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:-)