Dr. Peter G. Bourne, the President’s Assistant for Health Issues, was recently asked how the Carter Administration plans to put National Health Insurance over on the American people knowing it will push Federal payroll taxes even higher than they are today.
Dr. Bourne’s reply revealed his commitment to the same tactics that the Fabian Socialists have always used: We’ll “phase it in over a period of five or more years.”
Fabius was the ancient Roman commander who wore out his enemy by a strategy of conducting harassing and delaying operations. while avoiding decisive conflicts. That’s the way the Fabian Socialists (who adopted his name) grew in strength in Britain for 40 years until 1945 when they were strong enough to take over the government and nationalize medicine and major industries.
Dr. Bourne knows that the American people are in no mood for another mammoth and costly Federal program. But he hopes to inch us into his “universal and comprehensive” (his words) system over a period of time, starting with Federal Catastrophic Insurance.
From all the publicity, you might think that a $50,000 medical bill is very common. One recent survey, however, indicates that only 8/10 of one percent of Americans will have hospital and medical bills over $5,000 in one year, and of those almost 80 percent are Medicare or psychiatric patients.
Private catastrophic coverage which piggy-backs on major medical insurance is very inexpensive. A policy that pays all expenses up to $250,000 with a $10,000 deductible costs a young family of four only $52 a year. The Congress of County Medical Societies estimates that the cost of Catastrophic National Health Insurance run by the Federal Government would be about $370 a year for a family of four.
Medical costs have risen faster than the Consumer Price Index because of much better technology in diagnosis and therapy, extensive wage increases for hospital employees, the tenfold increase in malpractice liability insurance premiums, the 20 percent increase in demand under Medicare and Medicaid, burdensome OSHA requirements, the costs of complying with the regulations of 50 Federal agencies, and the hospitalization costs of the dying patients who used to be taken care of at home.
Good private health care is not cheap, but inferior bureaucratic medicine is much more expensive. Medicare and Medicaid cost more than ten times the originally projected estimates. Zero pricing always escalates the demand. In England the family doctor can spend only three to four minutes with each patient because the hypochondriacs, the lonely, the bored, and the neurotic all have the same right to free care as the truly sick.
Private medical care in America today costs slightly more than $600 per capita. The cost of the medical care provided by the Federal Government for veterans, Indians and soldiers is more than $2,000 per capita. In a private hospital today, the average nursing cost per patient care episode is $218 for acute medical and surgical wards. In Veterans Administration hospitals, the comparable figures are $880 in acute medical wards and $480 in acute surgical wards.
Under National Health Insurance, medical decisions will be made by Federal bureaucrats in Washington and your medical records will be about as private as the telephone book. The high rate of cheaters and defaulters in the welfare system, Supplemental Social Security Income, Medicaid, and the Student College Loan program are only a taste of how the American taxpayers would be ripped off by National Health Insurance.
Under a free system, you can switch doctors or cancel the insurance plan when you are not satisfied. That’s the best way to keep medical costs down.
