Opinion editor’s note: Strib Voices publishes a mix of commentary online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.
The cost of the sleep study my doctor ordered this month put me over my health insurance policy’s annual deductible. But that pronouncement, relayed by a cheerful staffer checking my records, triggered a different health problem: a temporary blood pressure spike induced by exasperation.
“A lot of good that’s going to do me,” I remember thinking while rolling my eyes. After months of paying for non-preventive care out of pocket, I’d hit the dollar amount at which insurance starts paying for the bulk of my care. The problem is that there are only two weeks left of 2024. On Jan. 1, consumers like me start over again meeting the yearly deductible.
The process reminds me of why I don’t enjoy casinos, where it always feels like the “house” has the advantage over bettors. But unlike those gleaming gaming palaces, health consumers don’t have a choice in whether they want to play. If you need health coverage, and everyone does, this is our system. And it’s unlikely to change in far-reaching fashion anytime soon. Even health-reform-minded Democratic presidential administrations have delivered incremental progress at best.
That feeling of powerlessness can stay bottled up only so long. Unfortunately, this shared frustration boiled over in alarming fashion earlier this month after the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, with callous social media comments regrettably eclipsing sympathy for the victim’s family. Congress, the incoming Trump administration and the new “government efficiency” advisory group led by Elon Musk ought to take note of this coldhearted reaction and see it as a mandate to take meaningful action.
While sweeping health care reforms ― like moving to the “single-payer” systems that other countries use ― aren’t realistic right now, there are still sensible improvements that would deliver taxpayer savings and ensure that health care dollars go toward patient care rather than insurers’ bottom lines. Taking steps like this versus doing nothing would help assuage the anger erupting after Thompson’s death. For the example I’ll highlight here shortly, there’s even a detailed plan from the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), an independent advisory group to Congress. Medicare, of course, is the federal program covering care mainly for Americans 65 and older.
To be absolutely clear, ire over a health system that many feel ill-served by does not justify Thompson’s execution, or the revolting embrace by some of Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old charged with Thompson’s murder, as a hero. In a nation of laws, worthwhile change comes through the democratic process, not at gunpoint. That’s what makes America great, even if the pace of reform is slower than ideal.
