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Strategies & Market Trends : MDA - Market Direction Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tunica Albuginea who wrote (53373)	6/8/2000 11:03:00 AM
From: Tunica Albuginea	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 99985

More thoughts on Drain of Healthcare to the Economy: When HMOs begun 10 years ago there was an editorial in the WallStreet Journal:the essence of it was that " true " HMOs, i.e. Health Maintenance Organizations actually increase costs, not lower them. The simple reason is that now you do extra, preventive testing and find and treat disease. Prior to this the patient would have died, sooner. WSJ stated that . the cheapest health care is a dead patient . ( Please don't squirm in your seat. Think about it for a moment.A dead person consumes no health care dollars.). Now with " true HMOs " disease is uncovered and you have a live patient who will have to be monitored the rest of his life: Yearly colonoscopies looking for cancerous polyps. Stress tests with cardiac catheterizations, baloon angioplasties, stents to look and treat recurring heart disease; Prostate checks. CAT scans MRIs looking for cancer to come back. Bone Marrow transplants. The patient continues now to remain alive and soon he needs a new hip, an intarocular lens, etc etc etc. He' ll need to be monitored for life. I say " true HMOs" because they where not HMOs: They actually where HROs: Health RATIONING Organizations. With Legal liability now and militant yuppies, HMOs are now forced to truly deliver on their promise. Well obviously costs are going to go up: Insurance premiums are already up 10% and they will continue to go up. Modern Healthcare technology is VERY expensive. It is GREAT Technology, but very expensive. Just try and compare fixing a Cadillac with fixing a YUGO. Our body is same as a Cadillac. Just as complex and expensive to take care of, TA