The Health Care Crisis

I hear a lot about the Health Care problem, but most of the solutions that I hear about are Health Insurance, not Health Care.

The election is over now, and Barak Obama and Senator McCain talked about making changes in Health Insurance and throwing government resources at health insurance, but is that really the problem?  Why is Health Insurance so expensive?  It’s because Health Care is so expensive.  So, instead of throwing government money at Health Insurance, why don’t we throw government resources at Health CARE RESEARCH? Give government grants to health care companies to solve the problems of the day.  When the problem is solved, the solution is owned by the public.  If the current drug companies don’t want to bite on this money because of the strings attached, give the money to universities or to private experts and let them have a go at the problems.  No more protectionist policies.  Research is done on the areas that need to be researched, not just the ones that will make a profit for “Big Health Care”.  If the cost of Health Care drops, then the cost of Health Insurance will drop.  That can only be good whether you promote a large government run health care system or if you prefer privatly run health care.  If you want government to pay for health insurance; great now it wil cost less.  If, like me, you think that the less things the government sticks it’s fingers in the better, then you’ll see more people and small businesses being able to afford Health Insurance.

Why don’t we see this type of solution promoted by politicians?  Is it because the drug companies of America gave 15 million dollars to election campaigns (opensecrets.org)?  If you combine the drug companies with the “Health Professional” industry, the money goes up to 59 million, which puts them as the number 3 contributor across all industries.  All of these contributuions are split evenly between both Republicans and Democrats.  These companies know how to play both sides.  Their interest is in keeping costs high not only to beef up their profits, but also to keep the barrier to entry high.  Keeping competition out allows them to closely control the flow of new drugs and keep prices high.  Considering that there are 5 main durg companies in the world, breaking that cartel could have a major impact on health care costs.

With a new Democratic president, Democratic control of both houses of congress, it looks more likely that we will have a National “health care solution”.  While my own preference is to have no national health care, please encourage your congress person and the new president to be sure they consider all options when looking at this problem.