Thread: Uninsured burden those with coverage

http://www.news14charlotte.com/content/ ... 05&SecID=2

3/2/2006 3:27 PM
By: Lisa Reyes, News 14 Carolina

Uninsured North Carolinians racked up more than $1 billion in medical bills last year.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – A recent study by the North Carolina Hospital Association revealed the growing number of uninsured patients is eating into the pockets of hospitals and patients with insurance.

"We're here to provide care regardless of the ability to pay," said Chris Williams, director of patient accounts for the South Piedmont branch of the Presbyterian Healthcare System. "At some point in time, it will filter to the payers who have the ability to pay."

Williams deals with insurance companies on a daily basis and says he goes through at least 500 claims a month from uninsured patients.

"We are large and we are able to take on more of those cases than maybe a smaller 50-bed facility," he said.

At Presbyterian, patients are given uncompensated health care based on income. Based upon their answers on a questionnaire, patients will be placed in a specific compensation category – uninsured, catastrophic or payment plan.

According to the study, about a third of the 1 million North Carolinians who have no health insurance are illegal immigrants. Williams says although the immigrant population is growing in North Carolina, it is certainly not the sole cause of the problem.

"To actually target one specific population or to say they are the reason why that our uncompensated care is increasing, I don't think that's appropriate," he said.

Williams says part of the problem is many employers do not offer a competitive benefits package or salary and workers cannot afford to pay for insurance.

According to the North Carolina Hospital Association, uninsured North Carolinians racked up more than $1 billion in medical bills last year.

Here is a subject where I have some personal knowledge. Since we will retire in NC, I check periodically for rates for health insurance similar to what we have in TX. Our health insurance--for TWO people-- just went up to just over ELEVEN thousand dollars a year in January. The same insurance in NC will cost us EIGHT thousand dollars a year! So there is no doubt that the people who can afford insurance are footing the bills for those who can't. And we all know that the federal law requires that the taxpayers afford basic medical care to those under 19 and emergency care to those over. So there we are. People who can afford insurance get a double whammy!

Maybe every American should cancel their health insurance policies...bet the insurance companies would have a fit...

We could get free medical care like the illegals...

Well, look what one of our lawmakers is trying to do to us here in California.

http://www.reason.com/rb/rb030306.shtml

Canadianizing the Golden State
California marches backward on health care
Ronald Bailey



A plan to outlaw private health insurance in California has been proposed by state Sen. Sheila Kuehl (D-Los Angeles). Senator Kuehl's bill, SB840, proposes to create the California Health Insurance Agency, a state government run single payer system for financing the health care of all Californians. Her bill, if enacted, would abolish all private health insurance in the Golden State. Her legislation essentially aims to replicate the system of socialized medicine in Canada which, until a recent court ruling in Quebec, made all private health care illegal. Her health care proposal is more authoritarian than the health care systems in the United Kingdom or Germany in which citizens can buy private insurance if they so choose.

Remarkably, Kuehl's proposal to socialize California's health care is being made just at the time when the Canadian system it resembles is falling apart at the seams. For instance, Canada's single payer system is projected to absorb more than half the budgets of most Canadian provinces. In addition, the amount of time a Canadian patient must wait before receiving medical care is notorious. "This is a country in which dogs can get a hip replacement in under a week and in which humans can wait two to three years," said Dr. Brian Day in a recent New York Times article on Canada's health care crisis.

Kuehl flatly denies that her plan is "government-run health care." She prefers to style it as "a publicly administered finance system." Of course, as the old saying goes: "He who pays the piper, calls the tune." In this case, the new California Health Insurance Agency (CHIA) will be paying, and thus every health care provider and patient in the state would have to dance to its tune.

Kuehl maintains that her government single payer health insurance system will cover all Californians including the one-fifth who are uninsured now and be cheaper at the same time. How? In order to control rising health care costs, Kuehl's plan pegs annual growth in health spending to growth in California's economy. But is that the right amount of spending? In fact, we know that as people earn more, they generally choose to spend higher percentages of their incomes on health care. For instance, economic studies show that for every one percent increase income, families generally prefer to increase their spending on health care by 1.6 percent.

Let's consider a simplified example of how Kuehl's plan would lead to less spending on health care than most Californians would like. Take the California median household income of $50,000 and assume that each household spends an average of 20 percent, or $10,000, on health insurance and out-of-pocket medical expenses each year. Then let's assume that California's economy continues to grow and that median family income climbs to $80,000.

If economists are right, this means that California families on average would prefer to spend $19,600 annually on health care. In other words, people would rather buy health care than the biggest houses or fastest cars that they could afford with a higher income. However, under Kuehl's proposal to fix health care spending at the growth rate of the economy, California health insurance bureaucrats would allocate only an average of $16,000 per year to each family. And since it would be illegal for California families to buy supplemental private insurance, they would be getting much less access to doctors and modern treatments than they would prefer.

Like all politicians Kuehl promises voters all good things. For example, she vows that under CHIA, "You will choose your own doctor and you and your provider, not insurance agents, will decide your care. All needed services, drugs, hospital stays, therapies, and medical equipment will be covered."

Looking at the fine print, you find that Kuehl's government-run single payer system will be cheaper because it will actually ration health care. In other words, decisions about what treatments will be available to Californians and when they will become available will be in the hands of government health care bureaucrats. Just like the Canadian socialized health care system, the new California Health Insurance Agency will determine how much it will pay pharmaceutical companies for new more effective medicines. This means that Californians, like Canadians today, will wait a long time, possibly forever, to get access to modern therapies. In 2002, Sally Pipes, head of the Pacific Research Institute, a free-market think tank in San Francisco noted,, "One hundred new drugs were launched in the United States from 1997 through 1999. Only 43 made it to market in Canada in that same period. Canadians are still waiting for many of them."

California health bureaucrats will also set doctors' fees. Kuehl likens her plan to the Federal government's Medicare system for seniors. She overlooks the fact that physicians are fleeing Medicare in droves because the program doesn't adequately reimburse them. Doctors are like anybody else; they work less when they get paid less. If Kuehl's system is adopted, you will eventually see waiting lines lengthening and doctors treating fewer and fewer patients. California doctors and other health care workers will leave for other states where they are better compensated, and few new doctors, nurses and other personnel will be attracted to California. Another side effect will be that many of California's innovative biotech companies will relocate to friendlier business environments.

Kuehl plans to finance the California Health Insurance Agency through a dedicated payroll tax in which employers would pay 8.2 percent and workers would pay 3.8 percent. And when the system runs short of money, as it inevitably will, the new health bureaucracy will impose cost control measures that include the "postponement of introduction of new benefits or benefit improvements; a temporary decrease in benefits; a postponement of planned capital expenditures, and limitations on aggregate reimbursements to manufacturers of pharmaceutical and durable and nondurable medical equipment." Translation: California health care bureaucrats, not doctors or patients, will be deciding what new treatments will be offered; what new hospitals and laboratories will be built; and what new drugs and new biomedical technologies will be permitted in the state.

Today, as the Canadian health care system implodes, more and more Canadians are seeking private medical care across the border in the United States. Within a decade after Kuehl's single payer system has been adopted, I predict that many Californians will similarly be fleeing across the border into Arizona and Nevada looking for modern private medical care in state-of-the-art hospitals and clinics.



Ronald Bailey is Reason's science correspondent. His book Liberation Biology: The Scientific and Moral Case for the Biotech Revolution is now available from Prometheus Books.

I checked out Kuehl's website too and sure enough it's there.

It can't be the few folks that sneak into this country to do the work that the folks without jobs or health insurance refuse to do... after all the NC Bankers Assc. just released a report saying our brown little workers without greencards are good for NC. Ain't no way they can blamed for the skyrocketing healthcare cost.

Welcome LoneWolf. Good to have you.

Are you talking about the same study the NC Bankers Association paid the Kenan Institute at UNC School of Business to do?

I found it very interesting that they weren't able to separate the illegal aliens. Of course, the numbers look much better if they count all Hispanic people.

Somehow, the John Locke Foundation's able to come up with figures for illegals only. Wonder how they do that.