Legislators ignore health-cost causes

To the editor:

State Sen. Charlie Shields talks a good story regarding Medicaid reform, insisting that the Medicaid Reform Commission he chaired will propel Missouri's poor and disabled into the 21st century.

The commission did explore several important issues, including wellness programs, smoking cessation and the growing problem of obesity. However, the greatest threats to Medicaid solvency were not addressed.

Sixty cents out of every dollar spent on health care goes to administrative costs. Americans spend 15 percent of our gross national product on health care, the most expensive for any industrialized nation, and 53 percent more than the next highest country. Our system, rated 17th, is far from being the best in terms of life expectancy. Our infant mortality rate is a shameful 7 percent, putting us in a category with former Soviet satellites Hungary and the Slovak Republic. Half of Americans have stopped taking medicine or go without medical care due to high costs. Forty-four million Americans are without health insurance. According to a study by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, an inefficient and fragmented delivery system and failure to adopt universal health care account for high costs and poor outcomes.

Missouri's lawmakers, knuckling under to special interests, have chosen to address out-of-control health-care costs by blaming the poor and disabled and booting them off Medicaid while ignoring the root causes of high costs. This approach will thrill lobbyists for special interests, but is guaranteed to propel us backward to the 19th century, not forward to the 21st.

WILL RICHARDSON, Jackson