Letters to the Editor

The Absence of Responsibility

I read your great article, "Weaning Your Hospital Off Medicare" (June 2008). Michael Freed from Spectrum Health is right on with his comments about personal responsibility. Our hospital is trying to educate the marketplace as to costs and quality (value), and we are not having much luck because consumers feel it's out of their control and they just do what they are told. It is very depressing, because we have an excellent message to deliver but no one is home, so to speak.

I do want to defend Medicare for one second, however. Although Medicare doesn't reimburse us our costs, why should it? It is not Medicare's fault that people lived unhealthy lives for 40 years and now are showing up needing hips, knees, drugs, heart surgery, etc. Don't the commercial carriers that were responsible for that person for 40 years have some responsibility to help keep someone healthy, not just plop them on the next person's doorstep and say, "Here you go, you get to take care of this person now"?

I recently went to the Czech Republic and France, which have much lower healthcare costs than the United States. Both countries are facing the same problems the United States is facing, and both have a single-payer system. Both countries have longer life expectancies, but the one major difference I saw was that there are virtually no overweight people in those countries. How can you compare a 65-year-old American who is 100 pounds overweight all his life, smokes, drinks, never exercises, has diabetes, and now needs a total hip implant to a 65-year-old Czech who is in shape and has no other ailments other than needing a hip just due to use. Who do you think costs more?

I agree with Freed: It makes my blood boil when people say our system is broken; it's not broken. No one is taking responsibility; everyone wants someone else to fix the system, which, as Freed says, is people, so we need to fix ourselves by being more healthy. I am taking an executive masters of business administration class at Bowling Green State University, and we have had heated debates about healthcare. For the most part, the class wants the government to fix the system. As Freed says, this is socialism at its finest. The government is partially responsible for making healthcare so convoluted now, and I have no confidence it can do anything to improve it.

We try as a society to equate what we pay for healthcare and compare life expectancies with other countries. I think that is a bad correlation. The most important thing driving costs and life expectancy is lifestyle! We all want to be fat and happy, but then we don't want to consider the impact that has on costs and life expectancy. Then we blame it on the healthcare system.

David Oppenlander
Vice president and treasurer
St. Luke's Hospital, Maumee, OH