Thanks for asking my opinion. I only had a chance to skim the first and last couple pages of the article (late day at work…) I agree that this article is well written and presents some interesting arguments, but my brief skimming of the article he seemed to be suggest a free market philosophy to drive healthcare costs down. He also seemed to suggest that people should pay for their preventative care like we pay for gas in our car. I don’t see our healthcare choices like other consumer choices. Most people agree that the best care is obtained when you stick with one provider (the concept of a “medical home”) the quality of your care will likely go down if you go shopping around every time you have a new healthcare need. Also expecting people without resources to pay for preventative is just never going to happen and they’ll still end up in the ER with illnesses that have progressed.
Sorry, I didn’t have time to comment on the many of the other points, but I figured better to keep it short anyway…[/quote]
Thanks for reading Allan, Matt, Nicole. If the byzantine payment structure is removed, more money will be spent on actual health care healers instead of office works slaving over billing.
There’s nothing in the article that precludes clinics financed in part by the county. Behaviorial economists (Thaler, “Nudge”; Dan Ariely, “Predictably Irrational”) have documented your concerns about people ignoring future needs in favor of present desires. I would not be opposed to fat tax to finance clinics. I think I’m personally responsible on demand side for sugar prices tripling in last 10 years. Sin taxes work wonders on consumption. Witness the CA beer lobby stopping new beer taxes in 09 and thus moving tax increases to car tax and general sales tax.
The population in USA has increased 30% in last 27 years and number of medical school graduates is still only 16K per year. The AMA certainly had something to do with that in 1979 with their dire warning of physician oversupply that has nearly stopped all additional enrollment. It is difficult to believe that with 30% more population that all those people are as lazy as me and couldn’t pass the muster. As for the expense, why wouldn’t the HMO’s be interested in funding these additional residencies?
Allan is right, I better shut my mouth. I already have the accounting industry after me because I dared suggest that we reallocate 2M people from worthless tax industry to financial planning, health care, etc. Then the defense industry (and most Congress members) are after me and Sec Gates because we dared speak up about worthless projects. Do I really want the health industry complex after me? Do I want to jeopardize my only decent investment VGHCX?
