I was reading with great sadness the story of a senior citizen—a lady well known to the New Hope Community—who had a terrible experience at a Jackson emergency room. The ordeal left her completely terrified of the hospital. Ten hours of waiting, multiple triage visits (to see if she was still kicking) and severe crowding finally pushed her to “Uber a ride out of that place like Ole Satan himself” was after her.
Her misery is all too familiar. If it’s not a problem with a hospital, it’s a problem getting insurance to cover something that is suddenly “out of network.” If it’s not that, it’s procuring medicine at a fair price.
No one disagrees that health care is broken. The tragic killing of United Healthcare’s CEO only added fuel to an already raging dumpster fire. It’s ugly.
I do not pretend to know where all the blame should fall, but I believe simple honesty and transparency would go a long way. Rep. Jerry Turner (R-Saltillo) has been in the legislature for 21 years and counting. Since 2009 he has received over $16,000 in campaign contributions from big medical names including United Healthcare, Molina, and Centine. He is, interestingly, the chairman of the House Insurance Committee.
He is also the author of HB1413, a so-called transparency bill that would require pharmacy benefit managers, i.e. insurance companies, to disclose a report on their kickbacks. Sounds good, except, a close examination of the bill shows that the managers need only disclose “aggregate” amounts for their rebates and administrative fees.
That’s it. We get to view a report with vague numbers and percentages. The river of money, as usual, drains mysteriously into the earth. Meanwhile, local pharmacists and patients still can’t figure out why the pills are so damn high.
We need real transparency, not lip service. The medical world has way too much lobby influence to claim a right to privacy. If we could see behind the closed doors, maybe we would end up with fewer hands in the cookie jar. Maybe we would know why the little bottle of eyedrops for pinkeye requires a prescription. Maybe we would know why our friend in New Hope had to wait over 10 hours under such scary conditions. Until we can clearly see the problems—with or without Medicaid expansion—we won’t be able to fix them.
“Next time I will just die at home,” the poor lady said. I feel her pain today.
David M. Chism
Lowndes County
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 34 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
