What US Health Care Needs

Medical doctor and writer Atul Gawande gave the commencement address recently at Stanford's School of Medicine. In it he lays out very precisely and in a nonpartisan way what is wrong with the institution of medical care in the US — why it is both so expensive and so ineffective at delivering quality care uniformly across the board. "Half a century ago, medicine was neither costly nor effective. Since then, however, science has... enumerated and identified... more than 13,600 diagnoses — 13,600 different ways our bodies can fail. And for each one we've discovered beneficial remedies... But those remedies now include more than six thousand drugs and four thousand medical and surgical procedures. Our job in medicine is to make sure that all of this capability is deployed, town by town, in the right way at the right time, without harm or waste of resources, for every person alive. And we're struggling. There is no industry in the world with 13,600 different service lines to deliver. ... And then there is the frightening federal debt we will face. By 2025, we will owe more money than our economy produces. One side says war spending is the problem, the other says it's the economic bailout plan. But take both away and you've made almost no difference. Our deficit problem — far and away — is the soaring and seemingly unstoppable cost of health care. ... Like politics, all medicine is local. Medicine requires the successful function of systems — of people and of technologies. Among our most profound difficulties is making them work together. If I want to give my patients the best care possible, not only must I do a good job, but a whole collection of diverse components must somehow mesh effectively. ... This will take science. It will take art. It will take innovation. It will take ambition. And it will take humility. But the fantastic thing is: This is what you get to do."

Comments

also: more doctors, less pay, more compassion.

[adam]

If I want to give my patients the best care possible ... This will take science. It will take art. It will take innovation. It will take ambition.

...it will also take the AMA not artificially restricting the number of new doctors. More than half of ostensibly qualified applicants every year are turned away. In the 1800s there were 400+ medical schools in the united states. By the early twentieth century there were less than eighty. The fewer doctors we have, the more each doctor is paid. The AMA carefully guards doctor salaries. This practice can be seen over and over (and resistance to influx of doctors willing to work for cheap) in country after country (the film Salud covers this well).

Furthermore, we need to eliminate the debt load for student doctors. You can't expect doctors to work for lower salaries (as I propose above) when they are graduating with hundred of thousands in debt. Basically we need way more medical schools (or slots in existing schools) and we need to lower their cost in exchange for a willingness to work for less money. This has the benefit of more doctors and lower cost, as well as shifting the pool of applicants to those who want to be DOCTORS and not just those who want to make MONEY or play GOLF all the time (and so on).

Cuba is a perfect example of this. They have better or equivalent health outcomes to the United States, yet they spend a fraction (read: less than 1/20th) as much per person on healthcare. They achieve these same outcomes using finnicky x-ray machines from the 1980s and out of date textbooks. They do this by having the greatest doctor-to-patient ratio of any nation, and by focusing on preventative medicine. But that's evil socialism. Insert dramatic music here. At any given time more than a third of Cuban doctors are voluntarily serving abroad (often in Africa) doing global health work. More than a third. What percentage of American doctors voluntarily serve in Africa? And they have a 98% retention rate, so any claim that this service is to "escape Cuba" is pretty well dispelled. (and just to go on the offensive for a sec, since I don't generally reply to those who reply to me, unless they actually make good points, since as you know /. has a typical signal-to-noise comment ratio... for those who want to doubt my claims above, calling them propaganda, etc, they are backed up by reputable sources. Paul Farmer, for instance, has written extensively about Cuba [and also happens to be the UN Envoy to Haiti and runs Harvard's School of Social Medicine at their Medical School, so he tends to be considered a reputable source] and almost never has a bad thing to say about their healthcare attitudes or outcomes. The list goes on.)

Re:also: more doctors, less pay, more compassion.

[rtfa-troll]

The thing is, that you don't actually have to go as far, politically, from the USA to see a working health care system. Before Margret Thatcher's management reforms crippled it, there used to be one in the UK and to a large extent there still is one in Scotland. The key element is to understand that money is a terrible motivator in health care.

There are always many many treatments and tests possible. For any given patient, most of those tests will either do more harm than good or be unjustifiable financially (costs 100,000, has a 1 in a million chance of helping you). The doctor has to be trustworthy to say "no, it's not worth it". That means that you have to believe that a) he has nothing to gain from not giving the treatment and b) he really has to have nothing to gain from giving the treatment c) he has to be competent and well enough trained to make that judgement.

Unfortunately, as soon as we have insurance companies, financial administrators and ignorant courts involved this breaks down. The insurance means that the doctor is doing the treatment for profit, so the more he gives, the more a non-involved third party pays. The financial administrators (e.g. in UK state care) mean the opposite. Now the patient knows the doctor is under pressure to not deliver treatment and will not leave until they get it (even if they don't need the treatment). The courts mean that the doctor can get away with killing hundreds of people with extra CAT scans, but if he misses one brain tumor by not doing one he goes bankrupt.

We need to take the direct money out of front line medicine, or at least pay it much more cleverly. For example, if you pay doctors by results (percent patients cured) they will only work on easy cases. Almost any such system I can think of can be gamed.

Re:also: more doctors, less pay, more compassion.

[toadlife]

Sure, keep true insurance around for catastrophic events, but otherwise let each person decide how to spend their own money on their own regular health care.

This leads to people avoiding preventive care, which drives up costs in the long run. There are already dozens of health care models around the world that deliver better outcomes for a fraction of the cost that the U.S. pays. There is no need to reinvent the wheel.

even though the overhead of dealing with 'insurance' companies can easily equal 50% of the bill.

And yet you advocate sticking with a system that involves private insurance.

Re:also: more doctors, less pay, more compassion.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm haemophilic - where am I supposed to get the cash for my treatment?

The free market is survival-of-the-fittest, healthcare is preservation-of-the-weakest; I don't find it that suprising that they don't get on.

The best solution is a publically owned industry like here in the UK, with much, much smaller private insurers who can stay light on their feet and plug gaps in the service when they appear.

This system is way cheaper, higher quality *and* it's fairer.

If there is a profit motive, doctors will ignore people who are really ill as it won't be worth curing them.

In the UK we are committed to provide healthcare for everyone until they are healthy, hence it is massively in the doctors and the governments interest to keep people healthy and out of the hospital; so they don't have to pay for their care.

If everyone suddenly got healthy in the UK, we would save a tonne of money - if they suddenly got healthy in the US your economy would collapse. You need people regularly paying the deductibles.

OK, time for another rant

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Uniform billing codes and realtime price-lists so that we know we're not getting ripped off. California's chargemaster publication requirement is a step in the right direction, but it needs to be updated more quickly, and rural hospital exemptions are BS. If you can run a hospital, you can update your billing DB no matter where you are.

2. No anti-trust exemptions. This is so fundamental it's mindblowing.

3. Nationwide competition.

4. No more buyer's clubs. If the doctor and/or hospital is *licensed* then the insurance must pay out. You get to keep your doctor no matter what. Any company that wants to keep having a buyer's club can do that; but you can't be compelled to purchase into a club, only real insurance.

5. Real insurance means you can't lose your life savings due to a percentage payment or a cutoff. After all, you can't actually insure health. Only genes and behavior can do that. When we talk about health insurance, we're really talking about medical bankruptcy insurance, and the current system fails to do that. In order to be considered a real insurance plan, you have to prevent medical bankruptcy. That means, for example, you can lose no more than 10% of your net worth or income in any calendar year. That way, you could be severly ill for 5 years, on chemo, and emerge with roughly 60% of your life savings intact instead of nothing.

6. Stop torturing doctors. No, really. Many people won't even consider med school because it's torture. Maybe we need to put some doctors through boot camp. Maybe it's important for brain surgeons; but I can't imagine this system is really doing much to increase the number of competent family doctors.

7. Malpractice/tort reform. Duh! If a doctor is so incompetent that we're better off taking him out of the profession then let's do that. Requiring all the other doctors to pay out as if they're that bad is insane. Multimillion $ payouts won't bring back your relative. License revokation, however, will prevent it from happening to somebody else. Note, this is tricky since it's possible for competent people to make mistakes. You actually need to make sure that the number of mistakes is statisticly significant. Otherwise, nobody will want to risk becoming a doctor (see point 6). Statistics is a bizarre thing. There's actually an expected number of botched operations; but the odds of a single doctor botching 10 operations in a row are probably low enough so you can safely conclude that doc needs to lose his license.

8. Everybody self-pays and submits claims. That's right. You run healthcare like a normal business. I know it's hard to believe, but it really is just like buying a loaf of bread. Fire the beurocrats. No biggy. They'll get free health care while they look for a real job.

9. No paper work until the patient is well. No signing anything under diress.

10. You can put a pharmacy in the hospital. Quit making sick people drive to get meds.

Let's ask the AMA

[adam]

Don't listen to me, just listen to the AMA instead; they're happy to admit their mistake (although they won't overtly admit the motivation behind it). Basically in the 1980s they wrongly predicted in 10-20yrs we'd have a surplus of hundreds of thousands of doctors and the market would crash (yeah, wouldn't that be horrible, to have too many doctors? I mean, horrible if you want to drive a Lexus and you're a doctor, I suppose...). Of course they got it wrong ("accidentally," I am sure) and overshot in the other direction and now we have a huge shortage. "Whoops." Unfortunate byproduct: ridiculous salaries (mostly for specialists). Not so unfortunate if you're a dermatologist, though.

Some quotes from the AMA themselves:

"Not a single allopathic medical school opened its doors during the 1980s and 1990s ... The surge in new medical schools is taking place as the Assn. of American Medical Colleges predicts a shortage of at least 125,000 physicians by 2025 ... But some experts on work-force issues say new schools are not enough. They say that without more federal funding for residency slots or changes in the doctor payment system, the schools are unlikely to avert an overall work-force shortage or address the undersupply of primary care physicians and general surgeons ... 1 in 3 active physicians is 55 or older."

I think we can agree that it's unreasonable to have 99.999% of the applicants on one side of the line or the other, but beyond that? What about taking only the best 10%, or only the best 90%, would one of those be OK with you?

How about 98% rejection rate? From the AMA article above: "Many private medical schools have 5,000 or more applicants for a class of 100 students."

Again, I hope it comes across, I know something about this issue. I said "ostensibly qualified" and "more than half" in my OP because I didn't want to get into a big debate about the exact percentage of people who apply and are grossly underqualified and rejected versus the legit applicants who are rejected, but basically the former is not happening, since you need to take the MCATs (not easy) and complete the equivalent of a degree in Molecular Biology simply to even apply to med-school (and currently to be competitive you need hundreds of hours of volunteer work, professional medical experience such as EMT work, and even then it is often a crapshoot, I know many qualified applicants who have been rejected more than one year in a row).

Mod Troll.

[adam]

Cuba has a dog and pony show.

...and you know this how, exactly?

I already warned you in my original post not to trot this shit out, because I'm not some idiot who happens to have seen a Michael Moore film and now thinks Cuba is a utopia. Instead I'll choose to believe the guy who runs Harvard Medical School's Social Medicine program (see: end of my original post), Jim Kim MD (former Prof of Medicine and Chair of Global Health for Harvard Medical School, now president of Dartmouth), and the World Health Organization, amongst many other credible sources.

Because I am busy and you make no effort to substantiate your claims, I'm just going to paste a chunk from Tracy Kidder's (Pulitzer Prize winner) biography of Dr Farmer, where Farmer talks to Kidder about dispelling myths about Cuba (and then after that some of Farmer's own writings)...

"For me to admire Cuban medicine is a given," Farmer said. It was a poor country, and made that way at least in part by the United States' long embargo, yet when the Soviet Union had dissolved and Cuba had lost both its patron and most of its foreign trade, the regime had listened to the warnings of its epidemiologists and had actually increased expenditures on public health. By American standards Cuban doctors lacked equipment, and even by Cuban standards they were poorly paid, but they were generally well-trained, and Cuba had more of them per capita than any other country in the world-more than twice as many as the United States. Everyone, it appeared, had access to their services, and to procedures like open heart surgery. Indeed, according to a study by WHO, Cuba had the world's most equitably distributed medicine. Moreover, Cuba seemed to have mostly abandoned its campaign to change the world by exporting troops. Now they were sending doctors instead, to dozens of poor countries. About five hundred Cuban doctors worked gratis in Haiti now-not very effectively, because they lacked equipment, but even as a gesture it meant a lot to Farmer.

One time he got in an argument about Cuba with some friends of his, fellow Harvard professors, who said that the Scandinavian countries offered the best examples of how to provide both excellent public health and political freedom. Farmer said they were talking about managing wealth. He was talking about managing poverty. Haiti was a bad example of how to do that. Cuba was a good one.

He had studied the world's ideologies. The Marxist analysis, which liberation theology borrowed, seemed to him undeniably accurate. How could anyone say that no war among socioeconomic classes existed, or that suffering wasn't a "social creation," especially now, when humanity had developed a grand array of tools to alleviate suffering. And he was more interested in denouncing the faults of the capitalist world than in cataloging the failures of socialism. "We should all be criticizing the excesses of the powerful, if we can demonstrate so readily that these excesses hurt the poor and vulnerable." But years ago he'd concluded that Marxism wouldn't answer the questions posed by the suffering he encountered in Haiti. And he had quarrels with the Marxists he'd read: "What I don't like about Marxist literature is what I don't like about academic pursuits-and isn't that what Marxism is, now? In general, the arrogance, the petty infighting, the dishonesty, the desire for self-promotion, the orthodoxy. I can't stand the orthodoxy, and I'll bet that's one reason that science did not flourish in the former Soviet Union."

He distrusted all ideologies, including his own, at least a little. "It's an ology, after all," he had written to me about liberation theology. "And all ologies fail us at some point. At a point, I suspect, not very far from where the Haitian poor live out their dangerous lives." 'Where might it fail? He told me, "If one pushes this ology to its logical conclusion, then God is to be found in the struggle against injustice. But if the odds are so p

I've always really liked that idea

[Sycraft-fu]

For just about everything else in life, insurance is just that: Ensuring that in the event something happens, you are covered. It is a risk transfer for certain situations. For example I carry insurance on my house. In the event it burned down, or everything was stolen or the like, I could not afford to replace it all. My cash reserves are insufficient and, indeed, I have to have a mortgage to own the place. So, in an emergency, the insurance company will cover my loss. However, it is only in an emergency. They do not cover regular maintenance and upkeep of the house. Even in terms of qualifying emergencies, like theft, there's a $500 deductible. So if someone breaks in and steals a couple speakers, I'm paying for that myself, but if they steal everything the insurance company will pay.

It is all about transferring risk. I take care of the high risk, low cost stuff, they assume the low risk, high cost stuff. It is a certainty I'll have to repair things, the risk of something breaking down is as high as it can be, more or less. But the cost is low, I can afford it. The risk of my place burning down is quite low, but the cost is high, too high, so I transfer that risk. Doesn't cost a lot, since it is low risk. Likewise, my insurance company does the same thing. They cover individual incidents. However for large things, like disasters, they have their own reinsurer. That company only deals with extremely rare stuff, the risk of it happening is minimal, but the costs are astronomical.

But for health insurance, that's all turned around. It covers EVERYTHING. I pay, at most, $10 for anything. Insurance pays the rest. Doctors visits, tests, hospital, etc. I only bear the cost if it is extremely cheap, like a generic drug. Otherwise they pick it up. However they also pick up high cost stuff. If I have a major accident and require intensive care, they pick all that up. They are liable for ALL risks to my health.

Is it then any wonder that it costs more per month than my home insurance does per year?

I really thing a medical savings account kind of plan is the right idea. You save money to pay for normal things. In the event of something catastrophic, no problem, your insurance is there to pay any and all costs.

However finding that is hard. They started offering one at work... And it wasn't worth it. My premiums stayed the same, my employer had to put in just as much money, and my personal financial risk increases. How he hell is that useful? It should cost my employer much less, but it doesn't.

Re:I've always really liked that idea

[ashvin213]

1. The reason why healthcare insurance policies are counterintuitive to other insurances is to foster preventive care. If I am covered only for catastrophe, then I will sit and wait for the catastrophe to happen rather than going and getting things fixed early. Because, from my perspectives, my costs are identical in both cases. 2. What constitutes a catastrophe varies wildly with person to person. For someone earning 1,000,000 per year, it could be that a bill of 500,000 is a catastrophe. But for someone who is earning only 10,000 per year, a bill of 5,000 is a catastrophe. The cost of covering a person earning 10,000 per year would be orders of magnitude higher (which he wouldn't be able to afford) than the cost of covering a person earning 1,000,000. For this reason, the insurance HAS to be provided by some agency like a government which can take losses on covering someone who is earning 10,000 and recover some of the insurance costs by charging a premium to the person earning 1,000,000. 3. The model could be as follows. Currently, govt collects 7.5% as Medicare. This 7.5% can be increased to say 10%. But now Medicare will also come cover the person paying the premium in the following manner: The person is covered 100% above a certain threshold which is the function of his/her yearly income (So for example, a person earning $10,000 is covered for all medical expenses higher than $1,000. Someone earning $1,000,000 will have their coverage begin after they spend $500,000). In addition, all are allowed to purchase secondary insurance from the various insurance companies if they so desire (to limit their loss during catastrophe).

How many different service lines?

[bezenek]

Dr. Gawande suggests the "13,600 different service lines [doctors] deliver" is an issue in health care costs. I put forth these comments:

* How many services are listed in the manual which guides the number of hours an auto mechanic is allowed to charge for a repair, e.g., replace spark plugs: 0.75 hours. How many items are in this book?

* How many different services does a software engineer deliver over a year's time?

I suggest the problem is related to control over charges. Car mechanics have a job with similar complexity to what doctors face. Software engineers often face a problem much more complex. (How many "surgeries" require several weeks to solve a single-line bug?)

The control of health care "service" in the US is in the hands of the AMA and the bureaucracies created around hospitals and other facilities. If they were willing to reduce their profit margins (assuming we can eliminate the defaults they see because of uninsured/under-insured patients), we could see significant reductions in general health-care costs.

This is just a thought...

-Todd

Re:government out of economy

[antifoidulus]

Um...hate to burst your bubble there but fact is that all the other G7 countries(which all have public health care btw) spend about HALF(in terms of % of GDP) of what the US does in healthcare and yet people in those countries live longer(there are lifestyle factors involved, but they aren't the only ones).

I have yet to hear a single empirically sound argument against public health care. No amount of ideology can contradict two very basic, and very important, statistics: percentage of GDP spent on health care and life expectancy. If the government was really driving up the cost of health care then you would expect to see the former be much higher than the US, but in fact it is the opposite. Also, if the health care was really as bad as a lot of people on the right make it out to be, you would see average life expectancy to be lower than that of the United States but it is in fact higher.

Again: trolling or uninformed.

[Anonymous Coward]

ACing this since you posted as AC above (where I replied as AC and refuted your infant mortality claim).

First, if you have any background in health you know the different between determinants and indicators. You can cherry pick whatever indicators you think will militate best in your favor. And when they don't militate the way you'd like (say: infant mortality) you will claim they are "cheating" by offering abortions or by using a marginally different method.

Allow us to get into the technicals of the method they use. Using your OWN LINK's info, the US method includes less than 1.3% extra babies, of whom 50% may die (less than this but we'll round up. So instead of 6.0 per 1000 for Cuba and 7.2 for the US The US actually has (.5*1.3%) better stats. So 7.1532 instead of 7.2. Wow, who cares. Furthermore, even if we ignore all of this and say that US IS BEST EVER for infant mortality, Cuba still trumps several other "first world" countries that have way more GDP/PPP and use the SAME method of measurement as Cuba. So their indicator holds.

Furthermore, this is ONE indicator. Life expectancy is another important indicator, and one you can't explain your way out of so easily, especially if Cuba has such a horrible medical system the fact that they live approximately (but not quite) as long as Estadounidenses again speaks to their health outcomes. Or their abilities at reanimating their dead.

You cherry pick breast cancer survival, which is a pretty random and focused statistic. I don't think you want to get into the "focused indicator game" with me to prove which country has better health outcomes. How many people does breast cancer kill in the US? Instead of arguing if Cuba wins or loses here, I'll just let you have it. Now how may people do GUNSHOTS kill here? How many in Cuba? Drug overdoses? Car crashes? You will lose the focused indicator game. Most resident doctors in Havana's hospitals have never seen a gunshot wound. Or a drug overdose.

And when we dig deeper into indicators, and I mean overall indicators, not narrower ones that are likely to show more bias, things get interesting. US life expectancy is one thing, but the distribution of life expectancy tells us a whole lot more. Which is to say that black men who live in Harlem have a shorter life span than the average Bangladeshi. So yea, if your last name is Buffet or Rockafeller you're gonna live maybe even 10 years longer than the average Cuban (if you're really lucky), but for the million of marginalized minorities in the United States, you'll probably live 10 years less. See: Hans Rosling's work.

Lastly you are either an idiot (i don't think so) or disingenuous to characterize experts who literally write WORLD HEALTH policy as "enchanted foreigners." If you or I went to Cuba and came back with a glowing review, we might fairly be viewed as "enchanted." When the world's foremost health equity experts have glowing reviews it is ignorant and dismissive to call them "enchanted." I cited people who run the top medical schools in the world. You cited a Philip Morris funded web site. Game, set, match.

Re:Again: trolling or uninformed.

[dave420]

You pay hundreds of times more for your healthcare which is only marginally better, at best, than that which is available to anyone in Cuba. I think that's the point. Are you really happy having this discussion? Doesn't the fact that you are having to defend US healthcare against Cuba's indicate that maybe not everything is OK in the US healthcare system? Oh, and if you lose your job or your insurer stops covering you, you'd beg to be treated in Cuba.

Re:Profit driven

[Runaway1956]

It seems to me that you have chosen to misinterpret my words. You'll note that I didn't ask or demand that ANYONE work for free. All I ask is that the profit motive not be the determining factor in health care considerations.

As for myself - I can't work for free, anymore than any other man or woman in the world. I MUST feed myself and my family, and all the rest of the stuff that goes with being a responsible adult.

But, personally, my career, my day to day decisions are NOT all profit driven. I COULD HAVE had any number of careers. Instead, I have chosen to work where I enjoy working, all of my life. When the job starts to suck, I go find another job. I walked away from the best paying job that I've ever had, because the boss thought that he "owned" me, and started becoming abusive. He simply could not imaging that anyone in this part of the world could walk away from more than 20 dollars an hour, a company vehicle, paid insurance, along with some other perks. I walked. Unlike so many Americans, I don't worship that Almight Dollar, to the exclusion of all other considerations.

Again - I don't ask that anyone work for free. All I ask is that people recognize that sometimes that dollar isn't the most important thing.

While I was in business, I put a roof on a house for an old lady, only charging her for the materials. I took a loss on that job, because I knew that she couldn't afford the work. I spent two days working on her house, and paid a helper out of my own pocket, because no one should have to put pots and kettles around the house to catch water from a leaking roof. Most especially, an aging woman in poor health. I did a few other jobs at discounts for people who needed a helping hand, but that one particular job, I actually took a loss.

If I can do such a thing, I expect that a doctor can do as much, now and then.

Profit. How much profit do you take with you when you leave this world, anyway?

Re:government out of economy

[thomst]

In US 50 years ago a family of 4 could have actual health insurance (covering of up to $50,000 of expenses, which was enough for everything) for a year for $25 dollars (payment for an entire year!) with a $500 deductible.

Basic problem is the government giving out public funding for any sort of endeavor. This leads to very rapid price increases. Before Nixon, a day in a hospital could cost $100, today it could cost up to 100 times that much. Obviously this has nothing to do with inflation. Costs to treat cancer could go as high as up to 20,000 dollars before then, now it could easily reach between 500,000 to a cool million.

Another ranting Rand-ite with no actual understanding of the problem.

Look, idiot, 50 years ago, virtually every hospital was run on a not-for-profit basis. Because there were no shareholders to have to provide quarter-over-quarter profits to - and essentially no MBAs to pander to them - nearly every dollar spent on hospitalization went to actual medical care. Likewise, medical insurance was MUCH less paperwork-intensive, which meant that overhead costs for medical billing were a whole lot lower than they are today. And finally (and utterly crucially), medical technology was barely getting started in 1960: no MRIs, no monoclonal antibodies, no gamma knives, no transplants. In fact, the only real high-tech devices were "iron lungs", developed to keep polio victims alive. If you got cancer then, surgery and whole-body radiation were pretty much the only options. Cisplatin-based chemotherapy didn't become commonplace until the 70's. So, no high-tech drugs and devices meant that treatment costs were quite modest by today's standards - and so were survival rates. It's a pretty straightforward tradeoff.

Free-market fanatics like you want to make government spending the culprit for all financial ills, because that makes understanding the world so much simpler for you. The problem is that your underlying assumptions are simply wrong, so your worldview is full of shit. The fact is that medical costs are out of control in this country not because of Medicare/Medicaid spending, but because of proliferating treatment costs and the rise of the for-profit medical insurance economy (whose overhead costs run ~30% - as opposed to Medicare/Medicaid, whose overhead is ~1.5%).

Oh, and Medicare/Medicaid wouldn't be facing the deficit problem that's looming, if Congress had had the sack to increase Medicare premiums and payroll taxes by a relatively tiny percent 25 years ago, when the impending problem first became apparent. Or, to put it in terms your tiny mind will reject: the problem isn't government spending, it's the government's cowardly unwillingness to raise taxes to levels sufficient to fund its spending mandates that's the problem.

I'm not surprised I have to explain this to you, because you're obviously too blinded by your free-market dogma to grasp the actual causes of the medical economic bubble we're experiencing in this country.

Re:government out of economy

[antifoidulus]

Thank you for essentially proving my point, instead of combatting my argument with empirical evidence on the efficacy of privately run healthcare you just responded with a lot of ideology with no statistics to back you up. Guess what, the problems in Greece is NOT the fault of healthcare, it stems from the government giving lavish gifts to it's own employees with 0 oversight all while trying to hide what they were doing. That happens elsewhere, including the US, all the time(both Repubs and democrats do it).

To add further empirical fuel to my argument, look at which economies in the G7 are recovering the fastest, Japan, Canada, and Australia. What do those three have in common that other countries do not? They all have public healthcare systems WITHOUT a lot of the other bullshit that comes attached with hiring and firing workers that the Europeans have. Despite their surging currencies(the loonie, ozzie dollar and yen are all really strong right now) it is STILL cheaper to hire workers(esp. for small businesses) in these countries than it is in the US. The healthcare system in the US is hurting international competitiveness and thus costing a massive # of jobs.

If you want to refute me please actually use real, verifiable evidence and don't repeat your last rebuttal where you think you win an argument just by using the word "socialism".

Re:The Health Care Problem in a Nutshell

[vlm]

Please define " Obscene corporate profits ".

Any revenue by any middlemen whom add no medical value, or exist solely to subtract medical value, from patient care?

If they're not profitable they'll either raise costs or go out of business, so he really means "obscene corporations"

Maybe he means obscene as in culturally unacceptable, obscene like kiddie pr0n or eating household pets for dinner or working in the medical insurance racket, not obscene as in "they make more money than I think they should".