The U.S. Health Care Crisis & How We Can Solve the Problem

Health care costs are way too high for the average American family or retired senior citizen. There are several reasons why health care is so expensive.

One very big reason is the free health care doled out to millions of illegal aliens. In 2001, according to the Institute of Medicine of National Academies, $35 Billion of free medical care went to illegal aliens!

These people, as a group, are unhealthy. In California, 3.4 million people are carrying tuberculosis bacteria, 40% of these aliens have intestinal parasites, many also have leprosy, polio, hepatitis infections, and even bubonic plague have been found among them!

Because they are mobile, they are spreading their diseases all across this country! Instead of treating all over again, diseases American medicine once eliminated from our country, these illegal aliens should be removed from this country, along with their families. We simply can’t afford to look after all the sick people of the world who come here.

Another reason health care is so high, is the high rate of fraud in the health care profession. Much of this kind of dishonest conduct is by foreign doctors. They know how to swindle the state and federal governments out of billions of dollars. How much is that precisely? One study by Dartmouth University found in Medicare and Medicaid that 30% of the $300 billion in payments in 2004, was wasted due to medical fraud.

Still another factor behind health care costs rising, is medical malpractice insurance premiums. These premiums keep rising because medical errors are the 8^th leading cause of death in the United States! So the lawyers keep busy with their multi-million dollar lawsuits and good, competent doctors and specialists, practice defensive medicine by ordering and conducting every test they can think of to avoid being sued by their patients or have their malpractice insurance policy cancelled out.

So now we know three of the major reasons that health care is so expensive. Now come the solutions.

1)       All illegal aliens receiving medical care should be denied such care, except for rare life-saving cases. And then they should be promptly deported.

2)       A special agency should be established whose only job is to find and prosecute any doctor or medical professional caught bilking the government out of money or cheating their patients out of their money for services not performed or poorly performed.

3)       To cut down on the high costs of malpractice insurance I propose annual medical competency examinations. If a doctor passes the annual test administered by the doctors from the state or federal government, and agrees to lower his or her costs, then, the state and or federal government will pay for all of the premiums for that year’s malpractice insurance.

If on the other hand, the doctor or medical specialist pays his own insurance premium, then that doctor does not have to lower his costs.

4)       I would also support Health Savings Accounts - this allows younger healthier people to set aside on a tax-free basis money in an account to pay for minor medical expenses, while accumulating a large sum of money to handle major medical expenses.

5)       If we abolish the income tax and replace it with a 10% National Sales Tax, everyone working would have on average a $5,000 boost in annual income, which is more then enough to pay for the best health insurance offered today, with a low or vanishing or zero deductible.

If these proposals were carried out, billions of dollars would be saved; and the cost of health care for all Americans young and old alike would be vastly reduced to levels all of us can afford, without setting up a giant federal systems of SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, which is what the Democrats advocate and they call "universal healthcare," which has been a disaster wherever it has been established.

Arthur J. Jones