Perhaps we should look for merit in Gore's proposals and not dismiss or accept them based on liberal/conservative leanings. The major campaign issues are not all black-and-white, right-or-wrong. I am favorably impressed by Gore's alleged position on healthcare/Medicare compared to GW's. On the surface at least, it is divorced from HMO management control, which is a good thing.
I am a practicing healthcare professional and therefore announce my biased but in so doing claim familiarity. Haven't you noticed the gradual decay of our healthcare delivery system, at least since the Clinton era began? Perhaps that dates to Hillary's ill-conceived healthcare reform efforts - who knows?
Nevertheless, during that period, there has been a slow but a malignant shift in control over patient-healthcare decisions. Decisions that were formerly made by medical personnel are now perversely influenced by detached, non-medical, HMO cost-containment guidelines administered by individuals with dubious credentials.
HMO-like cost containment has proven obscene, and let me site three examples -- 1) The appropriateness of medical diagnostic and procedural decisions are denied for reimbursement by insurance adjustors who are neither medically trained nor liable for decisional errors, 2) Many/most family-practitioner "gate keepers" are paid year-end bonuses for not referring patients for appropriate specialty care (cardiology, rheumatology, neurology, dermatology, etc.) 3) HMO frequently forces patients to break long-standing doctor-patient relationships/rapport with their physician because that physician is "out-of-network."
In Gore's speech, delivered to a Democratic group in St. Petersburg (I believe it was yesterday), he targeted many of the self-serving afflictions inherent to HMOs and responded specifically and appropriately. Gore proposed 1) Financial penalties for price gouging and/or denial of coverage to the senior and sub-senior (55 to 65-year old) healthcare insurance consumers, 2) Defended the patient's right to choice of physician. 3) Stands against insurance companies denial of diagnostic procedures that are covered but deemed unnecessary by adjustors, 4) etc. These are persuasive positions.
Despite Al Gore's position on the military, tax relief, the ozone layer, Buddha, and so forth, he is absolutely on target concerning the above facets of healthcare and GW is off base if not in leftfield.
What are GWs thoughts in this regard - turn the management of healthcare delivery over to the insurance industry - and labeling that a "free market" - I don't think so? GWs advisers are making a giant leap in assumptions here. What about those tax-paying seniors that wont live long enough to see a market correction, if any?
At some point, all of us face life-and-death medical circumstance. Tomorrow it may be your mother, daughter, or self who dies because the HMO denied the services you thought you bought and paid for. It is indisputable that insurance companies deny payment too often for appropriate diagnostic and medical procedures. By so doing they statistically reduce the treatable life span of the effected patient. But, oh yea, it may shorten the patient's life and reduce life's quality, but it saves the insurance industry big bucks in their bottom line profits -- all in the name of medical cost-containment.
I would suggest to GW that he take a very close look at the Gore proposal on healthcare, acknowledge it's merit, and forget any idea of letting the insurance industry control healthcare - unless of course he has vested interest in NOT doing so. Insurance industry control of the healthcare delivery system is as dumb an idea as inviting Bill Clinton to a Girl Scout sleep over.
Since when is it a sign of weakness to recognize that the position of your opponent may better than your own - it might indicate actual intellectual honesty. |
