OPINION: Free colonoscopies? Don't believe it

While John Morrison’s letter encouraging legislators to cover colonoscopy costs is heartfelt and his personal loss tragic, he is mistaken. As one who would benefit from expansion of government-mandated reimbursement, I urge you to reject it.

What Mr. Morrison fails to tell you is the enormous cost of this mandate. When the government mandates a health service be covered, all market forces that control costs are thrown out the window. He implies that if it is covered, it will be free, and nothing could be further from the truth. And since he knows it is not free, he is practicing progressivist deception in trying to increase utilization by prepaying a hidden high cost payment.

Let us see how this works. First of all, your private insurance premiums will go up over their already exorbitant amounts to cover this cost for private payers. Second, your insurance premiums will go even higher because Medicare and Medicaid do not pay 100 percent of costs, so this differential will be cost-shifted to private insurance as well. By the way, this is the great hidden cost of Medicaid expansion that no one told you about.

Third, because payment is guaranteed to hospitals and doctors, there will be no incentive to bring costs down, so you will see no effort at cost savings that will be meaningful.

Fourth, if the government or insurers then try to decrease reimbursement to hospitals and doctors for this service to mitigate these expenditures, they will only shift the cost to some other service or procedure to make up the shortfall.

Fifth, if they try to resolve that by a global payment, you will just get less work for the same money, which is the equivalent of rationing.

Government regulation, accelerated under the Affordable Care Act, has released a torrent of consolidation, resulting in a stifling of competition and ensuring higher costs. The incomprehensible response is to seek more government intervention.

Stop demanding that the government take your money and spend it for you. Instead create universal Health Savings Accounts for each Social Security number with unlimited contributions coupled with wealth- and income-determined graduated premium support for high deductible catastrophic insurance with the gradual elimination of Medicare and Medicaid.

Mr. Morrison identifies cost as one barrier to colonoscopy, without recognizing that that barrier results from government intervention in the first place, both in the regulation and the financing of health care. His solution of mandated coverage only exacerbates that problem.

There is only one solution that will lower the cost of colonoscopy, indeed most health care services, and that is individual responsibility. Stop looking to the government to give you something for free and take the responsibility to pay for it yourself or with the assistance of family, friends, church, etc., using the power of the purse to seek out value. As in every free market, with a virtuous people you will have increased access and lower cost.

And so Mr. Morrison, whether you pay by increased premiums or increased taxes for your mandated colonoscopy coverage, you are not getting value for your dollar. Somewhere along the line you got lost, along with the AHA, AMA, AGA, ACG, all Democrats, and most Republicans. Please try to recover before it is too late.

Michael Boharski is a Kalispell physician.