsolete. Nobody would ever be price gouged for being out-of-network or uninsured.
President Trump strategizes with industry leaders in the White House while former president Obama just accepted a $400,000 offer to speak at a healthcare conference. It’s difficult to be hopeful for real reform.
However, the desire for legitimate healthcare pricing is the one – perhaps only — unifying American issue. President Trump, drain the deepest, ugliest swamp of all. Tell the healthcare lobby to get lost and implement legitimate healthcare pricing — for we the people.
[Photo: Joshua Kehn via Flickr.]