HEALTHCARE: Profit is Good

Saturday, July 11, 2009

To: Canton Observer
Re: “Single-payer plan pros”, July 9, 2009

In the letter “Single-payer plan pros”, July 9, the letter writer presents the argument that since private medical insurance plans spend up to 21% of every premium dollar on administration and have to make a profit, while a public plan like Medicare, spends only 3% on administration and does not have to make a profit; the public plan is the obvious choice as the better plan.

Although at first glance, this may make sense to a lot of people, I can assure you as someone who has spent the last 30 years in the medical business; this is a patently false assumption.

While it is true that a public plan like Medicare does not spend a lot on administration, the lack of practical administration makes the plan a perfect target for fraud and therefore, every year, billions of dollars go to unscrupulous medical practitioners who have discovered that defrauding Medicare is a piece of cake; no one is watching. Please remember this has been going on for many, many years and continues to go on to this day.

Just recently, authorities arrested 35 people in Metro Detroit for defrauding Medicare out of 50 million dollars by paying kickbacks to people who signed false Medicare claim forms for medical services that were never provided. Catching such people is a rare event, most are never caught and the money defrauded is hardly ever returned to the taxpayer.

If we allowed our government to administer a national health program as in a single-payer plan, the cost and the waste would be staggering and I don’t think any of us want to see that happen. There are options being discussed in Congress today that will make sure all Americans have health coverage but without bankrupting the nation.

We should all pay close attention to the proposals being promoted and examine each of them with an educated and practical eye instead of an emotional one.

One thing about profit; it is not a dirty word and it is a major factor in what makes us one of the richest and most powerful nations on earth. Communist nations tried to eliminate the profit factor from their economic plans and we all know how they ended up.