Copyright 1999 The Kansas City Star Co.
THE KANSAS
CITY STAR
October 9, 1999 Saturday METROPOLITAN EDITION
SECTION: BUSINESS; Pg. C1; JERRY HEASTER
LENGTH: 646 words
HEADLINE:
Demand strains U.S. health care
BYLINE: JERRY HEASTER,
The Kansas City Star
BODY:
Reasonable people may
disagree on the merits of allowing patients
to sue their
health-care plans, but those who favor the idea
shouldn't
be fooled as to the trade-off involved.
If the House version
of the patients' bill of rights becomes
law,
health-care insurance coverage will become more
expensive and the
population of uninsured Americans will
continue to increase as a
result. Meantime, the
quality of care will gradually deteriorate as
resources
previously used to finance health care are diverted to
pay
insurers' legal bills, plaintiffs' lawyers and
outrageous damages
awarded by juries more interested in
vengeance than economic justice.
A growing number of
Americans have become convinced that
managed-care
providers concentrate too much on the bottom line to the
detriment of their ailing clients. Given some of the
horror stories
concerning policies designed to ration care, the
anecdotal evidence
is difficult to ignore.
It is,
however, only anecdotal evidence. In the main, it
appears
as though the U.S. system is the world's best and the
health-care
needs of the overwhelming majority of Americans are
being reasonably
well-served. It can also be
said with some certainty that the
system's
inadequacies often are as much the fault of government
policy and user demands as they are of health maintenance
organizations.
Whether anyone likes it or not, health care is
being rationed in
America because society's choice of
payment mechanism has boosted
demand beyond what the system can
deliver to everyone's satisfaction.
Medicare can't pay
its way, so government shortchanges providers with
ever
more stingy reimbursements. Employers find the cost of
insuring
work forces ever more expensive, so they seek out the
most economical
means of providing health
benefits. The result in both the public and
private
sectors is a form of rationing disguised as something else.
That something else is the pretense that it's the fault of
providers when they can't reasonably respond to the needs
of those
whose care is underwritten by either
government or an employer. The
essential
problem is that most Americans want sport-utility vehicle
coverage at compact car prices.
Uncle Sam is the
archetypal culprit in this regard. Despite the
obvious strains on the health-care system, the federal
government has
continued to pile mandate after mandate on
the system. It has done
this either by expanding
government-financed benefits or passing laws
forcing private
enterprises to add benefits to their health-care
coverage.
And when the resulting strains overload the system, what
happens?
The public demands laws to bolster patient power by
expanding access
to tort relief. In some cases, an
expansion of the right to sue may
be justified, but the
reality is that too many Americans have proved
themselves
incapable of using their tort system responsibly.
Tort law
is not so much a way to redress wrongs in America
anymore
as it is a way for the greedy and unscrupulous to seek
massive financial jackpots by playing litigation
lottery. If
Washington paints a bull's-eye on the
back of health-care plans, the
industry soon will be more
about get-rich-quick litigation schemes
than the
practice of medicine.
- Jerry Heaster's column appears
Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and
Sunday. To reach him,
write the business desk at 1729 Grand Blvd.,
Kansas City,
MO 64108. To share a comment on StarTouch, call
(816)
889-7827 and enter 2301. Send e-mail to
jheaster@kcstar.com
LOAD-DATE: October 09,
1999 
