It’s time to stop the blood sucking in health industry

For over 4,000 years, leeches, blood sucking invertebrates, were a health care mainstay and considered necessary in the treatment of patients. By the 19th century the medical community began to discredit their dubious use. Fast forward to the here and now; leeches as a metaphor for the viral entity that ails our country’s health care system is appropriate.

America suffers from a broken, outdated system crippled by a parasitic private insurance industry and related leeches — pharmaceutical companies, HMOs and sections of the health care provider sector. Ironically, while the real leech only sucks blood in amounts limited to its body weight, their virtual corporative counterpart has no limits.

The private insurance industry along with their political supporters are nowhere near ready to reduce their intake of blood money and profits on the backs of the insured. Fortunately the new paradigm for radical change is here and it calls for replacing an obsolete system along with the corporate and the discarded leeches of yore.

This is the year of change for New Mexico with a golden opportunity to embrace a health care system that makes economic sense while reforming our basic health care coverage system. It will not be easy; we still have a big hurdle to jump.

As we speak, our Legislature is in the middle of considering legislation to create a New Mexico health insurance exchange, an essential component of the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act, which is now the law of the land.

Health Insurance Exchanges are marketplaces (neo leeches) that offer regulated private insurance policies to those who are uninsured and not eligible for Medicaid. The exchange is supposed to help reduce the number of uninsured by making it easier to purchase insurance and for low- and moderate-income New Mexicans to receive a subsidy for them do so.

The bad news is that even by 2019 New Mexico will still be left with 182,000 people without any coverage. In addition, and our bane, most experts say exchanges will fail to curb premium costs. Massachusetts is a testimony to the cost concerns to taxpayers — that state adopted the insurance exchange program in 2006 and its residents have been saddled with the highest health care costs in the nation.

The good news is that, in compliance with the ACA, New Mexico can avail itself of the Waiver for State Innovation provision that enables states to develop their own alternatives to the insurance exchanges approach.

The Health Security Act is a better option for our state and it is currently going through legislative committees. Two empirical studies commissioned by the Legislature over the past few years clearly show that the act is best for New Mexico. One, the Lewin report states that if enacted in 1997, we would have realized $4.7 billion in savings by the year 2004! This, plus the fact that everyone would be covered! Private insurance companies could still continue to provide supplemental coverage.

The Health Security Act requires the Legislature to conduct a financial feasibility analysis to show it is economically sound. Once approved by the Legislature and the governor, a geographically representative citizens’ commission is created. As one of its duties, it will prepare the wavier. Once received, by 2017 the exchanges will morph into the Health Security Plan.

The Health Security for New Mexicans campaign needs to demonstrate even greater support for this alternative. Join the chorus of friends in contacting your legislators and urge them to support HB 262 (House) and SB 226 (Senate), the sensible answer to our state’s health care crisis.