Shop for a Better System – Lee Russ

Shop for a Better System

To the Editor:

Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) of Vermont now says Vermonters have a "personal responsibility" to become "savvier consumers" in light of Vermont's "health care affordability crisis."

How odd. We have several institutions that comprise and control healthcare—the hospitals, the insurance companies, the regulators, the legislators—but BCBS thinks each of the 600,000-plus individual Vermonters bears responsibility for addressing the affordability crisis. Those institutions have infinitely more power to address the crisis, and are already funded by those 600,000-plus Vermonters, who also pay for every single healthcare dollar through premiums, taxes, and out of pocket payments.

What might healthcare shopping look like for a patient who, say, needs some nonemergency surgery?

Drive 35 miles from home to get the cheapest blood work at hospital A. Drive back home. Next day drive 20 miles to hospital B for the cheapest lung x-ray. Drive back home. Next week, drive 50 miles to hospital C for the cheapest surgery's pre-op exam. Drive back home. The next week, drive 50 miles to hospital C for the surgery. Drive home after recovery.

That's 310 miles round trip, assuming you don't need to return to hospital C for problems or follow-up. Add in the hours spent locating the best "value" for each procedure. Add in the fact that there is no electronic records connection between hospitals A, B and C. If that's a solution we are doomed.

We need one of the universal care systems operating elsewhere around the planet, preferably a single payer system.

Lee Russ

Bennington, Vt.