Healthcare: So how much will it cost?

Kudos to the Columbia Journalism Review for both calling attention to the costs of the health care debate and pointing us to sources so we can judge for ourselves. From Trudy Lieberman’s blog post Yes, Virginia, There Really Are Cost Controls:

Leonhardt countered that the political reality meant the U.S. was not going to build a health system from scratch, so cost containment strategy centers on throwing “lots and lots of cost reduction ideas on the wall and hope that one of them sticks.” Ah! The spaghetti-on-the-wall approach. Makes perfect sense, except if premiums are unaffordable for your family.

Before more Americans are misled into thinking that affordable, quality health care is around the corner, the press needs to set the record straight and bring some new voices into the mix. Here’s one time where balance is appropriate. I’d even settle for some “he said, she said” on this one.

If I had my druthers, I wouldn’t force mandatory health insurance. I’d rather see free routine annual exams for all, regulated pricing, and Medical Savings Accounts that roll over coupled with mandatory catastrophic illness, injury and hospitalization insurance with a legal minimum requirement — kind of like auto insurance.

In my experience, most doctors charge between $150 and $500 out of pocket for annual exams once lab fees and such are tallied up. At most companies I have worked for, my contribution for health insurance was $50 – $100 per month. I’m sure my employer was paying three times that much. That’s about $4,000 annually that goes to insurance companies. If you don’t have a chronic condition — heck, sometimes even if you do — are you really using $4,000 worth of health care every year? Probably not. And if you had not only the $50-$100 that you contributed, but the $300 or $400 that your employer contributed, you would probably be able to cover the cost of a doctor’s visit, some tests, and your prescriptions every month.

So let’s say you have a car accident and are left with $15,000 in hospital bills as a result. That will probably happen once in your life time, if it does at all. Remember that $4,000 we sent to the insurance company? If that went into a Medical Savings Account, in three years, you have enough money to cover that entire expense. Whatever isn’t available in your MSA would be covered by catastrophic illness, injury, or hospitalization instead. Ditto cancer. Ditto heart attacks or strokes.

But back to Trudy Lieberman’s piece: mandatory health insurance without cost controls or a public option is just going to put the squeeze on single chicks with lots of credit card debt and mortgage payments *cough*me*cough* (and families). While I am all for health care reform, I can’t get behind what Congress is talking about now.