here's hoping health care reform fails

I'm easy to figure. I don't get the money strapping re health care in contrast to the billions/trillions spent on war. I live in a bizarre country. And I'm not a fan of war in general, I think of it as last resort. But, there is this industry..

My faith in the ability of those strange souls who feel compeled to figure out for everyone else what is really good for, them and for government in implementing their usually unrealistic ideas, to make just about any bad situation far worse - is undiminished.

How about giveing people the option of going to a government health plan and seeing what happens. The republican view that health care is perfect sucks and being against something no matter what isent a rational plan.

As Ze Frank said:

When you lose your car, people can say "Well at least you have your health." However, when you are sick, you don't see a line forming to tell you that at least you still have your car.

We can't talk about health care like it is any other good or service. It is more than that and we all know it. I am for universal health care, and I see that the current political climate isn't going to budge on that idea. I still see the value in the current HCR. I see health care as a right, not a simple service.

We can deal with difficult. Difficult is still better than denial of access.

T
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It's entirely possible that the political process that defines how our congress works, makes it impossible for congress to construct an efficient and functional health care plan.

Congress functions by negotiating solutions between counterpoints and anticipating the likely votes needed to pass measures, not by engineering a solution as a response to the conditions at hand. Health Care can't be solved by committee, it needs to be solved as an engineering problem guided by medical and economic realities.

In my opinion, the president should have ordered an impartial engineering approach to constructing a functional health care policy and then tried his best to ram it through congress, not allowed congress to cobble together their own plan designed to fit the needs of congressional voting.

TORT reform would also help.

I have mixed feelings about whether the current effort should fail or not. I like some of the insurance regulation that's included but ultimately I don't want universal health care insurance. I want universal health care and I don't want the public option to be provided through the private system. On one hand I don't want to see the effort of reform completely defeated but on the other I worry that going half way is worse.

Agree.

Insurance regulation, sure. It is unconscionable that they can and do cancel policies just when they're needed most, and also agree that public option should not be through private insurers. My biggest concern is that whatever passes this year is not going to be well thought out, and is going to be more complex in execution than necessary. Also, if a bill passes this year, I'm very afraid we are going to be stuck with it for a very long time.

I actually take it a step further, I don't want a public insurance program either, I want limited public health care.



I agree that whatever this effort produces is unlikely to be the best solution, and I also agree that we are likely to be stuck with it for quite a while, but I think the status quo is pretty bad and only getting worse. I also fear that failure to reform health care at all might mean being stuck with the status quo for a long time.

I am on board with tort reform. It should be part of the bill.

I think it's a necessity since the bulk of health care cost come from insurance against litigation in one form or another.

Are you sure? I will buy into significant, but I doubt that it is the bulk of the costs. I generally feel that doctor fees themselves are usually pretty reasonable, when you consider the amount of staff the average GP has to support, and much of the staff is nonmedical stuff like Medicare compliance, and dealing with all the different medical insurance companies. Hospital charges, on the other hand, seem divorced from reality, though there could be factors I'm not aware of.

brown is ABSOLUTELY right!

the largest problem in health care are the patients. america has become so spoiled that the people think they have a right to everything. people want health care but don't want to pay for it. it would be possible to have basic health care for everyone in the country but people want more than basic.

there is a single thing that will make health care in this country manageable: telling patients NO.

one of the leading chronic illnesses in this country is obesity. it causes cardiac problems, diabetes 2, COPD, sleep apnea, arthritis and a host of other issues. and nearly all of these are reversible. the problem is that people don't care. they want the easy way out. they would rather do as they want and just take a pill - not responsibility.

i would like to see a program where we, instead of treating diabetes for 20 years which is NOT cheap, give the patient a plan. the plan would include them losing 10-15% of their body weight per year or pay a steeper premium/penalty. instead of paying for several decades of meds, i suggest we first pay for a lap-band. an $8000 operation such as that would go much further in preventing illness than treating their self-imposed illness.

the EMTALA laws also need to be changed so that EDs are not forced to treat everyone without question. i *constantly* hear about the patients going to the ED complaining of chest pain or seizures or back pain just so they can get drugs. they are conveniently always allergic to the NSAIDs and tylenols... only the narcotics work... some even claim to be allergic to steroids (which is impossible). but doctors cannot legally dismiss this. they are bound by law and VERY VERY VERY stiff penalties to treat these people. it's ridiculous.

I think it is a major contributing factor to the underlying costs. Many doctors practice defensive medicine now (defense against being sued for not doing something). It's not uncommon for laboratory biopsies to be ordered for every scrap of tissue which is removed even if there is no reason to suspect cancer. And it's not uncommon for MRI's and other procedures to be ordered simply because if they are not, and later something turns up, the Doctor can be sued.

No single problem lies at the root of health care costs, but I believe that the interaction between legal concerns (malpractice) and the way the insurance industry manages premiums, exceeds that actual cost of pure health care science (medicine).

And then there's the pharmaceutical industry and the price controls they maintain through political lobbying...

If we could start from scratch and build a health care system which had nothing to do with legal issues or insurance or price controls, then I think an efficient system could be designed and then implemented. Unfortunately, such systems need to be designed by scientists and engineers, not by politicians who are worried about who gives them the largest campaign contributions.

i personally know several physicians who defensively order tests. many patients look at trips to the hospital like a lottery ticket.