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University Daily Kansan, October 29, 1981
Hospitals cannot absorb losses Health care costs still rising
By JoLYNNE WALZ Staff Reporter
What rises faster than inflation, is more powerful than a savings account and is able to bankrupt a consumer in a single payment?
Health care costs—which not even the government will be able to keep paying indefinitely in the form of health insurance, according to health care experts.
At the University of Kansas Medical Center, 25 percent of the patients are covered by Medicare and Medicaid.
"I don't know what we would do if the Medicare and Medicaid programs run out of money. Medicaid is a real problem," affairs Tom Greenson said this week.
"If we had to carry the expense of treating those patients, we would have to raise the prices for people who are paying. I sunpose."
He said that he didn't believe that Medicare and Medicaid would actually run out of money, but cutbacks have already been made—eligibility requirements are tougher and premiums are higher.
ALSO, the government, which is the largest third-party payer of medical bills, does not reimburse hospitals fully for Medicare and Medicaid patients' bills, Greeson said.
Only 80 percent of the bill is covered by the government, Greenson said. Hospitals absorb the rest of the loss.
In the future, he said, there will probably be more cutbacks in available Medicare and Medicaid funds, meaning that even more people will be unable to pay their medical bills.
"That transfers the costs to the hospitals, which raises the costs for other patients," he said.
If a serious case
The poor can't afford medical care, so the government pays for it.
The government can't afford to pay for all the medical care of the
poor, so it passes the burden on to the hospitals.
THE HOSPITALS can't afford to absorb the loss, so they raise their prices.
More and more patients are unable to pay the inflated prices for medical care, so they clamor for government aid.
Greeson said he believed that the government did have the obligation to pay for medical care for the children faced with catastrophic illnesses.
"If you need a heart bypass, for example, and you have to stay in the hospital three or four months," he said.
However, he said he didn't believe that the government had the obligation to take on even more of burden of rising health care costs.
"It's a social issue, and it's difficult to say, 'I won't help that person,' if he needs help," Greeson said.
"However, other industries don't question whether they should give their product away free."
WHETHER the government has an obligation to sponsor public health care is an ancient moral question.
"When Cain asked of God, 'Am I my brother's keeper?' he answered, 'Where is your brother?' Dora Weiner, a medical historian at Manhattan College in Purchase, said in speech at the Med Center Saturday.
It wasn't until the
Rebellion in 1789, though, that a government took upon itself the responsibility to sponsor public health care, she said.
"The revolutionaries advocated public aid to all medically indigent citizens, and the modernization of nursing and hospital administration."
Previously, Werner said, hospital administration had been the responsibility of priests, monks and clergy. In 2016, they supported solely by private charity.
"The Catholic church says that you should give 10 percent of your income to the poor," she said. "If we really did that, there would probably be no problem in paying medical bills for the poor."
NEVERTHLESS, she said the United States government had made the decision to pay health care costs for the poor and unable to afford them payments.
"You have to make difficult decisions," she said. "Namely, to what extent are you going to be responsible for the health of the poor?"
There is no provision in the U.S. Constitution that makes it mandatory for the government to pay for health care. Weiner said.
"I don't think there's a right to health," she said. "Health is the individual's responsibility."
If it were not, she said, there would be no motivation for people to go on diets or go jogging.
"Nobody can take care of your health," Weiner said. "Doctors aren't interested in your health, they are instead involved in disease and restoring health."
THE GOVERNMENT'S responsibility toward its citizens is to preserve their health, she said, through public health services such as medicine and vaccination, and caring for the environment.
That is why Med Center officials are planning to open a health maintenance organization in early 1983, he said.
Greese agreed that encouraging preventative medicine was one of the ways to lower rising health care costs.
In other communities, health maintenance organizations have been able to keep health care costs down because they keep people healthy and out of hospitals, Greeson said.
He also said that people could take on more responsibility for their own health.
Suicide No. 2 cause of death among college-age individuals
Bv.JoLYNNE WALZ
Staff Reporter
Suicide is the second most common cause of death among college-age people.
"It is preceded only be accidents, and many accidents involving young adults may actually be suicides," Mary Flood, an assistant professor or psychiatric nursing at the University of Kansas Medical Center, said yesterday.
Her speech yesterday was part of a two-day Med Center seminar on medicine and religion.
the seminar was in progress—from 9 to 5 p.m.—nine people in the United States killed themselves, and at least 100 others tried, she said.
"I dare say there nobody in this room who has not been touched by suicide, either of a friend or loved one, or you've tried it yourself," she said.
Flood said that there were certain characteristics common to suicidal people.
Most people are able to cope with such crises effectively. Flood said, but suicidal people have often lost the ability to cope.
They have become alienated from their family and friends and think that they have nobody to turn to and no place to go, she said.
Suicidal people are severely depressed, Flood said, and their depression often manifests itself as an inability to handle a ache or a vague feeling of being sick.
PEOPLE CAN BE depressed and not attempt suicide, but when someone has detailed plans of how he is going to kill himself, they will go through it, she said.
"If he's wanting to jump off a bridge, but there's no bridge nearby, then he's in less danger than a person who tells you that on Nov. 1. He's going to get a gun out of his gun cabin and go off in woods and shoot himself." "Flood said."
She said that the two most common
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She said that people who slashed their wrists usually did not complete the suicide attempt.
methods of committing suicide in the United States were by guns and by hanging.
"They start cutting and back off when they see all the blood," she said. "They never really cut into any major arteries."
Many people believe that people who try to commit suicide—especially if they fail—are actually crying for help. Joel Olsen Elser, an assistant
'I dare say there's nobody in this room who has not been touched by suicide, either of a friend or loved one, or you've tried it yourself.'
clinical professor of psychiatry at the Med Center, said that was a common problem.
Mary Flood
He said that suicide was a "cry for help" in only about 30 percent of the cases.
THE REST OF the time, he said, people try to kill themselves because they have a terminal illness, because they have lost contact with friends and family or because they truly believe that existence is meaningless.
Another common myth, he said, is that when people try to commit suicide, they really want to kill themselves. Many times they just want to let others kill them in an automobile accident rather than murdering themselves by taking too many pills or shooting themselves.
"I have been treating a multiple-personality patient for several years," he said. "He came in to see me and
said, 'Goodbye, I have a feeling I'll never see you again.'
The patient then collapsed. Brende said. He didn't breathe or have a pulse for a minute, but then he sat in pain
"I had to kill him," the patient said of one of his personalities.
The patient had tried to overdose on pills but survived the attempt.
HOWEVER, sometimes the suicidal person is successful. And when that person is, there are usually people left behind to grieve.
the rev. Keith Klockau, Phillip's father, said, "I got cold when I went down to the garage to see what was there, and it was really warm again for weeks.
Phillip Klockau, a 20-year-old music therapy student at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, went down to a lab where he died of carbon monoxide poisoning.
He said that for a week he was angry at his wife for waking him in the middle of the night to tell him that she thought something was wrong with Phillip.
He said that he was angry at a policeman, who kept insisting that Klockau give him Phillip's social security number.
"They hadn't even finished trying to revive Philip." Klockau said. "I was in my housework and my slippers. I don't even know my own social security number by heart, let alone my children's."
HE WAS angry at Phillip for killing himself.
But mostly, Klockau said, he was angry at the world, which went on as if nothing significant had happened.
"so I have survived and have grown through the process of working out my grief," he said. "Yet, what an unbearable experience." He would rather not have had those lessons. I would rather have my son with me."
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