Posted 6/8/2009

DR. KAUFER'S REMARKABLE HEALTHCARE IDEA

The Obama Administration is coming up with a bad idea for solving the nation's healthcare issues.

The big issue is providing healthcare for the 50 million people who are uninsured.

Washington is asking the wrong question: How do we insure 50 million uninsured people?

The right question is: How do we provide medical care for those 50 million?

The word "insurance" does not belong in either the question or the solution.

The insurance industry was once a fine and useful force for public good. Back in the day, insurance companies operated according to "The Law of Large Numbers." That Law required insurance companies to accept everybody – low risks, medium risks and high risk people. But then greed grabbed at the industry. Companies began devising ways to select the healthy while disenfranchising the unhealthy. Pre-existing conditions, time exclusions, age, and high premiums were a few of the devices created by greedy actuaries and statisticians.

One company, decades ago, came up with a "hospital cash" policy which did not kick in until the seventh day of hospitalization. This in a era when the average hospital stay was the same seven days! People never saw the seven-day exclusion, which was buried in a multitude of fine print. This money machine featured Art Linkletter on TV and ran until the Florida insurance commissioner shut it down. Finally the company was forced to reduce the exclusionary period to three days.

Now that insurance has become more about money, and far less about people's health, the industry should not be considered as the prime factor in finding a workable healthcare solution.

So how do we provide healthcare services for those 50 million uninsured?

Dr. Jerry Kaufer of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has come up with a brilliant idea. One that does not involve insurance.

Dr. Kaufer's plan: Revise the tax code so that doctors who provide pro bono healthcare for the poor and uninsured are given a tax deduction or credit. Every doctor currently treats some hard-up patients free of charge. A tax credit would simply fortify and expand a current medical practice which treats the poor and uninsured.

Every doctor in the country would welcome the opportunity to provide charitable healthcare without having to go through the mountains of paperwork currently required in treating the insured. Equally important, the doctor could determine the proper individual treatments without having to worry about insurance coverage limitations and the suffocating protocols designed for mass averages and not individuals.

There are nine major advantages to the Kaufer Plan:

1. The uninsured would receive healthcare.

2. Costs would be sharply lower than those of government or private insurance plans because there would be no middleman.

3. Doctors' incomes would stabilize or increase. The Obama approach envisions reducing the costs of Medicare by reducing payments to doctors, which will inevitably reduce the supply of medical practitioners.

4. The medical profession would become more appealing, reversing the trend of primary care physicians and general surgeons to leave medicine. More young people would be enticed into the field.

5. The already looming critical shortage of nurses would be reversed. The Obama plan would accelerate the problem by cutting fees paid doctors and hospitals.

6. Preventive medicine would be preserved and expanded – unlike the Obama plan, which would cut prevention services first.

7. Individually tailored treatments based upon genetic differences would be encouraged – unlike insurance plans, which are too bureaucratic to allow for individual difference.

8. Highly profitable practitioners of "concierge medicine" would embrace the
"Kaufer Plan" as an opportunity to write off expenses.

9. Everyone would understand it, thus providing major trust between consumer and government.

When Dr. Kaufer discussed his idea with fellow physicians, there seemed to be only one overriding objection: It's too simple.

We have become a nation that looks for complexities where simplicities will do. Look how well we have learned to tolerate our ever changing 700-page tax code.

Will the Kaufman Plan fly?

The insurance companies will fight it. They would lose control and influence.

The administration will fight it. It wants to direct and regulate our lives.

The highly educated will fight it. They would give up the complexities that only they can pretend to understand. (Think of all the bankers who invested heavily in "derivatives" without being able to explain what they were.)

Here's hoping there is still some common sense left in America.

If Joe Six-Pack doesn't get it, it's probably not worth getting.

But I think he would understand the Kaufer Plan to a far greater extent than he would the plan Congress is working on now.

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