There's a lot of subjective opinion, grand generalizations, baseless assumptions, and deliberate avoidance of opposing data in that post. In addition there are a number of jabs at free market failures in something that cannot be characterized as a free market.
I personally believe that there should be reform, but I also believe that not a single bill set forward so far will do anything to actually address the issues facing our nation. Politicians have convinced people that the best thing we can do is to put an insurance card in everyone's pockets. Well putting cards in pockets is easy, putting doctors in clinics and medicines on store shelves is far harder and that's why no one is talking about it.
Where's the incentives to get new students studying to be general practitioners? Where's the tax cuts and process streamlining to get lifesaving dugs to market without requiring tens or hundreds of millions in private funds for research and testing which inevitably leads to pricing the drugs out of the reach of many of the target patients?
No, Washington isn't looking for solutions. It's looking for an easy bandaid to cover the problem up for a few more election cycles when it becomes someone else's problem.
I agree. Most of what's been proposed so far will not solve the problems of our current system and may actually make things worse.
Anyone who truly cares about reforming the actual underlying problems in our health care system should read this article because I think it does a pretty good job nailing down the events that got us into this situation and some possible solutions...
I read that article a little while back & it is a great article.
But.
Politics is always about the art of the possible. Considering how much screaming hysteria has been set off by the fairly small changes that the current round of health care bills propose, how do you think we would ever make the huge, systemic changes that this article suggests we need? I am open to suggestions - I don't know how it could be done.
Given that, I think the health care reform that HAS been proposed is better than nothing & therefore it should be passed.
You know something? The Kennedy administration tried increasing the number of doctors by offering massive Federal aid for med students. We ended up with a lot more doctors, but costs didn't come down - all those doctors ended up doing a lot more procedures & whatnot. The system of incentives is broken, & just adding more medical care to the supply side of the equation will fix nothing.
Keep in mind that the system of incentives was designed by the same bodies of politicians that are now clamoring for more authority to fix these problems... that they created.
As the number of doctos increase so does the maximum volume of rendered care. We want the doctors to do a a lot more procedures and whatnot. That's why we have them. Many areas in America are critically short of general practitioners as it is. Let's suppose that the proposed health care bill is 100% successful in gaining coverage for another 46 million Americans that currently has no insurance.
That's a problem. We don't have enough doctors now, and when you add another 46 million people on top of that something has to give. It's less of "a rising tide lifts all boats" and more "I'm going to shorten the stilts on your house to prop up mine, so we all will get soaked."
Add in the expanded Medicare and Medicaid, both of which are in the process of cutting payments to reduce costs, government interference between doctor and patient, and you have a change in health care policy that not only fails to do what it's intended to do, rather it is actually harmful to health care and the economy.
The proposed plan is bad, dangerous, and prohibitively expensive. When it inevitably fails the politicians are simply going to claim that we didn't try hard enough rather than admit that it was poorly conceived to begin with.
Just because you educate more doctors doesn't mean they are going to be where the people in need of care are located. They will respond to the economic incentives that are in place, & they will go where they can make the most money (& why not? It's what we all do.). So you end up with more doctors in the rich suburbs, performing more & more possibly unnecessary procedures on the population that's already receiving health care.
Actually, my whole day yesterday was an adventure in exactly that kind of doctoring. I will try to write it up today.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2009-10-06 11:36 pm (UTC)I personally believe that there should be reform, but I also believe that not a single bill set forward so far will do anything to actually address the issues facing our nation. Politicians have convinced people that the best thing we can do is to put an insurance card in everyone's pockets. Well putting cards in pockets is easy, putting doctors in clinics and medicines on store shelves is far harder and that's why no one is talking about it.
Where's the incentives to get new students studying to be general practitioners? Where's the tax cuts and process streamlining to get lifesaving dugs to market without requiring tens or hundreds of millions in private funds for research and testing which inevitably leads to pricing the drugs out of the reach of many of the target patients?
No, Washington isn't looking for solutions. It's looking for an easy bandaid to cover the problem up for a few more election cycles when it becomes someone else's problem.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-07 03:28 am (UTC)Anyone who truly cares about reforming the actual underlying problems in our health care system should read this article because I think it does a pretty good job nailing down the events that got us into this situation and some possible solutions...
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200909/health-care
no subject
Date: 2009-10-07 06:08 pm (UTC)But.
Politics is always about the art of the possible. Considering how much screaming hysteria has been set off by the fairly small changes that the current round of health care bills propose, how do you think we would ever make the huge, systemic changes that this article suggests we need? I am open to suggestions - I don't know how it could be done.
Given that, I think the health care reform that HAS been proposed is better than nothing & therefore it should be passed.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-07 02:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-09 02:31 pm (UTC)As the number of doctos increase so does the maximum volume of rendered care. We want the doctors to do a a lot more procedures and whatnot. That's why we have them. Many areas in America are critically short of general practitioners as it is. Let's suppose that the proposed health care bill is 100% successful in gaining coverage for another 46 million Americans that currently has no insurance.
That's a problem. We don't have enough doctors now, and when you add another 46 million people on top of that something has to give. It's less of "a rising tide lifts all boats" and more "I'm going to shorten the stilts on your house to prop up mine, so we all will get soaked."
Add in the expanded Medicare and Medicaid, both of which are in the process of cutting payments to reduce costs, government interference between doctor and patient, and you have a change in health care policy that not only fails to do what it's intended to do, rather it is actually harmful to health care and the economy.
The proposed plan is bad, dangerous, and prohibitively expensive. When it inevitably fails the politicians are simply going to claim that we didn't try hard enough rather than admit that it was poorly conceived to begin with.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-09 04:53 pm (UTC)Actually, my whole day yesterday was an adventure in exactly that kind of doctoring. I will try to write it up today.