But what is the correct answer?
Letting the insurance and medical fields out price medical care isn't the answer.
Letting the drug companies rob those in need blindly sure the hell isn't the answer.
Letting some of the population go uninsured and thus hiking the cost for those that carry insurance isn't working.
Telling a sector of the population that you can't afford proper healthcare isn't the answer.
Allowing the lawyers the wiggle room for frivolous litigation suit after suit driving up the providers liability hasn't worked either.
I do agree, allowing the government to oversee it will only layer the costs and the money grab some more.
Simply put.. we the people as a whole are consuming ourselves consistently.
So again.. what is the correct answer?
I am convinced, just as history has proven again and again, every civilization will rise and will fall. And we are not on the uptick.
Originally Posted by: Pack93z
1. Even with all of the above, health care in America is *STILL* the best in human history. Especially if you account for biggies (rarely counted by anyone, but incredibly significant) of life expectancy, quality of food, and, IMO the biggest of all -- childhood nutrition. Go back any multiple of 25 or 50 years and you'll discover that all the whining about junk food, unwed parents,etc. notwithstanding, today is the best it's ever been.
Most complaining about health care, including my own, demands that which has never been systematically available to everyone. But guess what, it's never been because no one has figured out how to get it (apart from stealing from others to pay for it. In the bad old days, the king stole wealth from the peasants; now, we've been conned into believing we can magically become healthier by stealing from each other via taxes and good government planning.
2. The notion that government can somehow find a way to do what has never been possible before I see as absolutely ludicrous. Doing what has never been possible before demands productive innovation. The *only* thing that government has ever demonstrated it is able to do consistently better than someone else: (i) coerced transfer payments; (ii) national defense; and, sometimes, (iii) courts and the adjudication of contract disputes.
3. I'm not a fan of big health care institutions.. Having taught for 20+ years, I have some knowledge of the average thinking and quantitative quality of those who go into insurance. Some of those former students I know were and are fantastic; far too many of them come from the bottom third, and are people I wouldn't trust a penny of my money with, much less my health care if I could avoid it.
So I'm not going to sit here and claim Behemoth Private Hospital and Unbenevolent Insurance Company are saviors. They're not.
I will only say that prior attempts to improve the way they do things through state through regulation almost always makes things even worse. And it ALWAYS makes the total bill more expensive. Just look at all the paper generated by insurance claims, reimbursement, policy terms, etc., etc. -- THAT is the second big reason why health care is so damn expensive today. It's why many of the rich who pay for "concierge care" can get far more care at a price lower than the rest of us schmos would ever get did we try to buy it through the system we deal with: the people who care for it don't have to mess around with a few dozen separate bureaucracies all of them demanding forms filled out to satisfy CPAs, lawyers, health care consultants, and assorted other experts at pushing paper and using the Excel chart templates.
The biggest reason we have went down this road to mega-hospitals with their snazzy hand-held buzzers for patients sitting in their firing-squad-styled waiting rooms, mega-mega-insurance companies with Press-1-to-hold, Press-2-to-disconnect, Press-3-to-wait-for-me-to-learn-how-to-pass-the-buck, and doctors charging 100+ bucks for ten minutes and a glance at the PDR on their blackberry? Big companies are the only ones who can afford all the compliance shit and CPAs and high end lawyers and the like.
Me, I'd ban ALL government-provided health care except that provided to necessary government employees. And my list of necessary government employees would be very short: health care to military personnel "in harm's way" and to veterans for disabilities caused from being in harm's way, trial court judges, and those who maintain sewer and water systems. No one else.
And I'd make all elected officials and appellate court judges would be explicitly banned from EVER getting government-paid benefits of any kind, and would be required to pay a pro-rata share of the care provided to anyone else (that I didn't just specify) that they might classify as "necessary employees.
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Romans 12:2 (NKJV)