Health Care
Editor's Digest: A review of recent research and commentary
The killing of UnitedHealth Group executive Brian Thompson in December turned a spotlight on the long-simmering problems of insurance and health care in America.
Peter Earle outlines some of the reasons for widespread dissatisfaction with health insurance and decries expression of support for violent protest. “Instead of cheering barbarism, energies should be directed toward addressing the root causes of systemic inefficiencies: government policies and regulatory frameworks that reinforce insurers’ control.”
Peter St. Onge also seeks to explain “why American healthcare is so bad,” and similarly places much of the blame on corporate-government collusion. “In short, American health care is expensive because it’s lovingly written by lobbyists—insurers, hospitals, trial lawyers, and especially the doctors union—the American Medical Association.”
Reflecting on his own recent medical emergency and his divergent experiences in the United States and Brazil, Leonidas Zelmanovitz identifies some of the same problems and potential solutions. “Under more sane interpretations of the commercial clause in the US Constitution, the state oligopolies enjoyed by insurance companies would be dismantled instead of enforced. Under more sane applications of torts . . . frivolous malpractice litigation would be curbed, not enhanced. Under laws that would level the playing field of the tax treatment given to health insurance, many of the misaligned incentives created by the fact that the beneficiary is not paying for the bulk of the health provision cost could be corrected.”
One concrete policy effort to improved health care is requiring transparency in pricing. James Capretta reports on a study of the effects of such policies and finds encouragement. “Overall, the study validates the policy decision to force greater transparency on the market as there is a clear indication that price disclosure can help bring more discipline and balance to an unruly and still very arbitrary market.”
Charlie Katebi describes one dimension of the pricing issue and one state’s reform to address it: “Ending dishonest billing and requiring site-neutral payments would help make our health-care system more affordable, transparent, and tailored to the personal health-care needs of patients.”
Policy details aside, it is crucial to practice all healthcare within a sound ethical framework. Michelle Kirtley proposes a way forward amid intense debates over reproductive technologies and other bioethical issues: “Rather than steeping our arguments about bioethics . . . in a modern, liberal emphasis on the rights of the individual, we should instead develop public policy perspectives that focus on our network of interdependencies and a view of the common good that is also central to a biblical understanding of shalom, or human flourishing.”