If you hear “code blue” over the hospital intercom, someone is in really bad shape. All available professionals rush to the scene to try and save the patient. It’s a high stakes game where drastic measures are the norm.

I’m calling a code blue on America’s health care system.

Modern medicine can do some amazing things, but it is still delivered and funded in a way that has not worked for decades. Our system pays doctors on a fee-for-service basis with employer-based insurance and government programs covering the costs. This way of delivering health care is riddled with problems that are complex and lengthy.

In brief, doctors are paid for seeing as many patients as possible, ordering numerous tests and prescribing drugs. This is dangerous in a country where most people see multiple doctors who provide multiple prescriptions that may interact in unforeseen ways. It also allows drug companies to rake in embarrassingly large profits with their legions of lobbyists and lawyers and “educational” programs that market their drugs to physicians.

Insurance companies are the other key players in this problem. For-profit insurance companies seek out the healthy, “low risk” people and offer good rates to them. These people represented the security net of the non-profit insurers that controlled most insurance when the system did work. Without healthy people to balance the risk associated with insuring the sick, even the non-profits can’t avoid charging large premiums.

The result? Health care costs consume $2.1 trillion annually and 16 percent of the GDP and those numbers are growing. By 2050, Medicare and Medicaid alone will take up more than the entire federal budget. Other rich countries spend between 8 and 11 percent of their GDP on health care costs. If we could magically adopt the health care system of Great Britain (8.3 percent) we would have an extra $1 trillion a year to spend on other programs. Of course, a system that works in Great Britain might not work here and suggesting we transplant that system to the U.S. is a simplistic solution. My point is that we can do better.

There are three proposals to fix the system. Two of them simply won’t work. Mandate plans cannot achieve universal coverage because many people will make too much money to be covered by government programs, but will make too little to be able to afford their own insurance.

Single payer plans are full of problems even if you can stomach the idea of socialized medicine. This system has little oversight, is easily defrauded and offers no improvement to the quality of health care.

Single payer plans allow politicians to decide what doctors can and cannot do, based on cost rather than efficacy.

The best solution to the problem is the Guaranteed HealthCare Access Plan. This guarantees coverage, restrains cost and provides a higher quality of health care. In this system, insurance companies must offer a standard set of benefits and guarantee enrollment to all citizens. Insurance companies would be reimbursed by the government a varying amount for each enrollee based on a number of health factors. For example, an insurance company would be paid more for covering a smoker than a non-smoker. The plan would be funded by a tax of 10 percent on all purchased goods. That’s a lot of money, but it wouldn’t cost more than health insurance does today. Since insurance won’t be paid for by employers, companies will have extra money to increase salaries. Additionally, programs like Medicare and Medicaid will be phased out, eliminating their associated paycheck deductions. Oversight committees and other entities designed to run the system in an efficient way will ensure that the system is flexible, fair and high quality.

We’re facing a serious problem. Besides the millions of uninsured Americans and less-than-stellar quality of our system, we face the very real threat of health care costs breaking the federal budget. This really is a code blue.

The Plan can take us back from the brink – if we act fast. The Plan will curb runaway costs and create a system markedly better than the one we have today. The key is acting fast. Just like you don’t wait 15 minutes after a flat line to use a defibrillator, we can’t wait 15 years to fix our health care system.

Kjelland will be will be talking about this issue in depth and leading a discussion on it Oct. 15 in Beckman Hall Room 209 at 6 p.m.