Fear, tests spike health care costs

As the debate about health care reform continues in Washington and around the country, Seymour doctors are concerned about the driving forces behind health care costs.

Dr. Richard A. Wiethoff said fear of lawsuits is an issue in health care.

“One of the biggest drivers in health care costs, without question, is defensive medicine, fear of lawsuits,” the Seymour surgeon said.

Wiethoff said it’s almost unheard of for a patient to go to an emergency room today with a bellyache and not end up having a CAT scan of their abdomen and pelvis performed.

These tests are tremendously expensive, but emergency room doctors don’t feel they can afford to miss a “surgical abdomen” because of the cost of a lawsuit if they do.

“You will not find a doctor who doesn’t agree that our health care system right now is in a mess,” Wiethoff said. He said reasons for the mess stem from insurance company greed and fear of malpractice lawsuits against doctors. He said the cost is also driven up by technology.

“The things we are able to do, but MRI machines are very expensive, CAT scanners are very expensive, the new drugs are very expensive, these are all life-saving things,” he said.

Dr. Kenneth Bobb, Jackson County health officer, said he would like to see an administrative law system to handle lawsuits involved with practicing medicine. He described the unnecessary X-rays and unnecessary procedures that result out of fear of being sued.

“We really need to have some kind of insurance, some kind of plan that they take care of that, and that should be a national plan,” he said.

On a lesser scale, he would like to see an administrative panel that would hear cases where a patient can lobby complaints.

Wiethoff is also concerned about Congress’ decision on Medicare reform, which could cut payments to doctors. Medicare already discounts doctors’ fees for patients, he said.

Last month, the Senate voted against the Medicare Physicians Fairness Act of 2009 which, according to the Congressional Budget Office, would have repealed the payment formula for doctors. The bill would have cost about $250 billion over 10 years.

Dr. William Blaisdell said he thinks a safety net should be in place for the people who fall between the cracks of the health care system, but an overhaul of the entire system would be costly.

“How can we ever repay this debt? Only one way to repay it. Cheap dollars. The Fed prints money,” he said. Doing this will decimate people’s savings, he added.

The country cannot afford health care reform right now, Wiethoff said. He would like to see lawmakers give the free enterprise system more time to work.

“To me, it’s so simple: the best thing our government could do right now is go home. No new taxes, no new laws, no new bailouts, let the free enterprise system work,” he said. “Get out of the way. Quit trying to run the whole show.

“Now, if socialism is what people want, then in my opinion, that’s where it’s headed,” Wiethoff added. “And quality of care in medicine is going to drop like a rock and the quality of doctors is going to drop like a rock, because you keep taking away incentives for people to become doctors.”

Blaisdell said free markets work, and they are competitive.

“It’s not just health care, it’s societal stuff,” he added. “Do we really believe in free markets? Do we really believe in competitiveness?”

Using the example of new drugs on the market in the last 100 years, Blaisdell contrasted a socialist system, the USSR when it was still intact, with a capitalist system.

“How many new drugs did they put on the market in the last 100 years? The answer is easy, they got none, none in the socialist system. Where did they all come from? The U.S., England, Switzerland, Japan, France, that’s it. That’s where they came from. All capitalist economies.”

He said he thinks it is dangerous to start talking about systems that are not free-market based.

“I think the current administration unfortunately wishes to control a vast portion of the American economy. The health care system is one-sixth of the American economy.”

He said part of the problem with the current system is that “people want high tech at Model-T costs.”