The following are comments and ideas from two different people:
Comment from a woman who works in the healthcare industry and is involved in the issue on a state level.
My opinion is a 3 way focus to start fixing the problem:
1) It will be the integration of current (broken) systems into a regulated database format. Digitizing and entire industry can happen under the Dept of Health and Human services...only from the top-down!
2 ) Preventing and teaching of preventative strategies...beginning at the elementary school level, also a Health and Human services project...but implementing systems of life-skills, self care and health/planet care and education to the next generation MUST happen for this civilization to come through this on top.
3) lastly, the sin tax...exactly! Those who make personal decisions that compromise their health have incentive to do so. Reverse incentives can only happen with an overhaul of lobby, corporate greed and installing a bit of regard for human life into out corporate/food priority system :)
This can all happen...if we can see it, it is possible. keep passing the vision along, remember that you're planting seeds that will be sowed!
Small business owner who has had professional exposure to/involvement with a few different areas of our healthcare system.
I do believe that all Americans should have the opportunity to buy health care insurance. If I didn't have my business I would not be able to buy private insurance. Once you reach a certain age, the insurance companies do not want to insure you...they will cite pre existing conditions.
Clearly the system we have now is not working. A few years ago while working for a healthcare publication, I sat through a presentation by a company president extolling the wonders of automating drug dispensing at hospitals and tracking of patient care, electronically. When I commented that the semiconductor business has been offering similar systems for 20 years, he commented that the healthcare business is 20 years behind.
Finally, maybe the government can come up with a cash for clunkers program for the terminally ill
My response (Tonia Becker) to his post:
Thanks for the comment. Yes, the operational side of the healthcare industry (including pharmaceutical manufacturing) is 20 years behind. I do not buy the healthcare industry's arguments that the government stands in their way--the government makes it too expensive to upgrade efficiencies. There is some degree of truth to this. But, European and Japanese regulations are just as and in some cases more stringent than ours and their costs of delivering healthcare is much, much lower. Their systems are simply more efficient.
The US healthcare system (which includes a lot of different types of players--pharma companies, hospitals, doctors, health insurance companies, etc. etc) have not made operational efficiency upgrades because they have not had to. A great deal of profit was being achieved without operating efficiently--why would a private company spend money to increase efficiencies? The simple answer is, they do not.
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With regards to whether or not health insurance or healthcare is a "right", I can't say it any better than this document:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.westandfirm.org/Peikoff-01.html
With regards to whether public health insurance or mandatory health insurance will fix our healthcare woes, I can't say it any better than this document:
http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2008-fall/mandatory-health-insurance.asp
Americans are innovative people. We can fix this problem without allowing the govenment to become an even bigger player in the healthcare industry. While the stakes are high, there are multiple solutions to our troubles (some mentioned above) that would go much further to correct our problems than adding a public health insurance option to the mix. Vist this conversation to hear from doctors, insurance agents and concerned Americans about brainstorming ideas to fix our healthcare system:
http://www.facebook.com/wall.php?id=52751799540#/topic.php?uid=52751799540&topic=9921
Thanks for your post. I disagree with some of the position. Specifically some of the positions outlined in the "Health Care is Not a Right" article. In my view, Libertarian philosophy is just as impractical as Communist/Marxist philosophies. All are nice ideas, but don't work in reality.
ReplyDeleteIn a society as large and complex as ours, we need rules and bodies to set the rules. The government is the only logical entity to do this as people do not, as demonstrated, self regulate very well.
Government is not the be all and end all by any means, nor is the the private sector. Both institutions go at times horribly wrong.
Thanks for the article from The Objective Standard. I have had it on my to do list to do more reading about the MA experiment. I need to do some additional reading before I could comment as I always look for information from a few different sources on complex issues such as this. I do not, on whole, agree with the stated positions of The Objective Standard. I do not believe that the world is as simple as true or false, right or wrong on many issues. And I do not believe in laissez-faire capitalism.
I do believe that "capitalism" is the best market system at humanity's current disposal. But, I do not believe that there is any such thing as a "free market." Markets are man made games, not forces of nature. The magic question always is what are the rules of the game, not should there be rules of the game.
Thanks again for the post and for the info.