Yesterday, the Medical Society of D.C. hosted a gathering of congressional physicians to discuss the nation’s health care debate. This is so far the only forum composed entirely of health care providers and included the following medical doctors: Reps. John Boozman (AR), Charles Boustany (LA), Paul Broun (GA), Bill Cassidy (LA), John Flemming (LA), Phil Gingrey (GA), Tim Murphy (PA), Tom Price (GA), and Phil Roe (TN). The town hall meeting at George Washington University Hospital Auditorium gave doctors and patients alike the opportunity to bring medicine back to the personal one-on-one relationship of the past. Legislators discussed everything from patient needs to insurance reform, expressing their ideas and concerns about what standardized health care would mean to the American public.
The congressmen discussed numerous consequences of a government-takeover of the health care industry, both for patients and the private insurance companies. Flemming made clear the adverse effects on private health care if a government system becomes mandate. He explained that public programs like Medicare and Medicaid are subsidized by private health care, driving costs higher and higher. By implementing standardized health care, the government will place even more pressure on the private sector, inevitably leading to its collapse. The government, according to Murphy, will undoubtedly set itself up to win against other programs, further driving the private sector out of business and giving consumers less options for their health care. In addition, Gingrey cited an estimate that over 120 million people would be dropped from their current plans by employer changeovers, taking more business from the private sector.
Public health programs in general, they discussed, have proven inefficient or have failed to be fully attentive to the needs of different patients. Without options, says Flemming, the United States would soon resemble Europe, allowing only the wealthy to opt out of the public system and purchase their own care. Roe also expressed concerns about the large discrepancies between cancer treatments in the United States and United Kingdom. He explained that in Europe’s government health systems, certain age groups and patients with specific diseases are not considered “cost beneficial” to treat and so do not receive care when needed. Also, programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, explains Murphy, were constructed and implemented in an age when x-rays were considered advanced procedures, making them outdated and due for revision. Accordingly, he revealed that the 110th Congress alone had proposed 452 bills to change Medicare and Medicaid, revealing the government’s own dissatisfaction with the programs.
The congressmen’s solutions ranged far and wide and accentuated a restructuring of the current situation. Murphy emphasized the need for individuals to be allowed to buy insurance across state lines, an idea that many conservatives have rallied around in years past. State mandates banning such limit the ability of patients to purchase the care they want, need, and can afford. He also proposed that insurance premiums be a tax write off, not a punishment. In addition, Price expressed a strong desire for liability reform, a component he believes could be an area of common ground between opposing sides of the health care debate. The hundreds of billions in liability costs are unnecessary and could be saved for better usage, as both sides would agree. However, Price pinpointed the true solution to the health care dispute: the patient must be in control. Individuals and their families must own and control their insurance policies. “Insurance companies have to be responsive to patients’ needs,” Rep. Price said, adding that the only way for this to occur is to give patients legal control over their own destinies.
Yesterday’s discussion was revealing and insightful, given the attendance of men both committed to government and the practice of medicine. As trained physicians, these legislators provided a unique insight into the current debate on health care. When all was said and done, their comments and arguments boiled down to one principle: the patient must come first. A one-size-fits-all government plan does not accomplish this, and until we can devise reforms that attend to the needs of patients as individuals, the whole system will continue to suffer.