Show THE VOICE OF BUSINESS Trie last ot me b. Sm I O rj I e I i ill W G iS P By L. President Chamber of Commerce of the United States adjusted for Medicare beneficiaries spent more out- of-pocket for health care last year than they did in the year Medicare was The Medicare nightmare is that after all these years and all the billions of dollars the elderly are back at square one with respect to their health That quote is from a letter Senator sent to Wall Street His diagnosis of the problems the government caused by pouring billions of dollars into ill-conceived and poorly administered national health care programs is quite except for one He should have noted that reckless federal spending has generated the very inflation that is now the number one problem for the elderly and the rest of us as With such an admirable grasp of the futility of trying to cure social ills by massive infusions of printing-press you would think that a more costly federal health care program would be the last thing on the Senator's a more costly federal health care program appears to be the first and perhaps the only thing on the Senator's The need for a new national health care plan is hardly Roughly 90 percent of us already have health insurance of one kind or Any gaps in the current system can be filled at a reasonable which is what President Carter seems to be t t tx The approach is the proper because the two factors most responsible for the upward spiral of medical costs would both be aggravated by a universal run One of these factors was me sudden outpouring of federal money into the system when Medicare and Medicaid came The supply of funds available to spend on health care in- creased much faster than the supply of medical And like its own That problem is admittedly unless we repeat the initial The other problem is one which our own continuing studies of the health care industry unfailingly turn There is not enough Individual in- to control Insurance now pays 90 percent of the hospital bills and 66 percent of the doctors Under those medical personnel don't have much cause to worry about what they're charging the because they know the patient has The patient doesn't have sufficient incentive to be cost-conscious for the same And the insurance companies can simply pass their costs along to the insured often means the insured's proposed solution to lax cost- control is the Health Maintenance which makes more money when its patients stay well than it does when they get the emphasis is on preventive care for the well and effective treatment at the lowest possible cost for the Another solution is peer in which panels of physicians rule on the cost-effectiveness of the treatment selected by other SI helpful idea is to find a way to protect physicians from frivolous or malicious malpractice so they will not need to order more tests than are medically All of these ideas and many more can be used in concert to control costs without undermining the quality of The National Chamber will soon begin a community-oriented program to acquaint citizens and businesses with the most effective of the cost-control and health-improvement techniques based on a study done under auspices of the National Chamber Foundation The research was con- ducted by an independent health policy analysis and research firm We CAN have good health care at an affordable if we are guided by reason rather than politics mE era of ive expensive federal problems is as most people clearly In I the word reach even Senator |