We don’t have a deficit problem, we have a health-care policy problem
The graphs demonstrate, in the words of James Hamilton, that “Americans want an increasing government contribution to health care, but don’t want to pay for it.” It might be tempting to conclude from this that we either need to raise taxes to a level that corresponds to the government contribution we want, or we need to cut government spending, or both.
But that’s not the whole answer. Raising taxes might make citizens more sensitive to the real cost of healthcare, but it would kill small businesses already struggling under tax burdens, particularly as they take on the costs imposed by Obamacare. Reducing government spending might close the budget gap this year, but it would still leave our healthcare system struggling with inefficiencies and ever rising costs.
America needs to find ways of transforming the healthcare industry, not just ways to temporarily narrow the budget gap.
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Well I’d take the examples of Cosmetic Surgery and Lunch as an my models…The government isn’t providing boob jobs and they don’t provide me lunch. As a result there are a host of options and payment plans available.
So mayhap as a start LESS not more government might be the best government health care policy.
JFKY on January 24, 2013 at 9:57 PM
A big problem is the complete lack of standardization in the medical field (i.e. the thing that drives down prices over time in every other industry). Many docs and healthcare organizations are downright actively hostile to the idea that best practices can be applied across the board in most cases.
Unfortunately creating standardization in this case is going to mean telling someone who went to school for two decades and is making $1 million+ that maybe he doesn’t know the best / most efficient way to do his job.
Patients aren’t much help either, since they experience these wildly different methods of care across organizations and instead of thinking “gosh, here’s an industry that really doesn’t have its act together”, they think “gosh, this organization is great because they custom-tailor healthcare to me!”
pauljc on January 24, 2013 at 10:00 PM
OT: look at the front page of drudge. I’m not one for symbolism but that is weird…and eerie.
crrr6 on January 24, 2013 at 10:03 PM
Bwahahahahaaaaa!
Those fly pictures have always summed it up for me.
Priceless.
petefrt on January 24, 2013 at 10:08 PM
The flies know.
petefrt on January 24, 2013 at 10:09 PM
“The Lord of the Flies”
crrr6 on January 24, 2013 at 10:13 PM
You want to transform healthcare so that it is the best in the world?
Put it back the way it was in the 60s.
cthulhu on January 24, 2013 at 10:26 PM
In 1963, it cost just over $900 in 2012 dollars for all medical care surrounding an uncomplicated delivery — including a 4-day hospital stay for the mother.
Then the government started messing with healthcare to make it more affordable.
cthulhu on January 24, 2013 at 10:30 PM
As long as people think someone else is paying for there healthcare then the prices will continue to skyrocket.
brewcrew67 on January 24, 2013 at 11:22 PM
This!!!
AH_C on January 24, 2013 at 11:46 PM
Re drudge:Pretty fly for a half white guy
AH_C on January 24, 2013 at 11:51 PM
Sometimes I wonder why more isn’t made of the fact that the sorts of arrangements that are common in the healthcare industry, like HMOs, were pushed/subsidized by government so that they’d catch on (Health Maintenance Organization Act, 1973). Greater government control of healthcare would probably seem more obviously misguided to people if they saw how much government had messed it up already, in part by popularizing their “favorite” part of it, the HMO.
flush_explorer on January 25, 2013 at 1:22 AM