Health Care Reform, a sensible alternative overlooked

[Archaea]

http://www.businessweek.com/managing...818_100284.htm

Proposals:

1. The greatest risk to individuals is facing catastrophic events without insurance. Instead of providing full insurance coverage, the government should sponsor self-funded low-premium, high-deductible catastrophic coverage plans. Catastrophic coverage would kick in after the individual absorbed the deductible. To reduce deductibles, consumers could pay higher monthly premiums.



2. To administer these plans, the government should set up insurance cooperatives that require mandatory portability for workers changing jobs and no limitations for pre-existing conditions, so that no one would fear loss of health-care coverage. These cooperatives would be self-funded and run independently under rules set by the government. All billing would be handled electronically to eliminate paperwork.



3. To address lifestyle issues contributing to the high cost of chronic disease, the federal government should launch a national wellness and prevention campaign—much like the smoking cessation campaign—focusing on sound nutrition, physical fitness, stress management, and reduction of obesity.



4. The federal government should partner with state and local governments to expand community clinics that provide basic services for modest fees and teach people how to improve their health. These clinics would also help consumers access the massive amount of health-care information available on the Internet. This approach puts responsibility for healthy lifestyles where it belongs—on individuals, with support from their caregivers.



5. To promote quality outcomes for chronic disease, the government would shift from reimbursing procedures to paying for keeping people healthy. Physicians and hospitals would be paid for keeping people well, not doing more procedures and tests. Physicians and caregivers would develop integrated approaches to patient care, rather than automatically opting for high-tech, high-cost approaches.



Comparative effectiveness studies would help patients and physicians choose the most cost-effective, proven procedures for treating chronic illness, including accelerated approval of generic drugs after patents expire.



6. Changes in tort laws should be enacted to protect physicians and hospitals that follow these procedures from punitive damage claims, thereby reducing the malpractice claims and class action suits that dramatically drive up costs.



7. To address high end-of-life costs, patients would shift to hospice facilities or their homes where they would receive palliative care.

But oh no, Obamacare will bankrupt our systems of care.

[MikeWaters]

If I am an inpatient hospital doc, how in the hell do I keep people well outside the hospital?

Call their home teachers?

Some of this is pie-in-the-sky easy-to-say hard-to-do stuff.

Yeah, it would be great if Americans let their dying die, but who's going to make them? Their pastors?

[Archaea]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

If I am an inpatient hospital doc, how in the hell do I keep people well outside the hospital?

Call their home teachers?

Some of this is pie-in-the-sky easy-to-say hard-to-do stuff.

Yeah, it would be great if Americans let their dying die, but who's going to make them? Their pastors?

The concept of government mandated, and government controlled, health care systems and insurance reform, is pie in the sky stuff.

Obama and his ilk typify "it's always the other guy's fault" form of logic. The wellness aspect of health care reform is substantially ignored from what I've read.

I guess fat people vote too.

[MikeWaters]

There's really only one way to cut medical spending.

Rationing of care.

There are other things that can be done--like creating more out of pocket costs so the cost of care is actually tied to the kinds of economic decisions that people make.

I have a new medical benefit, I just found out. Employees and family members qualify for discounted cosmetic surgery. Hooray!!!

[Archaea]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

There's really only one way to cut medical spending.

Rationing of care.

There are other things that can be done--like creating more out of pocket costs so the cost of care is actually tied to the kinds of economic decisions that people make.

I have a new medical benefit, I just found out. Employees and family members qualify for discounted cosmetic surgery. Hooray!!!

Well, if Cali is to be believed that we spend too much GNP on health care about 20 percent, and we wish to increase those participating in the twenty percent, then what everybody receives who's already receiving health will be less. It's total BS to believe government will cut substantially from the costs to make up for the difference.

So rationing is the only way or my prediction of drastic increases in costs will result, which they will.

[Archaea]

Some simple obvious concepts here.

If you want to include persons not receiving a product or service, you will either have to increase what you pay or you will have to take away from others.

And there isn't enough in administrative concepts, even if you believed in the magic fairy of government cost savings, to make up the difference.

Health care is not the issue about which most people are concerned. But thanks Obama for f...ing us in the rear any way.