By Traci Andrews

Medicare’s insolvency has been debated for years and there are those who disagree with the opinion that it is currently bankrupt, though it is predicted to become insolvent soon — which is all the more reason to enact health care reform NOW, including Medicare reform, and not put it off for another year. To answer some recently published criticism of my first two columns, my argument was not that Medicare was perfect but that it is a social insurance program which does not limit care and a public option would be the same; it is not socialized medicine. I don’t think the public option is the best solution (that would be a single-payer system) but it’s the one being debated.

The future insolvency of Medicare could be prevented if something were done to lower the costs of health care. The U.S. is currently spending $7,290 per capita on health care, yet one in six people have no coverage and one in 12 is underinsured.

Addressing fraud in billing would save millions, and ending billions in subsidies to private insurers would also help. Tort reform will help to reduce costs, but neither that nor other proposed reforms, like making policies available across state lines, will suddenly make the health insurance giants lower costs and make insurance available to those without.

These companies are in the business of making money. They are unconcerned with our well-being. I’m sure they don’t hate the poor, they likely don’t think of them at all. Scrapping the system is not the answer, and something which those on Medicare might take issue with. More privatization would serve to increase costs and create more uninsured.

Our “miraculous” health system is only miraculous when you can pay for it, which more and more people have become unable to do. Medical expenses account for 62 percent of bankruptcies and 78 percent of those are filed by people who had insurance (at the beginning of the illness); and the number one reason for home foreclosure is medical bills. (See www.businessweek.com/

bwdaily/dnflash/content/jun2009/db2009064_666715.htm and http://works

.bepress.com/christopher_robertson/2/).

Those people may argue with the contention that these insurance companies are protecting them. The Canadian system does have problems with lack of equipment, but the U.S. already has the equipment; it won’t suddenly disappear. Lack of access to doctors and equipment is happening RIGHT NOW for millions. What good are two STAT MedEvac emergency helicopter units in Erie to the uninsured? Some Canadians do come here for surgeries, and the bill is paid through the social insurance provided by their government.

Unclean conditions are not only found in UK hospitals. An estimated 200,000 people die in U.S. hospitals every year because of hospital-born infections and unhygienic conditions. (See www.tcpalm

.com/news/2007/dec/14/letter-hospitals-need-be-inspected-cleanliness/A study by Boston University found that 52 percent of hospital rooms were not cleaned between patients, and that 65 percent of physicians and other hospital personnel don’t change lab coats more than once per week while 16 percent don’t change them more than once per month, despite the fact that some bacteria can stay alive for days on those coats.

If Canada’s and the UK’s systems are so terrible why do we still lag behind them for life expectancy? Recent findings by the United Health Foundation has put life expectancy in the U.S. at 69, behind 27 countries including the UK (71) and Canada (72); infant mortality is seven deaths per 1,000 births while the UK and Canada both have five. We have more deaths due to cardiovascular diseases (188 per 100,000) than the UK (182) or Canada (141).

We do better than the UK and Canada in cancer-related deaths but are behind many other countries.

The health care systems in the UK and Canada may not be perfect, but they must be doing something right.

A 2008 Commonwealth Fund study shows that the U.S. “quality of care is highly variable, and opportunities are routinely missed to prevent disease, disability, hospitalization and mortality. Across 37 indicators of performance, the U.S. achieves an overall score of 65 out of a possible 100. ... Performance has not improved” and “access to health care has significantly declined. As of 2007, more than 75 million adults — 42 percent of all adults ages 19 to 64 — were either uninsured during the year or underinsured.” The U.S. “now ranks last out of 19 countries on a measure of mortality amenable to medical care. ... Up to 101,000 fewer people would die prematurely if the U.S. could achieve leading, benchmark country rates.”