Health Care Podcast
Do you worry that we will be seeing Hillary Care or some version of socialized medicine in the near future? Is more government intervention into healthcare the answer? As a libertarian-leaning health service provider and psychologist, I say "no," it would be a step in the wrong direction with longer waiting times and horror stories for the truly sick. The healthy might think socialized medicine is an improvement because it's cheap, but you get what you pay or don't pay for. Imagine being put on a waiting list to have a life threatening condition like cancer or a heart condition evaluated. Isn't your life worth more than money?
In addition, do we really want the government making decisions about our healthcare and expanding the power it already has? I don't. American health care gets better and better, yet more and more Americans state they are dissatisfied with their coverage. Why? Are we a nation of whiners?
We talk with Dr. David Gratzer, a physician who has worked in both the Canadian and U.S. healthcare system and is the author of a new book, The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care.
He discusses how capitalism can improve health care, why we are so unhappy with the current state of health care and his proposals for reform. Both Glenn and I read the book and it is chock full of information about how the current health care system originated and how to change it for the better.
You can download the podcast directly here or for dial-up users, listen here. You can visit our archives here to listen to previous episodes.
This podcast is brought to you by Volvo at volvocars.us.
In addition, do we really want the government making decisions about our healthcare and expanding the power it already has? I don't. American health care gets better and better, yet more and more Americans state they are dissatisfied with their coverage. Why? Are we a nation of whiners?
We talk with Dr. David Gratzer, a physician who has worked in both the Canadian and U.S. healthcare system and is the author of a new book, The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care.
He discusses how capitalism can improve health care, why we are so unhappy with the current state of health care and his proposals for reform. Both Glenn and I read the book and it is chock full of information about how the current health care system originated and how to change it for the better. You can download the podcast directly here or for dial-up users, listen here. You can visit our archives here to listen to previous episodes.
This podcast is brought to you by Volvo at volvocars.us.
posted by Helen at 9:41 AM
10 Comments:
Yes, we are a nation of whiners, and the older we get, the grumpier and whinier we get. So better health care creates more whining. However, eventually the whining will become so loud that the providers will give up, the whiners will die off, and we will revert to (actually fall below) a whining/health care quality mean which will encourage providers to come back into the market.
Right now we don't know what the mean is; but we do know we are above it as is evidenced by fewer and less qualified medical school applicants. It will take several cycles produce enough data to determine an official "W/HCQ Mean" through a simple regression analysis.
Then a quasi-Federal Agency - like the Federal Reserve -will be set up to follow it. It will inject either whiners or medical practitioners (it will maintain reserves of both in large underground vaults) into the system as needed to maintain the balance.
The headquarters will be in Washington and be housed in the Hillary Health Care Building, which will dwarf all other government buildings currently in existence.
You are a breath of fresh air and vision of common sense in the national debate. :-)
We are turning into a nation of healthcare haves and have nots. Those that have coverage want to be ensured that they will receive a ready supply of pills, including Viagra and Lexapro when they "ask their doctor". They want access to expensive operations that might prolong their life 2 extra weeks before their inevitable multi-organ failure. They want bariatric surgery when they choose not to control their eating. And they want it all covered under a private healthcare plan. Those that don't have health insurance want to be able to see a doctor when they get sick and not have to hand over the deed to their home in the process. As more people start losing their homes, their credit and their savings due the inability to pay their medical bills, the drumbeat for national healthcare is going to get louder.
Cham,
Which is why HSA's seem like a step in the right direction. Tax free savings accounts to pay for smaller ticket items like preventative care etc. and catastophic insurance to pay for serious medical problems like cancer or heart disease etc.
Losing your home may seem like a trauma when you have a horrible illness but losing your life or that of a loved one because your health care is rationed is much worse.
ok,... in the uk we have a national health service, it works, to a greater extent, yes there is waiting lists.. but we also have private health as well.. where you pay into a health plan, and when your ill you get coverage plus better rooms etc..so on...
the rich usually have these, the poor with no recourse would die if they werent treated.. is it best to refuse treatment for the terminal if they dont have insurance, is it best to bankrupt people with expensive pills that are unnecessary because the doctors think and get paid by chemial companies..
is one persons life less important because they dont have money, is a persons life more important if they can pay more..
HSA's are a step in the right direction in that the goverment needs to decide whether health care dollars spent will be tax free to the consumer or not. But rather than create a complex structure around the administration of HSA's, why not just make health care expenses tax deductable, period? The answer is, of course, that the govt. wants to keep its fingers in health care. Why? I haven't thought about it enough to offer an answer.
Dr. Gratzer makes a very interesting point when he compares health insurance to car insurance. We don't buy insurance for our vehicles to cover minor scratches and dents, or to cover the cost of gasoline and maintenance.
Similarly, why do we pay a giant administrative organization to cover minor health care costs we all know we will incur each year. If we carry this logic to the extreme, we would be expecting our health insurance to pay for our groceries -- after all if we don't buy them we will starve. Come to think about it, if I make a decision not to buy groceries and in fact do begin to suffer from malnutrition, my insurance will step in and nurse me back to health.
Until we separate the catastrophic from the expected, we will continue to pay an enormous cost to have the system provide us with what should be considered basic commodities. That, in turn, will limit its ability to help out with the catastrophic.
How entitlement mentality with respect to basic health care got to the point of people griping about a $5 co-pay is beyond me. To me the HSA is comparable to simply slowing down, when in fact we need to stop, make a U-turn, and go in the other direction.
"Single payer" really means "single denier" and when one is denied by a hillarycare bureaucrat one will be denied the opportunity to choose an alternative paid for by ones own money.
The comparison tomcal drew between auto and medical insurance was useful. The purpose of insurance is to cover expenses so dear that to meet them would catastrophically change ones lifestyle, like losing ones house to borrow Dr. Helen's example.
What most people call "health insurance" isn't really insurance at all, rather it's a pre-paid health plan and when customers consume gobs of practitioner services of course they'll end up being charged gobs of money. Those people who whine that they shouldn't have to pay so much for what they foolishly overconsume and waste are - in my opinion - merely the usual suspects who believe there's a free lunch out there somewhere and who have a covet-thy-neighbor's-goods problem.
Great Medical Books: http://www.onlybooks.us/categories/medicine.html
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