Right now, all the obligatory paperwork required by Health Insurance procedures on top of the mix or

[WCGreen]

Entitlementstitlementscare/Medicaid provisions, must add at least 25-30% to the cost of providing health care.

Because I have United Health Care as a primary and then Medicare as secondary, payments come to the provider after running through two large bureaucracies that also have different requirements for submitting claims. Then, I have to, at least twice a year; go through all my bills when, inevitably, one of my health care providers accidentally submits to Medicare first. It is a lot of wasted time and cost standing between me the patient and all of my providers. It is also a lot of time before the goods have been provided and the payments are received. The Co-pay at least ensures that the provider has some cash flow. Not an efficient system on this I believe we all can agree.

Given that, could someone please explain why Americans are, under the benevolent auspices of the free-market system, so willing to have all that money dedicated to just collecting and manipulating paper work?

Perhaps the Obama proposed national overhaul of the medical records system will expedite the transfer of information to and funds disbursed by the insurance companies. This would supposedly cut some of the time and cost associated with the insertion of a profit center between the provider and the patient. Good idea in theory but I wonder just how large and cumbersome this new bureaucracy will turn out to be.

It seems to me that the end result, from what I gather, of the Obama/Emmanuel overhaul of the medical cash flow system is going to rely heavily on mandated individual basic health insurance for reaching the goal of universal affordability. This is, remember, with the employer out of the mix. The talked about provision to eliminate the tax deduction for Employer Provided Health Insurance and to designate that “benefit” as fully taxable income to the individual will take care of all that.

This mandated insurance would, presumably, be subsidized by the Federal Government based on a sliding scale up to a certain income point. The taxpayer would then have to pay for his or her own insurance. These out of pocket costs for medical health and insurance will still be, presumably, deductible for those individuals who file a 1040 and add a Schedule A to their federal income tax return.

Again, the theory must be that the efficiency and cost cuts would lower the cost of the overall package of health care costs to the company, the individual and the insurance companies lucky enough to win designation by the Government as sanctioned insurance providers. (Oh the campaign contributions that will come.) Of course, these cost savings would be passed on to the consumer because that always happens. I wonder how the shareholders of the insurance companies will view this development when profits start to shrink.

The better off and the wealthy would, naturally, be able to buy supplemental insurance or pay for their boutique care out of pocket so they can continue to be happy knowing that they would still be able to retain the health care they feel entitled to from our quasi-free market system. The basic insurance package would, of course, be designed to ration health care to the poor and middle class by allowing the profit motive to be the major factor in deciding how health care is provided.

Remember, this would freeze enrollment into the Medicare/Medicaid system at the level when enacted thus reducing and thus eliminating of one pillar of that much-ballyhooed financial disaster looming on the horizon caused by overly generous “Entitlements.”

So, as it appears now, if all we get from the Obama Health Care reform is a reshuffling of the players while tinkering at the edge of the health care abyss, what, someone please enlighten me, is the point?

It is all so confounding.

On a personal note, the paper work generated for one simple procedure I have every five months and then for three weeks in a row is massive. I have to fill out the same information sheet and answer the same questions over and over again. To top it off, even though I am the same building, actually the same two rooms, and taken care of by the same people throughout my two to three hour stay, I travel through four distinct profit centers. This means my insurance has to deal with four, well eight because I have private and public coverage, different requirements and reporting. That’s a lot added to the process.