Do you know the secret for saving the health care system? Well, the first healthcare reform competition is still on. If you haven’t had a chance to submit yet, there’s still time to get your entry in. Go on. Dazzle us with your brilliance! Thrill us with your insight! Just don’t go over 250 words!!!
Technorati: healthcare, health, insurance, policy, politics, economics, medicare, news and politics
Categories: Uncategorized
Since health care costs are eventually going to drive many more Americans into bankruptcy before too long, why does the medical profession in general together with the drug companies still continue to resist universal health insurance? Despite the faults in many of the Government-run health schemes in operation throughout most other industrialised nations, the benefits to their populations as a whole far outweigh them. Study them all, pick out the best points from each of them then surely you Americans can come up with the finest health care system in the world. Your present fragmented, profit-driven set-up frankly just stinks.
Repeal Medicare and keep Medicaid with the requirement for preventive services.
You may not like the proposal but it would change the health care system in many ways and most of them would be beneficial.
My 175 word suggestion to control healthcare costs:
Assumption: Increasing utilization (too many purchases)is the motor for driving up healthcare costs.
Assumption: Marketing drives up demand for purchases.
Assumption: Many purchased healthcare options are not worth the money but are demanded because of marketing.
Assumption: Healthcare providers compete by providing more services, not by lowering prices.
The net result of the above assumptions is a delivery system that creates demand for services.
The only way to lower costs is to cut back on services. There are 2 good ways to do that.
1)Make people pay for their healthcare.
2)Create a single payer system that decides what to pay for.
1) is what we are gradually doing now. The net result of this system ultimately is that people will forego needed care.
2) is a more humane option in that necessary care will be covered. How to decide what is covered? Use the Oregon Title 19 system to bring consumers into the decision process. Society thus makes the decisions about what expenditures are needed, not providers.
If you only used the word “SECRET” in the original post. Then the answer is one word: OPENNESS.
And you’ve got until Dec. 5 to do a 175-word version and take a shot at the $100,000 at SEIU’s sinceslicedbread.com contest…
Hey Matt. I linked this post on our site. I hope that brings in some submissions. Good Luck, and great idea!