There’s been a lot of discussion abouth health insurance on Open Salon, ever since Cindy Ross’s eloquent post put a human face on the problem. It’s not my intention to chronicle everything that is wrong with our nation’s train wreck of a health care system. I’ll confine myself to just one point. People like to argue about whether “socialized medicine” would be preferable to a free market. One poster, commenting on Ms. Ross’s story, asked rhetorically, “Do you really think the government could have done [any] better?” As if the government is not now involved in the allocation of medical resources.
It’s a waste of time debating the merits of the free market versus “socialized medicine.” For better or for worse, that train left the station a long time ago. Today, the taxpayers foot the bill for 58% of our health care costs. On a per capita basis, that is more than TOTAL spending on medical care in all but three other countries. That should be enough to indemnify every man, woman, and child in the United states, with hundreds of billions of dollars left over.
The problem is, we have a system which is a sinister hybrid of socialism and capitalism, and which combines the worst of both worlds. The government collects the taxes and hands the money over to the hospitals, which in turn have a responsibility to their shareholders to maximize profits, which means that there is an enormous incentive to push as many expensive and invasive treatments on patients as possible. Nobody is responsible for maximizing patient outcomes.
To give one example: every year thousands of people die and tens of thousands are left with varying degrees of dementia due to bypass surgeries and cardiac catheterizations, even though studies have shown that, except for the three percent of patients with left main disease, these procedures are no better than non-invasive treatments. See these books by Shannon Brownlee and Nortin M. Hadler, M.D. for details on this and a whole slew of other examples.
So let’s drop all the yammering about socialized medicine. This isn’t a matter of asking for a handout. With all the taxes we pay, it’s time we started demanding our money be spent in a rational manner.
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Dr. Evan Levine
old new lefty
Unbreakable
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Comments
And, I would add, it's time we started demanding that our tax money go into the direct provision of health care rather than into the pockets of health industry executives and shareholders.
Yes, exactly.
Thanks to both of you for your comments.
My take, avoid, avoid, avoid; the sadistic criminal minds which, and his is the key word here, "practice" medicine and the when current Administration asked for my help more than one year ago I sent my healthcare proposal and their physician adviser, vehemently rejected it. So, be it. Alas there is no Messiah on the horizon, nor even an FDR. The Legalized Drug Dealers Of America and their Pushers, 95% of the physicians, are part of the problem, the other is allowing the rat-bastards to advertise their street legal drugs to the many future, addicts.
Great post.
Thanks. Also, please see my post, "War On Drugs = War On Sanity."
We pay more in taxes for health care than you do. Too bad nobody is watching to make sure we get a dollar's worth of health care for every dollar spent.
Fifty percent of the people who declare bankruptcy in this country had unpaid medical bills. Meanwhile, the medical profession is the third-biggest cause of death in this country. We can't afford to go on this way. It's bankrupting us and killing us.