During the Bronze Age, legend has it that the Greeks laid siege to the city of Troy. They couldn't conquer it by raw military strength, so after ten years they turned to trickery. The Greeks presented a huge figure of a horse, which the Trojans took within their walls as a spoil of war. Then, under the cover of night, a secret Greek force emerged from the horse and let open the gates of the city. The waiting army flooded inside. Troy was destroyed--from the inside out.
So the Trojan horse has come to represent a disguising scheme.
At present, "universal health care" has been built up as a promise by our champion of hope, our beloved President Obama, as a major public expectation. Well, our dysfunctional for-profit health care providers have found a solution: OK. Let us use "universal health care" as our servant: our Trojan horse. We will grasp victory from the jaws of defeat. How? Very simple.
Government, i.e. taxpayers, pays for everyone who can't afford our premiums. Employers and individuals pay for the rest. We give them universal health care--that adds 50 million people who pay us. Our for-profit doctors and hospitals make more money. Pharmaceutical companies sell more drugs. Hospital beds will fill up. Hey, Santa is here. By the "end of the year" President Obama has fulfilled his promise. And--we all get a 20% raise in revenue. Let's go for it. But let us tell our friends, like Senator Max Baucus (who has received over $400,000 in campaign contributions from health insurance and pharmaceutical companies over the last two election cycles), to keep the spoilers off the table, i.e., no single payer advocates need to be present at the table. Specifically -- god forbid -- no nonprofit, single payer should be allowed to show up. We will say single payer is a nonstarter, it is not doable, it raises taxes, it is "socialized medicine," it is inefficient. Hush. Don't let the word "nonprofit" get hold. Specifically, a nonprofit, private, people-funded, people-managed, independent, single payer insurance agency. That would kill the goose that lays our golden eggs altogether. Keep these bums, "do-gooders," know-nothings off the table: they are against our "free enterprise" system. Let's chant together: profit is the driver of competition and competition is the lifeblood of our capitalistic system. (Never mind if that lifeblood is the blood of our 130 million chronically sick people who have to work two jobs or go bankrupt). We will laugh all the way to the bank. Those sick people can buy stock in our companies, too. We all get rich. Then we can afford to be sick. Let's celebrate our next Christmas: a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. 20% raise? Can you beat that?
In 2001, the Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to George Akerlof, Michael Spence, and Joseph E. Stiglitz for their theory of information asymmetry. Their simple but profound insight was that when a decision or a transaction occurs, one party has more information than the other. This can change the outcome of a transaction in dramatic ways.
Health care is a good example of this uneven access to information. Providers and health insurance companies know everything about the production costs of all their devices, tests, pills, etc. The people they sell their products and services to have no clue of the cost basis of what they buy. That is why the pharmaceutical companies can sell a pill for $27 a pop, or doctors can charge several thousand dollars for an operation, completely arbitrarily. To try to even out this information asymmetry, even to a minor degree, here I want to lay the truth bare for all to see.
What is the economic outcome of for-profit health care?
Universal for-profit health care will add 50 million additional payers to profit from. Altogether the for-profit segment will see an additional $400 billion in revenue. (That's well worth the money spent on lobbying for it.)
We all should be watchful because this approach is very similar to having everyone borrow to buy a house during the mortgage debacle of the last 10 years. Then we saw the housing market depression and the taxpayer bailout of the greedy bankers. The next debacle will be when our health care cost comes to be over 20% of the GDP, now estimated to be in the year 2017. From there health care costs are expected to continue to rise at 7.2 percent per year, or twice the rate of inflation. With for-profit universal health care now on the table, we will get to the level of 20 and even 30 percent of the GDP much faster. Then we will be watching our country's economic collapse. Then, again, we will witness another plea for a taxpayer bailout. Believe me, at that time we may end up with an open public revolt. The greedballs then unknowingly would have killed the goose that was giving them the golden egg.
What is the alternative? No doubt there has to be a better way. That is a nonprofit, single payer, private, people-managed, independent insurance agency. It will provide universal care for everyone including preventive care, devices and prescription drugs at half our present cost. It will run independently, like the Federal Reserve, except that it is managed by people, i.e. policyholders (see here). You may ask, how is this possible? Answer: the cost of such health care is already half our per capita cost (i.e., less than $4,000 per capita versus our $8,000 per capita) in all developed countries despite the fact that theirs are inefficient, government-run systems. Our proposed, privately run, nonprofit system will have an even lower per capita cost because it is efficient. Its directors are elected by people (i.e. patients), have salary caps and term limits. Doctors can spend all their time taking care of their patients, instead of worrying about billing and running a business. We will save $480 billion in excess billing and administrative costs, and costs associated with poorer quality of care. Drugs will become less expensive, as they are now in Canada and all the other developed countries. Fraudulent billing, upcoding, unnecessary procedures and testing will also be gone. This will save many lives and large sums of money.
We have a choice. 1) Sink under the weight of a greedy, for-profit system, or 2) swim out of this cesspool through a nonprofit, efficient, people-managed, independent, single payer insurance agency.
To be sure, none of this will be done unless there is a groundswell of grassroots activism. We all should make it clear to all elected officials that they are on "term limit" unless they vote for a nonprofit, private, independent, single payer system. To make your voice heard, go to http://twitter.com/nonprofithealth.