“Take a hike!” That’s Republican candidate Bob Beauprez’s response to Colorado’s health-care crisis. Check it out – it’s right there on his website, beauprezforgovernor.com.
Last month, a reporter asked Beauprez about the factors causing massive increases in the cost of health care. Remarkably, he answered, “Medical malpractice costs.” According to the candidate, 80 percent of doctors admit to practicing “defensive medicine” due to malpractice costs. This despite the fact that, according to Beauprez’s website, Colorado’s medical malpractice laws are among the most effective in the nation at “thwarting frivolous lawsuits and defensive medicine.”
Do Colorado’s effective medical malpractice laws effectively thwart defensive medicine? Or do 80 percent of doctors practice “defensive medicine”? Mr. Beauprez, which way is it?
When the interviewer asked what he proposed to do about escalating medical costs, the candidate said, “You start with a wellness initiative in the state. People who watch their diet really reduce the cost of health care.”
Beauprez brags that Dr. Patricia Gabow, CEO and medical director of the Denver Health and Hospital Authority, is one of his health care gurus. If that’s the case, surely he knows that 42 percent of the care provided by highly regarded Denver Health isn’t covered by insurance. Last year the hospital delivered $280 million in uncompensated indigent care, much of it in the expensive emergency room.
He probably also knows that Colorado has one of the most restrictive thresholds for Medicaid access in the country. A family of four can earn no more than $533 a month to qualify. A pregnant woman with kids younger than six can earn $2,000 per month – but her husband is not covered.
Colorado’s policy makes it tougher for low-income Coloradans to get federal support for health care than people with comparable incomes in other states.
Here’s what Beauprez has to say about federal support for health care: “Excess utilization, too many doctor visits. Is that a surprise? My mom is on Medicare. When you’ve got a very low or no co-pay, your back is a little sore, you’re going to go see a doctor. Somebody else is paying for it.”
Beauprez looks to consumer- driven solutions, pointing out that many of the previously uninsured are now covered by health savings accounts. Under this system, the consumer buys a basic health insurance package with a large annual deductible to cover catastrophic care. Routine health care is paid out of the HSA account, thousands of which is tax deductible.
This may be a terrific system for the young and healthy or the well-to-do. However for others, including the 45 million Americans still with no health insurance, such savings accounts are not an affordable option.
According to health care expert Malcolm Gladwell writing in The New Yorker magazine, the leading cause of personal bankruptcy in the U.S. is unpaid medical bills.
At Denver Health, 57 percent of those receiving indigent care are people with jobs.
And how about protecting our children, including the 180,000 uninsured in Colorado? Beauprez suggests we encourage them to be more active. Never mind that Colorado has one of the lowest childhood immunization rates in the country and that young children denied well-baby and childhood health care are more likely to have serious health problems as adults.
Gladwell points out that America’s annual per capita health care expenditure is $5,267, compared to the industrial world’s median of $2,193. We have fewer doctors per capita, don’t go to the doctor as often and are admitted to hospitals less frequently.
Seven hundred thousand Coloradans lack health insurance. The result is expensive, and directly or indirectly, taxpayers foot the bill.
Yet somehow we have come to believe that easy access to insurance means waste and abuse of the system. And what does candidate for governor Bob Beauprez have to say?
“Take a hike!”
Susan Barnes-Gelt (bs13@qwest.net) served eight years on the Denver City Council and was an aide to former Denver Mayor Federico Peña. Her column appears on alternate Sundays.
