Thursday, October 09, 2008

More on Debate #2

I'm not Carrie Bradshaw gets my "Most perceptive blogger" award for the day, although I am not telling you why:-P. But, trust me...she knows all of your secrets!!! She also confessed that she originally thought I was an aspiring author trying to land a book deal...hmmm...a book deal, you say:-) (For the record, I don't want a book deal. Unless it pays me enormous sums of money and requires little to no actual work. In that case, call my agent.)

Anyway, it seems like most of the debate analysis is in line with my own...total snooze that was good for neither candidate and bad for all of us. I have a couple of points left over that I forgot to make yesterday.

First of all, in two Presidential and one Vice Presidential debate now, we have heard not a single word about abortion, gun control, judicial appointments or immigration. Does anyone else find that kind of odd? I understand that the news has been about economic and financial issues...but to totally ignore those, and to spend only a minuscule amount of time on education or other social issues...I dunno, I question who is setting the debate agendas.

Second, the health care discussion was horrifying. Hillary Clinton may have been off the mark in 1992, but she was right in her basic thesis that the whole system needed to be torn up and re-built. Really, if McCain and Obama represent the best ideas that we have, we oughta just quit right now and let everyone fend for themselves. I thought Obama was a single-payer, universal health care fan...did I miss something?

Regardless, the entire discussion revolves around pushing costs from one bucket to another...business should pay, individuals should pay, government should pay, etc. They are totally missing the point...we need to remove cost from the system, not reallocate it. They did mention some IT and automation, which is certainly a good idea, but is just a drop in the bucket. The basic, core issue is that doctors and patients make decisions without regard to the cost of the decision because neither of them is effected by how much it costs. Until we institute some cost controls into the system, the cost of health care will continue to spiral upwards.

Newt Gingrich is right...unless people have to make a pocketbook decision about care, they will ALWAYS choose the most expensive option. And what does that do? Drives up the overall cost of care that we all share, and encourages people to feel entitled to get three kinds of MRI's every time they sprain an ankle. And yes, in two paragraphs I just said positive things about Hillary Clinton and about Newt Gingrich. Try and find that somewhere else!!!

I also object to calling our system "insurance" at all. It is not, it is a communal payer system. If it were insurance, then all regular and routine health care expenses would be out-of-pocket, insurance would be much cheaper and it would exist to cover the catastrophic, un-predictable events. Your homeowners insurance doesn't cover painting, cleaning the gutters or filling the oil tank...but it covers a fire. Your car insurance doesn't cover dings, scrapes or oil changes, but it covers damage above and beyond a certain amount.

I could go on, but I imagine you are already bored out of your mind...

In better news, it is Thursday, and we all know what that means:-)

7 comments:

Ally said...

You're right about people needing to feel the cost. And that's the great thing about HSA/high deductible plans. When I first got one I started asking doctors about the cost of a visit before scheduling it. One doctor wanted over $200 for an initial visit when I had an earache. Needless to say I ended up seeing a physician's assistant for $95, resulting in a 2 minute appointment (that's an awesome billable rate btw) and a prescription for a Z pack.

Anyway we need to be smart consumers even when it comes to our health care....we seem to forget that.

Anonymous said...

CHICKEN FINGERS!!!!

(That's all I took away from this post. Sorry, I'm a Canadian living in the U.S.... I'm totally clued out.)

Aaron said...

How long have I been ranting about both candidates? Is this the best each party has to offer???

Our Happy Married Life... said...

chicken fingers with Munchkin and SHR and the scientist? I've been reading... haha Have fun! :)

Accidentally Me said...

Ally - Amen!

Dawn - Blah blah blah, blah blah blah. Chicken fingers!!!

Aaron - Um...unfortunately, do you have anyone better in mind? I don't...

Amy - I see that some congratulations are in order:-)

Anonymous said...

Obama's not a single payer universal health care guy - that was Edwards.

I agree that we need to be smart consumers. I work in the medical field, and I see the benefits of that day in and day out.

However I do disagree with you slightly.

Expensive insurance doesn't actually drive up the cost of care. Large swaths of uninsured populations ACTUALLY drive up the cost of care, because then when they show up at an emergency department, there is an obligation to treat - even if a hospital will never see a dime from the care given them. That means that the buck gets passed on to the rest of the health care users, because in order to stay solvent, that MRI you get will also be helping keep the hospital financially afloat & covering all of the care given to un- or under-insured people.

Also, I have great insurance, and still stuff costs a lot. So I think that I have a financial interest in it. 80% of my care is covered, but on a $500 procedure, that's still $100. If my deductible has been met before. On my salary, that's an appreciable amount of money. I'm just sayin'. When you're poor, every cost has an impact. For the rich, maybe not so much.

So yes, if everyone has insurance, cost goes down for all.

Also, our society is so litigous that there's a lot of CYA-medicine being practiced. So and so PROBABLY doesn't need a belly CT scan, but if you don't get it ordered, and there turns out to be some RARE weird thing going on that is easily diagnosed as something else, then BAM! You get sued. So there's the cost of unnecessary CTs being ordered left and right to avoid law suits, and also there's the cost of malpractice insurance, and lawyers, and admin, and and and.

The system is broken. It needs to be fixed, and the best way to do that is unclear. But I do know this - deregulation is NOT the answer in regards to health care.

boohoo said...

Thank God we have the NHS is all I can say. NHS dentists fell off the map recently so the cost of those visits means I haven't seen the dentist in about two years.