Letter to Pete Sessions re health care

This post is a copy of a letter to Pete Sessions, U.S. Representative from my district in response to a letter he wrote to me, probably just a form letter. The paragraph heading are a paraphrase of his response.

Dear Pete,

Thank you for your response to my inquiry about health care. What is there about the current proposals you do not like.

You favor affordable health care for all Americans.
Included in most Democratic proposals.
Do you know what health insurance with a high deducible costs? About $3,000 per year per person. With 46.6 million people uninsured that’s $139,800,000.00 per year, $139 billion. You’re going to pay for that? (Granted some of these uninsured are so by choice, but since as a country we only allow 18,000 actually die for lack of medical care the health care costs for the uninsured are passed on to the insured in the form of higher charges for treatment.

You favor allowing insured to retain their current health care plans.
Included in most Democratic proposals.

You favor prevention and wellness.
Don’t we all, but this will cost money. How do you pay for it. 18,000 die each year, because they do not have health insurance. This is the ultimate rationing of health care.

You favor reduction in health care costs and suggest pooling.
If pooling had worked, large health insurance carriers are a form of pooling, why are costs rising for large insurance companies.

You favor equalizing the tax treatment for individuals and corporations.
Many of the Democratic proposals favor eliminating the tax favored treatment of health insurance enjoyed by large corporations. Is this what you mean?

You favor portability and uniform regulation of health insurance.
This is a provision in Democratic proposals.

As a member of Congress you enjoy a government financed health care program.
Why is this good for you and bad for the country. See, answer to question one for the reason that a government sponsored is necessary. Medicare costs 6% of the payout for administrative expense. A commonly quoted figure for a health insurance company is 25%. Some hospital administrators have told me that they spend 25% in additional costs to collect from health insurance companies. These numbers seem to be inline with the experience other industrial countries which spend about half what we spend on health care as a percentage of GNP. Incidently they also deliver better health care by standard measures of health care, infant mortality and longevity. Rich Canadians may come to this country for health care, but the poor don’t.

I expect you will be urging our U.S. Senators to vote in favor of the Democratic proposals.

Sincerely,



Ben Goff

Some have indicated that I have misstated Mr. Sessions position on health care. The following is a direct quote from the letter I received from him:

"Patient-centered solutions, not government programs, are going to be the driving force to insure nationwide equal-access to healthcare. Every American should have access to affordable health care regardless of health condition. If Americans are happy with their current health care coverage they should be allowed to keep it. Prevention and wellness should be advocated to all Americans to insure a healthier generation. In an effort to reduce costs, Congress should be promoting greater pooling options. Equalizing the tax treatment of health care dollars to allow individuals and small businesses the same pre-tax purchasing options that larger employers enjoy would help affordability for many that are currently uninsured. We need to promote portability and ownership so individuals are not tied to their employer health plans and can take their insurance from job to job and across state lines."

Did lawyers cause the crisis in medical costs?

Writing for Slate Timothy Noah suggests that Goldfarb v. Virginia State Bar
laid the foundation for one of the major causes of the present medical costs crisis. The reasoning is that the cause of the constantly rising cost of medical care is the physician owned hospital and excessive and unnecessary referrals for expensive testing. Goldfarb held that the practice of law and other "learned professions" constituted commerce as defined by the Sherman Act and therefore the lawyers of Virginia could not fix prices as this was "anticompetitive conduct." The entrepreneurial doctors, with no doubt the help of their lawyers, convinced the American Medical Association that the previous practice of restricting doctors from advertising, to selling drugs, or owning a financial interest in any lab or machinery they used to perform tests constuted an unlawful restraint of trade. What resulted was the unrestrained increase is medical costs. Great for doctors and the insurance trade, but driving the rest of us to bankrupcy.
The one reason the "silent hand" of the market place does not work to efficiently keep medical care costs down is that entry ino the the market of the "learned professions" is restricted by the state. The state controls entry in to the professions by requiring licenses to practice them. It is recognized that to practice the "learned professions" it is in societies interest that they have minimum levels of training. This monopoly is the reason the Sherman Act should not have been applied the Virgina lawyers. Perhaps the Court should have said that because the lawyers have a legal monopoly that they should not be allowed to fix prices to the injury of their clients. Now that the "learned professions" have sipped the honey of entrepreneueship, it is going to be difficult to get them to restrain themselves. Perhaps, the way to control medical costs is to either abolish their monopoly or for the government to take over some regulation of the profession by restricting their activity to practicing medicine.