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This Speakout has not been edited

By Representative Claire Levy, House District 13

Our health insurance system is broken. The question before the people of Colorado is how to fix it.

The legislature created a commission in 2006 to solicit and evaluate proposals to reform Colorado’s health care and health insurance system. You can review the submittals at www.colorado.gov/208commission. The legislature is expected to enact major health care reform legislation 2008.

Here are some of the factors we must keep in mind as we consider health insurance reform. First, with 770,000 Coloradans uninsured, a similar number underinsured, and many more financially strained by their current health insurance costs, radical changes are necessary. The number of people who receive health insurance benefits from their employer continues to decrease, throwing an increasing number of people into the prohibitively expensive individual market, or into the ranks of the uninsured.

The health care costs of the 770,000 who are currently uninsured don’t just go away. People get sick even if they have no insurance. Uncollectible bills are recouped by adding an average of $930 to the annual premium of those who have health insurance.

Our health care dollars must go farther by putting more of what we spend into providing care. The United States spends approximately 16% of its gross domestic product on health care. Other industrialized western nations spend far less, yet our health indicators lag behind theirs. As much as 20 to 25% goes to insurance company overhead, and an additional 12% is spent by doctors and hospitals to process insurance papers and sort out what benefits are available under the many different plans. As much as one-third of the premium dollars spent in the private sector do not go towards health care.

Our current system burdens businesses in the private sector with costs that are unrelated to the goods and services they provide. Employers who provide health insurance spend approximately $8500 per employee for family coverage, while the employee spends $3000.

Employers incur administrative costs in the form $57 per employee for staff to analyze benefit plans and administer their benefits packages. The cost to employers of providing health insurance currently operates as an 8% payroll tax.

Companies that do provide health insurance are at a competitive disadvantage as compared to those that do not. It also places American companies at a competitive disadvantage compared to the other major industrialized nations.

Health insurance can be provided without devoting dollars to activities whose purpose is to maximize profit rather than make people healthy. The Medicare system spends 3.10% of its costs on administrative expenses. Non-profit Blue Cross and Blue Shield companies spend 16.30% on administrative expenses. Twenty to twenty-five percent of what commercial carriers collect in premiums is spent on advertising, screening out unhealthy applicants, executive compensation, shareholder profit, and paying a staff whose job is to second guess doctors and deny benefits. This spending saves money for the health insurance company and increases profit. But the cost of health care for those who are denied coverage is shifted to the taxpaying public or to the premiums of those who have coverage.

An employer based benefits system disrupts the labor market and hampers competition. Employees who have health insurance benefits are reluctant to change jobs for fear of losing their coverage or seeing an increase in cost. Health insurance considerations may prevent them from fully utilizing their potential in a different job and unproductive employees stay on the payroll because of medical issues. Employers may not hire the best candidate for the job due to concerns about increased health insurance costs, or may not expand because of the cost of additional benefits. Companies that cannot afford to provide insurance may lose out on the most experienced, talented employees. In a myriad of ways, health insurance drives employment and business decisions.

So what is to be done? We must begin with the premise that health care is a basic human right. We implicitly acknowledge this already by the substantial government funded programs that provide health care to children, the elderly, poor and disabled.

Hospitals must provide emergency treatment to anyone who needs it. Our laws, policies and ethics require treatment yet our health care financing system is not built to deliver it.

We must decouple employment and health insurance. Whether one is self-employed or works part time, whether one’s employer chooses to offer health insurance, and what insurance plans one’s employer selects should not determine whether a person can afford health care.

Employers should be focused on providing goods and services.

Our system must put health care dollars into health care and allow doctors to focus on medicine. Reducing administration costs to the 16% spent by non-profit insurance companies would save $982 per person. Reducing these costs to the level of Medicare or the Veterans Administration would save still more. Eliminating the staff hospitals and physicians dedicate to claims administration would free up even more dollars. The money saved on administration and profit could cover all of the uninsured and enhance the coverage provided by basic plans.

Last, we must acknowledge that governments, employers and individuals already spend a substantial sum of money on health care. If we spend that money according to a broad comprehensive plan instead of filling gaps, we can achieve the goal of universal health insurance.

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GOVERNMENT- THEY HAVE ALL THE ANSWERS BUT NO SOLUTIONS

Former president Bill Clinton said the United States spends 16 percent its national income on health care, compared with 11 percent in Canada and Switzerland, the countries with the next highest spending. That gap represents $800 billion a year, he said.

Yet the United States ranks only 37th in the world in overall health care, insures fewer of its citizens, and pays more for its drugs, Clinton said.

"U.S. citizens spent $5,267 per capita for health care in 2002—53 percent more than any other country." - http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/abstract/24/4/903

How can it get much worse than it already is?

Ken and Amen, you are right! Need I say more?

Our health care system is broken because we have 12 million illegals in this country popping out border babies one after the other and they get a free pass on having to pay for all these children.They can also go to any emergency room and must be treated.They don't have to pay and the hospital can't hunt them down like dogs the way they do citizens, because they have so many fake I.D.'s and move around alot.
So the health care system charges Americans more for their services and that is passed onto insurance companies if the person has insurance.Then it is passed onto the employer and employee which then becomes unaffordable and out of reach for the employers and employees.

That is why we see so many American families without insurance.Lower wage workers can qualify for some social services for health care.If you make really good wages you can afford health care.

If you are middle class you are stuck between a rock and a hard place.Their is no help for you and you can't get away with not paying a huge hospital bill unless you claim bankruptsy.

Just like our schools , the illegal population in this country are causing a health care crisis.

That is not racist that is fact.

When ever I hear about universal health care, even when the plans include methods for paying for the system, I never hear about limits. Limits must be placed and lines drawn on what is covered and what is not. That will be a painful decision. Do we cover the transplants of a 70 year old man that refuses to quit smoking? Do we cover the premature baby born with so many defects that the estimate of survival, even with medicine is one year? HARD choices. Yet, these are decisions that must be made prior to offering universal care or else we will be covering everything for everyone out of “fairness.”
Universal care must be offered only so long as it is for the public health, i.e. immunizations. Above that, I am sorry, but I believe that while we are all granted a right to pursue happiness in life, there is not right granted for health……sometimes, it is just luck.

Privatize the system and get the government far away--unless you want to pay more and get less. The same goes for our broken SS system.

Who better than the patient spending his own money and in his own best interest? Some wacky socilaist politico telling him on what and when?

Sosialism pure and simple. Next step communism. Move to Canada or China if that is what you want. Why don't you take care of the illegal immigration problem. That would get rid of 12 million + uninsured.

I am sorry but health care is not a basic human right no matter how you slice it. I don't recall the founding fathers saying "Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and healthcare" We have to realize in America that not everything we want is a 'basic human right.'

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