January 31, 2006

Demand for true health care reform

A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows health care at the top of Americans' priority list, with 76% calling increased access and lower costs "an absolute priority" for 2006.

The Journal reports that "The Bush administration's much-heralded prescription-drug benefit under Medicare has yielded scant political benefit. Unfavorable views of the benefit outnumber positive marks by 31%-15%, with the rest having no opinion. Nearly eight of 10 senior citizens call it 'too complicated and confusing.' "

Will an emphasis on "consumer-driven health care" and health savings accounts address access, lower costs and senior prescription drug problems?

Posted by schwitz at January 31, 2006 11:02 AM | TrackBack
Comments

It's going to be hard for the insurance, pharmaceutical, medical, and legislative monopoly to hold onto the facade that they provide the right approach to health care, esp since their system has vaulted MDs into the leading cause of death (See "Death by Medicine" by Gary Null et al online). 900,000 are unnecessarily dead each year from this system; that's over 2400 a day (Iraq is 2.1 US soldiers dead per day). Null's study is not the only one that exposes medical-performance shortcomings (See JAMA Vol 279(15) p1200 and the Barbara Starfield, MD, study in JAMA 2000. Or you could just read "Who's Representing the Healthy? by me and get all those studies in one place.)
As a CEO on Ron Insana's CNBC roundtable discussion pointed out recently, "At the bottom line, we need fewer people going to doctors, if we plan to control costs." That means having healthier people. What motivates people to be healthy? Does free insurance provide motivation? Such an approach is more likely to produce a tax increase to pay for the "free" insurance.
Rather than resort to socialism to attempt to repair our health-care problems, it might be worth asking if our current system provides incentives for good performance or disincentives for poor performance. It doesn't; everbody in the group pays the same premium. Group-health plans dump the poor-performance cost overruns onto the employer, the government and worst of all, onto the healthy policyholders, who pay a large portion of the premiums for those who fail to maintain their own bodies. Who is that motivating, and why do we punish our top performers?
Capitalism can fix the health-care problem by offering healthy people their own insurance. Such a plan will drive costs up for poor performers who will be encouraged to get healthier to acheive lower premiums. Such a plan is akin to pay-for-performance. Imagine the effort people might make if their premium was linked to their measured state of health.
Corporations can go one step further by training and assisting their employees to learn and perform to higher standards.
Best regards,
Dr. Thomas N. Campbell, DC

Posted by: Thomas N. Campbell at January 31, 2006 01:15 PM

Dr. Campbell - May I say that your post was awesome... It was a must better read than the original article...

(Dr. Campbell is the individual who commented first on this blog article...)

Posted by: John J at February 22, 2006 04:28 AM
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