This is in response to the editorial by Norma Engelberg in The
Tribune, Sept. 16. Her conclusion is flawed that another
government-run health plan is acceptable just because we already
have Medicare, Medicaid, CHIPS and Tricare. Those plans have severe
shortcomings. Medicare needs to be modernized. Examples include
paying for quality not quantity and eliminating the sustainable
growth rate. Without significant changes, Medicare will go broke in
the next decade.
Physicians cannot sustain a practice on government
reimbursements. Several practices in El Paso County have closed
because they were a Medicare and Medicaid practice. El Paso County
Medical Society took a recent survey and out of the 900 physicians
in the county, only 12 practices were taking new Medicare patients.
Reimbursements from Medicaid, CHIPS and Tricare are even less than
Medicare. Patients with those plans have a difficult time finding
physicians to care for them. Compare this with reimbursements from
private insurance which are on the average 30 percent higher than
Medicare. Expansion of government programs will cause more
practices to close and exacerbate the access problems we face.
Patients will likely migrate to the public plan from private
insurance because it will be cheaper. In time, there will not be
any private plans, and we will be stuck with the single payer that
most people fear.
Before we let government extend their presence in the health
care business, let us see if they can fix the problems with their
plans in existence. We should reform the current system of
employer-based health care (160 million Americans have their
insurance through their employer, almost half of all Americans),
where the health plans will not deny for prior health problems, not
rate for age or gender, put caps on personal spending, and develop
benefit packages that are flexible and portable. The private health
plans are committed to doing so.
William J. Mandell, D.O., J.D.
Colorado Springs