The healthcare expert announced that he was here to participate in a session whose goal was to determine whether all the new healthcare innovation that we're all hearing about is going to make us healthier and be cheaper than all the healthcare we already have — or whether it's all just a bunch of hot air.
That sounded like an interesting question.
So I asked the healthcare expert what the answer was.
"Hot air," he said. "Nothing makes healthcare cheaper."
The healthcare expert observed that I considered this answer profound, so he qualified it.
"Actually," he added, "Vaccines have made healthcare cheaper. That's the one innovation that has made healthcare cheaper. Nothing else makes it cheaper. More cost-effective, yes. But not cheaper."Most politicians know this to be so, too. The question then becomes how to control costs, and the answer to that is rationing either by price or in some other way that is political rather than economic. You know, "death panels."
Or, we could just recognize that affordability is never the problem when the real resources are available. The scarce resources in health care are generally qualified personnel since training takes time. So the answer to universal health care is in large part training personnel commensurate with expected need, e.g., due to population growth.
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One Of The World's Leading Health Experts Just Revealed The Truth About Healthcare
One Of The World's Leading Health Experts Just Revealed The Truth About Healthcare
Henry Blodget
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ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/18/science/end-of-life-care-needs-sweeping-overhaul-panel-says.html?_r=0
ReplyDeleteHere is what deranged deficit phobe Walker has been up to:
"“The bottom line is the health care system is poorly designed to meet the needs of patients near the end of life,” said David M. Walker, a Republican and a former United States comptroller general, who was a chairman of the panel. “The current system is geared towards doing more, more, more, and that system by definition is not necessarily consistent with what patients want, and is also more costly.”
Yeah sure Dave... these morons will kill us all...
First it was the abortions: "We can't afford all these babies!"
Now they are coming for the old people: "We can't afford all these cancer treatments!"
They will kill us all if we let them....
No mention of drug/device patent monopolies which drive prices way above marginal cost? WTF??? Dean Baker has been talking about this for YEARS! So much for that guy being an "expert."
ReplyDeleteAnd asking the question "What exactly is that person going to do in the private sector that is so much more important than looking after the nation's health, and who is going to hire them?".
ReplyDeleteThey really, really don't like that question.
Guy in the article that is.
ReplyDeleteAll patents and copyrights do nothing other than increase costs. Just like all monopolies.
ReplyDeleteRight on. If there are enough people willing to supply health care, then we should raise spending to support that supply or enough to bring new supply on. Constraining spending just keeps supply away. We don't cure disease with keystrokes or paper. We treat it with labor, research etc... I don't think we have a shortage of people willing to do those things.
ReplyDeleteRight. The question is whether the failure to create the real resources needed to do the job efficiently and effectively (which implies "affordably) is ignorance or intentional creation of artificial scarcity to favor vested interests.
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