By Jack E. Lohman

Rep. Mike Huebsch is absolutely correct when he says the health care system is broken. But his logic is reversed and he doesn't seem to accept that state politicians trashed the system when they lifted the certificate of need and allowed the so-called "free-market" to take control.

Moving to the for-profit, free-market system over the last decade is exactly the reason costs have increased at five times the rate of inflation, and we don't need more of the same. We also don't need employers offloading their health care costs to employees via Health Savings Accounts, or as Huebsch and George Bush calls them, "personal savings accounts."

The banks, credit card companies, and bankruptcy attorneys will have a field day with HSAs as they dangerously refocus the issue from providing needed health care to cutting care and costs. HSAs make sense only if you are young, healthy and wealthy. Read the code words and don't be fooled by right-wing rhetoric.

When patients must decide on the dollars they spend, they too often delay care until it is more costly to treat or it becomes untreatable. A RAND study demonstrated that when hypertension patients had to pay part of the bill, they had a 10 percent higher death rate. Most certainly if people die earlier we will reduce our health care costs, but that sounds too much like a Philip Morris study I once read. We can do better.

Understand this: there is no such thing as competition in the health care system. Period! Never has been and never will be, at least not in this decade. Most patients trust their physicians to do the right thing, and few will seek the lowest bidder. The vast majority of consumers are not equipped to second guess their physicians, though they should indeed research their diseases and potential treatments, and they should live healthier lifestyles.

Rep. Huebsch lambastes a government solution, but in fact every other system in the world that exceeds U.S. quality and efficiency (which is the top 36 systems) are either total government or a combination public-private systems like Canada's. According to the World Health Organization, the United States ranks 37th, Canada ranks 5th and France is in first place with its Medicare-type of system. Longer life expectancy and reduced infant mortality are hallmarks of the systems better than ours, and we have 18,000 people per year dying because they lack health coverage.

Though not perfect -- because Canadian politicians have under funded it and wait times exist for non-urgent procedures -- over 80 percent of Canadians still prefer their system to ours. Its costs are 10 percent of gross domestic product compared to our 15 percent, and ours is projected to rise to 20 percent in the next decade thanks to our free-for-all approach and turning it over to for-profit corporations.

If Huebsch really wants to fix health care he'll support the Medicare-for-all system proposed by Sen. Mark Miller and Rep. Chuck Benedict. Fund it properly and we'll have 100 percent coverage with no wait times, yet the same costs as today's. This is the most business-friendly and public-friendly approach possible, and it makes sense to everyone except those profiting from the current mess.

Contrary to the anti-government rhetoric, Medicare is the only part of our health care system that does work well. It treats the most costly of patients and the end-of-lifers -- it does so efficiently and without rationing -- and seniors are not complaining. I know because I’m one of them.

But at the very least Assembly Speaker Huebsch should let the Miller-Benedict bill receive a fair public hearing and not block its progress to a floor vote. When you look at all of the industries who would benefit from HSAs over a single-payer plan -- banking and finance, health professionals, health services and institutions, insurance, lawyers and lobbyists – Huebsch alone has amassed over $165,120 in campaign contributions, according to Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. So he and the others should start by refusing the $1.4 million the health care industry makes in annual campaign contributions, and start thinking about a real public solution.

Barring that public commitment, perhaps we could reconsider Huebsch’s position if he and his cohorts first passed a law mandating health savings accounts for all state legislators. Let them experiment with their own families before passing it to the public.

Lohman is a retired business owner from Colgate, author of "Politicians -- Owned and Operated by Corporate America" and founder of http://www.ThrowTheRascalsOut.org. He can be reached at jlohman@execpc.com.