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5/7/2008
Rep. Frank Lasee: Hidden Tax

For some reason, our government gets away with paying doctors and hospitals less than they bill. The rest of us pay more because the government doesn't pay what everyone else pays. Our government dictates what they are going to pay (and the left wants to dictate even more of our health care to make it better. Somehow.)

This government underpayment is a hidden tax that everyone, not on a government program, pays whenever we see a doctor or go to the hospital.

This is a scam. When the government buys cars, telephone services, roads, bridges or military equipment, the services are put out for bid. For all services except health care, the government pays the going rate. The price the government pays is generally about the same as any major purchaser of the goods or services. Sometimes the government even pays extra, remember the $800 hammer?

For health care, the government dictates the low-ball price paid. For instance, in the city of Green Bay, the four major hospitals bill over $1.2 billion a year. These four hospitals collect about half, a little over $600 million.

It is interesting that insurance companies negotiate their bills, and pay about 75% of what they are billed by hospitals. Medicare pays about 35% of their bill charges. Medicaid, the state’s program for poor people (including BadgerCare and BadgerCare Plus) pays about 25% of the billed charges. (By the way, about half of the 75,000 births in Wisconsin are underpaid for by Medicaid.)

Because our government underpays so much, you and I and everyone not on a government program, the majority of us, (about 65%) pay anywhere from 20 to 40% more. If Medicaid and Medicare paid what everyone else pays, we could lower our health costs immediately by 20 to 40%.

What Medicare and Medicaid are doing in the marketplace is wrong. Wrong for our government to offer an incredibly low reimbursement rate and to tell providers to “take it or leave it.” By law they can’t “leave it” when it is an emergency.

Some politicians and the media would like you to believe that getting more people on government programs is the answer. By getting them on a program we would save large amounts of money. Somehow.

The fact is that in the Green Bay area the four hospitals write off less than 4% for charity. The real charity case, the media and some politicians aren’t talking about, is the chintzy reimbursement rates of government programs. Instead of advocating and talking about how to increase reimbursement rates they are talking about how to add people to these programs.

It gets even better. They claim they can add lots more people to government programs and it will not cost more, but the same or maybe even less.

Why doesn’t our left-leaning media challenge them on this? (any of you media types who are reading this? I am interested in your answer.)

I am surprised that no left-leaning politician has proposed a Gasaid and Gascare program yet. After all, getting to and from the grocery store, work, and the hospital (visiting grandma?) is a right, isn't it?

If we had a Gasaid program, for everyone on Medicaid, the government-issued cards would entitle the holder to get gas for a buck a gallon. For everyone on Medicare, the Gascare card would get gasoline for a buck thirty a gallon. Problem solved. (Well, sort of.)

If gas stations would honor these cards and provide gas, the rest of the cost would need to be shifted to those of us who don’t have the wonderful, magic cards.

I wonder how you would feel paying even more for gas than now so that the next guy could get gas below cost.

The reason the government can’t do a gas scam like the Medicaid scam is that gas stations wouldn’t accept this, nor would the general public.

One of the most important things our government could do to reform health care cost and availability to most Americans would be to aggressively work toward paying the full freight. To work towards paying roughly the same price that everyone else pays for health services. This would be the honest thing, the right thing, and the American thing to do. This would make pricing in the medical community more reasonable, understandable and less costly for the majority.

It would make medical insurance more affordable to the vast majority of American citizens.

Frank Lasee is a Republican and represents the 2nd Assembly District.

COMMENTS

Jo,
Frank is right on. However, by extending his argument to it's logical conclusion, this means a national payer(or at least state wide) system with prices negotiated by the single payer. Otherwise cost shifting (which is rampant in the industry) will continue along with the excessive bureaucracy and lack of transparency.

dave allen (Wed May 07 06:54:20 2008)

How did the discussion start with health care and switch to gas cards in this piece?

Oh well, there you go again. Apples and oranges, who cares so long as anyone getting a benefit is made to look like a malingerer or worse.

And by all means lets make things even smoother for the insurance companies.

Is there anyone left out there who believes that the three top corporate media conglomerates don't dictate editorial policy and that the blow-dried news anchors and reporters ditto what is given them?

Here is another bit of language that has gotten mangled in the so-called liberal media.

Let's parse out who the providers are and who the preventers are.

A health maintenance organization maintains no health. HMOs and insurance parasites are health care preventers. The more health care they prevent the better and bigger the yachts and private planes are.

The health care begins and ends at the hospital door. The health prevention is anything that is considered risk by the misnamed health maintenance organization.

If we for once and forever separate out the providers from the preventers (all this cant about who pays what portion of what) then the real boogey man, Simon Legree, Scrooge -- whatevs-- will become abundantly clear.

Lon Ponschock (Wed May 07 12:20:25 2008)

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