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This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by editorial page staff and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Gov.'s Health Plan Best Prescription

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    It's like that unpleasant but necessary medical procedure; it gets put off despite the professional recommendation to get it done. Is this the year the Legislature grits its teeth and passes health-care reform?
    Committee after task force after blue-ribbon commission has studied the issue but failed to find consensus on the cure.
    The latest effort, the Health Coverage for New Mexicans Committee, wrapped a study this year without handing up a consensus proposal to Gov. Bill Richardson.
    The governor fashioned a plan from pieces of the study's alternatives. Strong medicine often tastes bad, but New Mexico needs a dose, and we can't count on Dr. Washington.
    Lack of consensus in the past has given the Legislature political cover to defer biting the bullet and taking action virtually guaranteed to leave many constituents and interests unhappy.
    No action, however, perpetuates a status quo that— and there is broad consensus on this— is unacceptable.
    Some 400,000 are uninsured. That means they get no routine or preventative care but end up in emergency rooms getting the most expensive kind of treatment. That cost is spread among those who do have coverage, increasing the cost of their insurance.
    The governor's plan offers the best solution.
    It would expand the ranks of employers who contribute to their workers' insurance premiums, either directly or through state government. It would require the enrollment of people who gamble on the odds of remaining healthy and opt out of buying coverage they could afford.
    The result: Expanding the number of people covered spreads the risks and costs and lessens the cost-shifting that frustrates accountability.
    Richardson's plan does this without tearing down the system of health insurers that already delivers care to 80 percent of the population and subsidizes the rest, a system in which competition pushes for efficiency.
    The proposal also addresses monitoring of health care to ensure adoption of best practices that could squeeze out savings. Infections contracted by patients after admission, for example, unnecessarily increase the cost of hospitalization.
    An alternative to the governor's plan favored by some, a government-run single-payer system, is worse than doing nothing. It would lead to state government deciding your health care. Predicated on the erroneous assumption that government could cut costs by squeezing providers, it would encourage more doctors to leave for greener pastures.
    Single-payer advocates' mantra is "free" health care. That's what you get for free hunger pangs right after the proverbial free lunch.
    The problems of high uninsured and escalating costs perhaps cry out for a federal solution, but they shouldn't wait around any more for it. If it does ever come to pass, however, Richardson's solution wouldn't preclude New Mexico making the transition to a national plan.
    But that's crystal-balling the future. The Legislature needs to deal with the present. It's time for the right procedure.
    New Mexico's condition can only get worse.