Jack Lohman's Capital Times Opinion Piece...

Mr. Lohman has used an interesting technique to continue his quest for a government-run statewide equivalent of Medicare.

First, because our political system permits contributions to politicians, and because some of those contributions originate with health care or insurance entities, political corruption is part of the “health care crisis”.

If it is, why do we not tackle political corruption as a separate issue and not throw it into the same basket with health care? Health care in and of itself is far and away a tough enough situation to resolve properly without the added impediment of political corruption tossed into the mix.

Next, he restates his premise that a single payer system of health care would be a windfall for business, the economy of Wisconsin and the citizens who would be the consumers of health care in this brave new world.

Medicare relies upon the private sector insurance companies and health care administrators to pay all its claims. Those costs have been shown to be about 12% of the total claims paid, not 31%. The government cost of operating the system is some 2% to 3% of the total cost. That total administrative cost is about the same as the cost of private sector plans in the state under our free market approach.

“A small payroll tax” of 10% to 15% would be levied on the state’s employers instead of the money currently being spent for the free market version of health care. That would impact the roughly 50% of Wisconsin’s smaller employers that do not currently offer health insurance to employees. A new tax of “just” 10% to 15% would virtually guarantee that those employers would cease operation or move from Wisconsin where that was possible.

The reference to Medicare costing more per capita then would the program Lohman espouses is concerning. He maintains that the state-run program would actually save money over Medicare in that all citizens would be rolled into the pool thus spreading the risk. He ignores the fact that Medicare reimbursements are barely more than $0.50 on each billed dollar. The amount unpaid by Medicare is transferred to the free market programs through increased retail fees at the point-of-care. That alone is a big part of the health care crisis which is largely a health care cost crisis as we’ve argued before.

An alternative would be for those same health care providers to decide whether or not they could continue in business if all reimbursements were now at or below the level of Medicare reimbursements. Another alternative would be for the state to hire the providers of care to take all the egregious “profit” out of the equation. Yet another alternative is for rationing of the then available health care services by the state agency charged with running the health system. Each of those alternatives certainly has a nice ring to them; it’ll be really difficult to decide which to use. Maybe we can have some of each.

And then there is another “small tax” to take away all co-pays, deductibles, dental and vision expense. That would complete the loop. The entitlement mentality that is a large part of the current problem would have become the mentality of us all, and we would’ve driven more jobs out of Wisconsin.

But, we would’ve completely eliminated the insurance industry, all the agents, etc. And that seems a primary goal for effective health care reform from Mr. Lohman’s perspective.

Finally, the argument returns to that of “Business Ethics 101”.

We are finally in agreement: all sides of this debate must be completely honest and ethical because this is far too important a debate to permit it be limited or twisted.