Health Care Reading List

[MikeDC]

Here's my required reading list for understanding why health care is fucked up (and yet, it could still get a lot worse), and what should be done about it.

1. How American Health Care Killed My Father. From The Atlantic. Choice quotes:

All of the actors in health care--from doctors to insurers to pharmaceutical companies--work in a heavily regulated, massively subsidized industry full of structural distortions.

For fun, let's imagine confiscating all the profits of all the famously greedy health-insurance companies. That would pay for four days of health care for all Americans. Let's add in the profits of the 10 biggest rapacious U.S. drug companies. Another 7 days.

Health Insurance Isn’t Health Care

You Are Not the Customer

2. John Mackey's (CEO and Founder of Whole Foods) WSJ editorial.

3. Essays by Megan McArdle, business editor of the Atlantic.

• Is What's Good for Pharma Good for America?
• What Does It Mean To Have a Private Health Care System
• A Long, Long Post About My Reasons For Opposing National Health Care

I don't agree with everything written by every one of these guys, but I think they're a lot closer to write than anyone that's proposing law these days.

 

[barfo]

Here's my required reading list for understanding why health care is fucked up (and yet, it could still get a lot worse), and what should be done about it.

1. How American Health Care Killed My Father. From The Atlantic.

That was a good read, thanks. But as the author himself observed, his suggestions aren't politically feasible. For better or worse, our system of government isn't built to make radical changes. Incremental change is the best we can hope for.

barfo

 

[Denny Crane]

"Health Insurance Isn’t Health Care"

That says it all.

At some point, the insurance companies must have figured that preventative care was good for profits. I don't see why people can't pay $35 once in a while or $100, to visit a doctor. Insurance should be there to help you in case of a catastrophe. Maybe if the deduction were $10K, an amount that shouldn't bankrupt people (people charge more on their charge cards...), the rates would go way down, and when you need that expensive operation, the insurance would cover it. The $35 copays and $20 prescriptions are some twisted way to have health care provided.

If the individual actually paid the doctor like in the old days, the costs wouldn't be so great.

Interesting thing is there's heavyweight corporations, like out of Atlas Shrugged, duking this one out. You have Pharma on one side and the insurance companies on the other. What does Pharma stand to gain? Guaranteed revenues and profits for life, backed by the full faith of the US government.

Evolution can be a bitch. Sick people go to the hospital, and we treat the bugs with anti-bug drugs. They adapt and we need stronger anti-bug drugs to kill them. When they're so tough to kill, it's easier for them to kill.

 

[BLAZER PROPHET]

Ya know, the real problem is that there is no real answer to making health care affordable, fair and without rising costs year in and year out. None.

Clearly, government health care is easily the worst possible solution. Costs far above private health care, worse care, slower care, it becomes a purely political process that ensures we remain with staggering debt until it forces the country into insolvency.

Private health care, for profit, creates it's own layers of beauracracy (misplelled?) and shareholders must be appeased. That, in and of itself, runs counter to the service they're supposed to be providing.

Doctors, hospitals, pharmacutical companies, plaintiff attorneys... are all too often greedy for gain and seek to rip off the carriers as well as government. You might be surprised how much overcare goes on. Month after month we read about plaintiff attorneys and doctors or chiropractors that stole millions of dollars in phoney scams...

In addition, there are unfathomable cost over runs in all areas of medicine.

All the government reform in the world isn't going to cure the situation.

Add to all that, the plaintiff attorneys run the show with respect to "tort reform", ensuring they can sue the hell out of insurance companies and just line their pockets. And that money eventually flows to a very liberal government. And a liberal activist bench is loathe to help out. About 90% of malpractice lawsuites have no element of liability, but litigation costs and/or jury sympathy (for cases that should never get to a jury) cost billions of dollars per year- all paid for by you & me in the end.

Barfo said something that is very true. All we can hope for from our government is small incremental changes. And I will argue that whenever a small incremental change occurrs, it is quickly and easily countered by plaintiff attorneys, insurance companies, politicians, doctors & hospitals, health care companies... so it really doesn't matter. I've seen it my whole life.

So long as politicians care more for themselves and not the people, so long as special interest groups (plaintiff attorneys, doctors, hospitals, insurance companies...) create so much influence and so long as government strives to interfere... the only thing we can be fully assured of is that it will all get worse until eventually it implodes or we're all broke- or both.

 

[Shapecity]

Ya know, the real problem is that there is no real answer to making health care affordable, fair and without rising costs year in and year out. None.

Clearly, government health care is easily the worst possible solution. Costs far above private health care, worse care, slower care, it becomes a purely political process that ensures we remain with staggering debt until it forces the country into insolvency.

Private health care, for profit, creates it's own layers of beauracracy (misplelled?) and shareholders must be appeased. That, in and of itself, runs counter to the service they're supposed to be providing.

Doctors, hospitals, pharmacutical companies, plaintiff attorneys... are all too often greedy for gain and seek to rip off the carriers as well as government. You might be surprised how much overcare goes on. Month after month we read about plaintiff attorneys and doctors or chiropractors that stole millions of dollars in phoney scams...

In addition, there are unfathomable cost over runs in all areas of medicine.

All the government reform in the world isn't going to cure the situation.

Add to all that, the plaintiff attorneys run the show with respect to "tort reform", ensuring they can sue the hell out of insurance companies and just line their pockets. And that money eventually flows to a very liberal government. And a liberal activist bench is loathe to help out. About 90% of malpractice lawsuites have no element of liability, but litigation costs and/or jury sympathy (for cases that should never get to a jury) cost billions of dollars per year- all paid for by you & me in the end.

Barfo said something that is very true. All we can hope for from our government is small incremental changes. And I will argue that whenever a small incremental change occurrs, it is quickly and easily countered by plaintiff attorneys, insurance companies, politicians, doctors & hospitals, health care companies... so it really doesn't matter. I've seen it my whole life.

So long as politicians care more for themselves and not the people, so long as special interest groups (plaintiff attorneys, doctors, hospitals, insurance companies...) create so much influence and so long as government strives to interfere... the only thing we can be fully assured of is that it will all get worse until eventually it implodes or we're all broke- or both.

That is the sobering truth right there.