Health care bill does not reduce costs

The leading cause of disability and death in the United States is chronic disease. Heart disease and diabetes lead the list. About 133 million Americans live with at least one chronic disease and more than one in 10 have three or more. Your humble author is well acquainted with these numbers in so far as 18 months ago I received a new lease on life, a liver in an 8-hour transplant surgery. The costs are staggering. Chronic disease accounts for 75 percent of the more than $2 trillion spent on health care each year. Coronary heart disease alone, which afflicts 16.8 million Americans, costs some $165 billion a year.

Until the mid-20th century, infectious diseases such as diphtheria, polio and chicken pox posed the greatest health threat to society. No more. Now chronic diseases, incurable medical conditions and the fact that Americans live longer have created the nation's main health care challenge.

"At no point in medical school are physicians exposed to patients with chronic illness, except for acute episodes leading to hospitalization," so says Michael Lockshin, M.D., of New York's Hospital for Special Surgery. Despite the obvious shift, the U.S. health care system is still largely designed to treat patients with acute medical problems not chronic ongoing disease.

The result: Patients shuffle from doctor to doctor in search of relief from the complications of their chronic illnesses. On average, people with one chronic condition see three different physicians and fill seven prescriptions a year, this according to Partnership for Solutions, a research group at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

People with five or more chronic conditions make 12 physician visits and fill 50 prescriptions a year.

In my own experience, I visit the doctor three times per year. One is for a MRI to insure no re-occurrence of the tumor I had and to see how the new liver is faring. This visit is not an option it must be conducted. The other two are for blood and enzyme work. Unfortunately rejection of an organ transplanted can occur at any time in the recipient's life. Continued monitoring is the only way to insure the transplant does not reject. Just one of the 10 prescription drugs I take is $978 per month. I'm sure the insurance company would love to see a reduction in the cost of that drug alone. The current health care bill has no provision to reduce the cost of any drugs. So much for reducing our medical costs. Even with all that care, patients with chronic illnesses are still sick. A 2009 National Council on Aging (NCOA) survey found that 32 percent of people 44 and older who have one or more chronic illness are living in pain, 65 percent are stressed and 50 percent are depressed. "The present medical model has ignored many of the issues - pain, fatigue, anger - that interfere with people's lives," says Nancy Whitelaw, Ph.D., NCOA senior vice president. "Until our care system focuses on improved health for people with chronic conditions, we will never get a handle on skyrocketing costs."

I do not have the answers; however, I do know that the bill before the Congress does nothing to help reduce the cost of medical care. It merely gives the government more control, more bureaucrats to get in the way of doctor-patient care and add 30 or so million people to the rolls with no provision to pay for them. This is a bad bill done only for the purpose of aggrandizing one Barack Obama. I hope in the 2010 elections people wake up to this fact and vote appropriately.

Allan Walker

Weeki Wachee