Quote:
Originally Posted by spence
Look at what your healthcare costs have done in the past 5 years alone, the current trajectory simply isn't sustainable.
I'm not for a single payer system, but there's enough money flowing to better handle situations that are s#^&#^&#^&#^&#^&g up a lot of cost. For instance an investment into preventative care could reap a net gain downstream by reducing more costly treatments for advanced conditions.
-spence
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Spence, you're right on about preventative medicine, but it's not going to solve the healthcare crisis alone.
The major reason healthcare costs have increased as much as they have is malpractice insurance costs for doctors. The best and brightest doctors who are trained in the U.S. aren't going to work in hospitals now. They either go into research, where the liklihood of malpractice suits is minimal or they go into group practice. We're left with doctors trained at the Ghana Community Medical College or Haiti School of Hair Design, Plumbing and Medicine.
Because the doctors are being charged outrageous malpractice insurance costs, they are passing the costs along to the health care insurers like BCBS, etc... The health insurance companies need to keep their margins, so they have to raise costs. Who ends up paying? Those of us who have health insurance and the companies we work for who are paying the bulk of our medical insurance.
Now, none of this is any comfort to the uninsured out there, but it explains a little bit of why health care in this country is so out of whack.