Hidden health care costs

First we need to understand that we are already paying, as a society, all the health care costs - those that are obvious and those that are hidden.
The average Joe (like me) pays for part of the cost of my health insurance, which is heavily subsidized by my employer. So, for instance, I pay around $300 per month for family coverage. My employer pays more than that - probably round $400 a month - to cover my family and me.
In addition to private health insurance, I pay Medicare taxes, which pays for current Medicare beneficiaries to cover their health care costs. There is this huge misconception that Medicare beneficiaries banked their money years ago and are now withdrawing it to pay for their medical expenses. In fact, the money that Medicare beneficiaries are currently spending is the same money that you and I are paying in Medicare taxes today. The average Medicare beneficiary spends every penny he or she has "banked" very early in his/her Medicare career. Their costs are significantly higher than whatever they "socked away."

Now, the hidden taxes.

My health insurance premiums are probably a thousand dollars or two higher than they should be, because hospitals shift costs from uninsured and underinsured patients to those of us who are insured.
Then, I pay state taxes, which go to cover the state's portion of Medicaid expenses. And I pay federal taxes to pay the costs of the federal portion of Medicaid. On top of that, in the county in which I reside, I pay a penny of sales tax to support the charity hospital in my town. So between my own health plan, and the extra costs tacked onto my own health plan, and the Medicaid and Medicare taxes I pay, AND the premiums my employer pays, we are paying, collectively, for my health care and everyone else's.

The fallacy that many people are buying into right now is that the cost of health care is going to skyrocket as a result of health care reform. In fact, the cost is not going to skyrocket at all. Are we are doing is merely naming all the hidden expenses that we are already paying for. If anything, now that we are explicitly naming all the expenses that we are already paying, we can now reduce those expenses by bringing them under control.

Later on, we'll discuss who is paying for what; that is, which sub-groups of folks are paying for health care and which groups aren't. But right now, I'm focusing on how all of us, as a society, are paying the health care costs.

Rational thoughts on health care reform

I have hesitated to start this blog. Who cares what I think about health care reform, anyway? Who am I to opine on the subject? And so I've been sitting on my hands.
Day after day, however, I've been inundated by so many other writers, and pundits, and self-styled experts on health care reform, reporting not facts or statistics, but hysteria, misinformation, or just plain ignorance.
In Journalism School I learned the importance of checking facts, of using corroborating sources, of showing as much objectivity as it is possible for a human to have. That's a lot of work! Who has time for that? I have a life (well, sort of), with real responsibilities, and demands on my time. But then I've been reading and listening to so many so-called journalists who clearly aren't following the responsible route of reporting. From Ann Coulter, who wrote the most inane column on health care and the free market, to the Regular Guys, a couple of syndicated shock jocks who ramble audaciously about completely false concepts such as forced euthanasia in the health care reform bill. Hell, I thought, I'm not any stupider than these guys!

I can't fault Fox News or Clear Channel for airing these morons and allowing them to spread misinformation on the public airwaves. After all, as the parent of a severely developmentally disabled child, I've always been a proponent of hiring the handicapped. But if I'm going to complain, then I have to offer a responsible alternative. So I have decided to jump into the fray with this blog: Miranda Writes about Health Care Reform (if I have to explain the pun in the title, then you should probably stop reading now and turn on Fox News).

What are my qualifications to discuss health care reform? Well, I'm no Uwe Reinhart, but I do have some street cred. I earned an MBA with a concentration in health care in 1999. I have worked for 17 years in a not-for-profit community hospital, concentrating on cancer care. I consume the Wall Street Journal daily - which, by the way, is absolutely the best health care reporting in the country. I have immersed myself in source documents published on the CMS website, making me somewhat of a local expert on government-run health care.

So that's me, and that's why I believe I have something to say about health care reform. In the coming days and weeks, I will talk about different aspects of health care reform, including, but not limited to, the current bills moving through the House and Senate. I'll also talk about concepts that may or may not be included in the current debate, but have been presented and discussed in recent years and hold merit for today's discussion.
I welcome your thoughts, your responses, your disagreements, your ideas. But you have to promise to consider the facts and alternative views before making up your mind. If you've already made up your mind, then don't waste your time reading this, and don't waste space responding.