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Obama care is going to make this worse. 30 million people who previously did not have insurance, will be covered by 'the rest of us' through our taxes.
There are two major problems with our current health care system.
First - Our current system is a 'pay for service' system. By that I mean, that every time you go to a doctor, or get a test done, the doctor gets paid. The doctor is incented to see you more often, not to make you better. If he/she 'heals' you right away, they loose out on income. But if they have you come back for a follow up, or they order additional tests, then they make more money. There is an alternative, called 'Episode of care', or 'Bundled payment' where a 'budget' (either annual for chronic illness like diabetes, or episodic, for things like knee replacements) is created. This budget is then spread across all medical providers involved with your care. If the providers can avoid complications (a list of Potentially Avoidable Complications - PACs for short - are also generated based on the patients past medical history) they receive a bonus. This type of payment system actually encourages the providers who are taking care of you to do two things. One - get you healthy, with the least number of visits/tests necessary, and two - make sure that you are doing your best to avoid those complications. The challenge here is to get providers to agree to this type of system, as they will argue amongst them selves as to who should get the biggest part of the budget - and how do we hold the patient accountable. If the patient's providers tell her to take her meds, and she doesn't the providers should not be punished. One proposed method is to require a non-conforming patient to pay a higher premium. There are several insurance payors already using this type of payment system, but the vast majority of them are small and own the hospitals, clinics and doctors that the covered patients see. Another advantage of the EOC (episode of care) system is that the data it provides helps us determine which doctors have the least amount of PAC (potentially avoidable complications). We can also determine which doctors had a higher number of patients in poor health (those patients will have a higher EOC budget). Dr's whose patients have higher EOC budget AND whose patients have a lower PAC rate - that's a **** good doctor.
Second - Pricing transparency. Right now many hospitals are at the mercy of their suppliers. For example a young lady that I was close to had a very serious car accident. As a result she needed to have her neck fused. The two metal rods and the 18 screws cost the hospital 94k, not to mention any of the costs involved with the surgery itself. These exact same screws, from the exact same manufacture, when used in the equine industry, cost veterinarians only 18 dollars each. Hospitals are at the mercy of their vendors, and we are at the mercy of those hospitals. We, as a nation, need to get transparent pricing in place in our health care system. Hopefully we can soon get to a point where if you need a knee replacement you can not only "price shop" but you will also be able to view the track record (success rate, and ability to avoid those complications) of both hospitals and doctors.
The United States spends 2.3 BILLION dollars on health care alone. If that is compared to the GNP of other countries in the word it would stand in the top 10. Consider another travesty - Drugs are cheaper in Canada than they are in the the USA. Why? Simply because our government allows it. Anyone familiar with Medicare's prescription drug program is keenly aware of that -- but did you know that the US government, according to law is not ALLOWED to negotiate prices with the drug companies -- those companies are allowed to set their prices to anything they want and Medicare will pay it.
VF " your preachn to the choir" here my friend! I have read some of this not all so I appreciate the update, but, yea, the VA system is much like what it will be like, so there's no argument here!
Also, as a vet tech, I have obviously seen the prices of not only veterinary drugs but most supplies we use, there is NO excuse for the high prices, except for the reasons you have stated, so......yea. Got the message!
I told him it would be the BEST water he ever tasted.. He tried it and LOVED it... So we finished up our chores and his Mom came over with his little sisters. She and I were standing talking and all of the sudden she gasped and her eyes got really big.. LIL she was looking at her kids.. Her son was telling his little sisters about the awesome tasting water and had all of them lined up and was teaching them how to drink out of the hose . The kids were loving it. Well come to find out Mom said that she can NEVER EVER get her kids to drink water . She had tried special cups.. flavoring it, bribing them etc... and here they were just lapping it up.
