Ok, since that thread is getting all packed out with racism and illegal immigration, I figured I'd spawn off a new topic dedicated to politics, specifically....


Healthcare.

Discuss.

My views are on the thread below, but I'll ellaborate more as people post their own thoughts. My thought is that the current US policies towards healthcare are fragile and slowly moving towards their inevitable collapse. My thought also, is that Carter was an asshole when he devised the current system we have of referrals and primary care physicians. Ideally, I'd like a minimalist system and some way to bring competition into the healthcare industry to drive down prices, as opposed to the current trend of spiraling them upwards. Rather than going with a highly restricted, socialistic universal healthcare system (something I believe would utterly stagnate R&D in the medical industry if the United States adopted it), we should go with a far more open and unrestricted system.

I'm not exactly sure how it should work though, what're your thoughts?

One (arguably large) part of why healthcare costs more now is that there are more drugs, more tests, and more therapies than ever before. Back in the day you didn't get an expensive MRI or CAT scan because they didn't exist. You didn't take a fancy (and expensive) drug for your high blood pressure because there wasn't one to take.

Honestly I think the important thing to know is what the desired end result is... Obviously the best healthcare possible... but how?

How do you devise a system where it is:

In the health care industry's best (financial) interests for you to be healthy in such a way that you don't need them other than regular checkups leveraged against some serious motivation for making sure things don't go undiagnosed because it is cheaper.

I don't know how this is possible even in the ideal, let alone in a real life system.

That's definately one part of it, additionally the full battery of tests get given probably a lot more often than they are necessary since, typically, they're trying to maximize the bill they're sending to the payer.

Actually it's not just to maximize the bill, it's to cover the doctors butts incase something goes wrong. If something goes wrong they want to be able to say look see I did this, so they don't get there butts sued. Part of the skyrocketing cost of healthcare is the skyrocketing cost of malpractice insurance. I think there are two ways to fix this part of the problem, first doctors need to do a better job of policing themselves when it comes to incompentent doctors though there review boards. I know it's tough when the boards are made of doctors and you don't want revoke a doctors license because it could happen to you, but the incompentent ones are the ones driving up the cost of the insurance. Second, there needs to be more restraint on the "frivilous" lawsuits that end up in our courts.

This is a red herring, imho. Here's an editorial:

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0126-27.htm

Relevant quote:

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office finds that the costs associated with malpractice--buying insurance and paying out damage awards--amounts to less than two percent of America's skyrocketing healthcare expenses. "Even a reduction of 25 percent to 30 percent in malpractice costs would lower healthcare costs by only about 0.4 percent to 0.5 percent, and the likely effect on health insurance premiums would be comparably small," the CBO determined.

That article is extremely biased, but here's the document from the CBO where they got their numbers.

http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=4968&sequence=0

I actually don't think limiting the amount you can sue somebody for is the answer. I was aiming more for the what they talk about in the quote below, that it will help reduce the number of things done because the doctors are scared of getting sued. I guess I'm just going on the things my Doctor sister-in-law tells me.

Advocates or opponents cite other possible effects of limiting tort liability, such as reducing the extent to which physicians practice "defensive medicine" by conducting excessive procedures; preventing widespread problems of access to health care; or conversely, increasing medical injuries. However, evidence for those other effects is weak or inconclusive.

I worked at one time for a neurosurgeon. The guy got sued left and right. Frankly, it wasn't his fault. What'd happen is, someone would come in with a malignant case of glioblastoma which has progressed, and they're given, more or less a death sentence of 6 months to a year, assuming they put a wafer in their brain or take chemo, maybe 2 years. They die and their loved ones sue.

They never win...they just sue. Honestly, I wish there was a way to have a more efficient system where the endless malicious lawsuits weren't such a burden.

You're also correct in that, lack of documentation accounts for the lion's share of victories against doctors in lawsuits.

One could argue that health care in this country has been too inexpensive for too many and that the market is just correcting itself right now. How many people go into the doctor for the sniffles, because an office visit is free or they only have a $10 copay? How many people are getting drugs for diseases that aren't necessarily diseases or because the drug is the easy way to fix the problem? Take the high blood pressure medication example, most people, if they watched there food intake, and excersied a little, wouldn't need the fancy drug, but taking the drug is much easier than changing there lifestyle. But if the prescription copay is only $10 for the drugs alot of people think "Why the heck not it's only $10."

This all is trickle down from Jimmy Carter's perspective on managed healthcare. You're right, the whole system is crack-tastic.