The Voice of New Rochelle: Health Care's Bitter Pill

During the run-up to a vote on so-called Obamacare, the resultant emergence of the Tea Party and, ultimately, the Supreme Court vote, there were two clear sides. Everyone knew where everybody else stood on the issue. Now that the Affordable Care Act is phasing in, there are painful realities being presented that blur the color of the uniforms, and that make one wonder why these “problems” are only being offered up now.

No less a strong supporter of the new law, the AARP is warning its members that Obamacare will make it difficult to find a good doctor now that millions of additional Americans will be accessing the health-care system. Moreover, they are reporting of a shortage of doctors, along with an additional mass of physicians who will not take Medicare or Medicaid after the law goes into effect.

The Supreme Court is hearing a case—the Federal Trade Commission versus Actavis—centering on whether a maker of a brand-name drug can pay a generic drug company to keep the generic version off the market. Yes, you read it right. One company is paying another company to screw you. To be fair, from a strictly business point of view, this seems like a fair business practice—for the generic guy. He gets to make money with little staff and production costs. From a public policy point of view, however, it is reprehensible.

USA Today reported that there is a shortage of cancer medications. The basic reason: They are not as profitable to make as other drugs. Clearly, people will die. And to think they worried about “death panels."

Time magazine reported on how a single generic acetaminophen tablet—they go for $1.49 for 100 on Amazon—cost $1.50 for a certain person in the hospital. Not a lot of money in and of itself, but it is indicative of how things are marked up. Just so you know I am not just dealing in small change, a cancer drug administered to the same patient costs the hospital about $3,000 with the usual discount. They charged him $13,702.

There is the other side of this story, of course. People go into the hospital every day who have no insurance. This group includes the millions of aliens here illegally who have no coverage, as well as those who—well—have no coverage. Even though those who opposed Obamacare said that this is working fine the way it is, they ignored the reality that this is one of the prime reasons that costs are going up and hospitals are closing.

The Government Accounting Office estimates the cost of fraudulent Medicare payments at $17 billion. Other independent estimates run as high as $550 billion. The very complexity of the Bush-era prescription drug program, according to the New York Post’s Michael A. Walsh, makes it a source of fraud. One in 20 Americans is collecting an aggregate $170 billion dollars in disability payments annually. I challenge every reader of this item to think about how many people they know who are gaming the system. What is worse, the gamers are on both sides of the political ideology now polarizing the country. 

Both government and the free market system share the blame. We can’t have people dying because a drug is not profitable. We also can’t have the government lose billions of dollars through incompetence and fraud. And we can’t have everyone beginning to panic because those who were disenfranchised and of lesser health and life span are now joining the system. This latter dynamic is the bitterest pill of all.

I am left to wonder just how many individuals, businesses, health-care professionals and politicians were so concerned about prospective national health care because they believed, silently, that health care is a zero-sum game and only those who can afford it deserve it. The reality now emerging is that our vaunted health-care system is not really equal to the task of taking care of America. 

Shame on us.