In America, we waste money on healthcare. We see it every day. My life’s work is developing and instituting systems that take better care of patients, improve our health overall, waste less and cost less. I’m committed to our efforts, and there is a lot of work to do, so I usually stay focused on my job rather than raise my voice in public discourse.
But today we are engaged in a particularly vexing episode in which we are extending a debate far beyond reason and squandering $1 billion to do it. None of this time or money is being spent to provide more or better healthcare. Instead, we are arguing, seemingly endlessly, over the politics of healthcare. This argument, in my opinion, is an unconscionable waste of precious effort, time and money.
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was signed into law more than three and a half years ago and despite recent political gyrations, it will become law on January 1, 2014.
This month Americans are signing up for newly available health plans. Finally, decades after we first realized our healthcare system is in need of reform, we are taking a bold step toward covering the 40 million Americans who have no health insurance, not to mention the tens of millions more who are seriously underinsured.
We need to take this critical first step in our effort to solve what will continue to be a top-priority problem for the foreseeable future.
Nevertheless, according to a widely reported study by the Campaign Media Analysis Group, we are still in the process of spending more than $1 billion to continue bickering about the ACA in the media.
Advertising to inform the public about the new law is necessary. But the majority of the media spend is on partisan political ads, scare tactics and the dissemination of untruths. I find that reprehensible.
Our focus should be on standing together to address the challenges of health care cost, quality, service, safety, access and affordability. Our job is to find ways to cover the un- and under-insured. Every health care dollar spent on futile bickering and partisan politics is a dollar squandered, a dollar that could in fact be used to find a true and durable solution to one of our nation’s most solvable and most unforgivable crises.
I know that saving $1 billion is not the answer to our healthcare troubles. In America, we spend twice that every day before breakfast. But I can’t help thinking about the healing we could bring, the suffering we could avert and the health we could preserve with that money.
Here for perspective’s sake, are some possibilities.
For $1 billion we could train 5,000 doctors, provide MRIs for one million patients, treat 150,000 diabetics for a year or buy flu shots for nearly half the children in America.
With $1 billion we could pay for 10 million chest x-rays, 5 million physicals or 165,000 motorized wheelchairs.
Or let’s think about it this way. How far would $1 billion go toward helping a city of one million people become the healthiest place on Earth? For $1 billion you could take a city roughly the size of Dallas or San Francisco, or Charlotte or Indianapolis and do all of the following:
– Give every woman a mammogram and every man a prostate exam.
– Give every smoker a 90-day smoking cessation program.
– Buy every child and senior a flu shot.
– Buy everyone in the city a one-year health club membership.
Several years ago, just following the passage of the ACA, a dear friend and former staffer for Senator Edward Kennedy told me that one of the senator’s greatest regrets was that, nearly a half century ago, he rejected President Nixon’s offer to jointly advance health care reform. Kennedy rejected the offer waiting for a day when he could carry forward a more perfect plan. What he realized in later years was that, had he accepted the plan, imperfect though it may have been, we would have alleviated so much unnecessary suffering, provided care and coverage to so many in need, and we would have had decades to learn from our experience, to reshape and refine our work and to build that more perfect plan.
We need to start somewhere, and I am convinced that somewhere is here, it is now, and it is with this Affordable Care Act.