Inspired by my friend Lukas and by Mark Elrod’s Signs of the Impending Apocalypse (which is basically wacky Friday news), I am starting a new serial feature called the Kick In The Neck Awards (or KITNA, archived here), celebrating those whose accomplishments/antics are worthy of nothing less than a kick in the neck. Think of it as an ig-Nobel Prize.
Our first winner is Mike Leavitt, Secretary of Health & Human Services, who said recently that expanding the S-CHIP program, which provides health care coverage for children from low- and moderate-income families and is currently up for debate in congress, would be bad because it would cause longer lines at the doctor’s office:
If you increase the … number of people who are covered by government insurance, you’re ultimately going to see higher taxes, you’re going to see long waiting lines, and you’re going to see lower quality. link
The expansion would be funded by a $0.61 per pack cigarette tax, in case you’re wondering exactly which taxes Mr. Leavitt is talking about.
Let me get this straight: If we provide free healthcare for more children, the children of America will suffer because the lines will be longer, and doctors will magically reduce the quality of treatment they provide, presumably because they are being paid by the government instead of a private insurance company or the parent.
Let’s sharpen that comparison a bit: Mr. Leavitt is saying it would be better for some kids to receive no medical care at all than to wait in longer lines due to the increased number of people with access to medical care. I assume he means the lines will be longer for those who currently have medical coverage, since the rest can’t even get in the line.
It sounds like Mr. Leavitt subscribes to Richard Nixon’s theory of healthcare: the less, the better. You can hear the audio tape of Mr. Nixon discussing the benefits of private health insurance in Michael Moore’s film SiCKO.
It seems as if people assume that medical care is like candy - if you make it free, people will take too much, and it will be bad for them as well as too costly for taxpayers. Is that really what medical care is like? While I realize that there are hypochondriacs who may seek unnecessary medical care, the DSM-IV says that only 1-5% of the population suffers from this disorder, and at any rate, the medical decisions are made by competent doctors. We should never have a goal of minimizing the amount of medical care we provide; we should provide what is necessary according to sound medical judgment, not economics.
So, Mr. Leavitt, congratulations on being the first person declared by this website to be worthy of a kick in the neck.
*Disclaimer: I am not actually advocating violence against any public figure; I am simply pointing out that if an action movie were made about a KITNA laureate’s life, and Matt Damon were to kick said individual in the neck, I would enjoy watching that particular scene.
Note: If you were to make a logo for the KITNA, I would be most amused.
I’m not overly familiar with the debate, so my comments may be completely wrong. I’m wondering if the SCHIP program only pays for coverage in certain facilities, which is the case with publicly funded healthcare in my area. Publicly insured patients and procedures are only accepted at one facility, so if you increase the number of people eligible for that aid, then yes, lines would be longer there. Longer lines means more pressure on staff (of which I am one), less time per patient for nurses and doctors, and increases the likelihood that lower acuity patients will spend hours to be seen if at all. So quality can indeed suffer. Ideally, people’s insurance coverage would work at every facility, thus helping to spread the patient load around. But even with long lines and impaired quality, some healthcare is far better than no healthcare at all.
Hi Nathan,
Thanks for shedding light on that - I hadn’t considered that dynamic. I agree, though, that making everyone wait 2 hours instead of 1 hour is better than denying some people any care at all.
The problem with health insurance is that it makes the practice of medicine the only industry in the US in which prices are not regulated by the law of supply and demand. That being the case, the cost of medical insurance rises at astronomical rates. Whbile I am covered by health insurance now, I really believe that it would be best if health insurance were banned entirely. Then doctors would have to compete on price and the cost of health care would plummet.