Jul 07, 2009

Wasting the Health Care Dollar

For all the talk of reducing health care costs, there is a little conversation about the huge costs that are most easily reduced: all of the billions that insurance companies, HMOs, pharmaceutical companies, and hospitals spend on non-patient-care reasons: high administrator salaries, advertising, political ~~bribes~~ campaign contributions, lobbying fees, and corporate profits.

The Washington Post reports that private insurers, drug companies and their representatives spent more than $126 million on lobbying in the first quarter of this year. That’s over $1.4 million a day.
And they’ve hired more than 350 former government staff members and retired members of Congress to do all that lobbying work.
When Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, sat down with health-care lobbyists on June 10, two were his former chiefs of staff. Their aim: to minimize the “damage” in profits to insurers, hospitals and drug makers from any change in approach from government. Specifically, they oppose any even remotely public option, the details of which are right now up for debate.
Want to hush the activists? The real scandal, it seems to me, shouldn’t be the thousands of dollars that on-line organizers are spending on advertising to the public and Congress. The real scandal should be the millions that private insurers and pharmaceutical firms are spending infiltrating the government.
If the public option lobbyists had the access Big Pharma’s got, they might not need to buy all those ads. Besides — $1.4 million a day. Imagine what real-life nurses could do with that! —Laura Flanders, Common Dreams

Only a single payer system can eliminate such costs. So, of course, we’re not allowed to even talk about it…..

Michael Sky | CommonHealth