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Politics : THE WHITE HOUSE -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GROUND ZERO™ who wrote (2416)	3/16/2007 11:36:11 PM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 25737

Easy... you need to deduce starting with the evidence, not the other way around.... (For example: How do you explain the ACTUAL RESULTS of the various States which HAVE capped tort awards? Some saw subsequent increases in health care costs, while some saw small decreases, but then got right back on the national trend of ever-increasing costs....) Obviously, as with ANY policy, the 'Devil is in the details', but the evidence that is available to us points to the conclusion that tort awards are, at best, a relatively SMALLISH contributor to our national problem of too expensive health care. (Some big studies have estimated it's contribution to our rising health care costs at perhaps '5%' or so.... One other put it as high as '12%'....) Which argues that there must be OTHER factors that are the main drivers behind the ever-rising costs, and the relatively poor cost/performance of our system, (measured against it's peers among other developed economies). Thus... my limited attempt to point out some of the more obvious areas we could look at, GZ. ================== Reforms that (IMO) could likely impact cost/performance for the good: 1) Patent reform. When Congress EXTENDED patent terms (yet again!), and the FDA wrote the rules so that very minor changes --- such as changes to the packaging, associated buffering agents, color of the capsules, etc., etc., could be sufficient to 're-up' patents when they were about to expire... this PERVERSELY ADDED MORE COSTS to our health care system then any single other identifiable factor. 2) Insurance reform. (Why must health care providers have to deal with literally THOUSANDS of different format insurance forms?????????? It makes no sense at all. Some standardization here would save BIG BUCKS. 3) Reforms to the FDA, and federal medical research funding. (No need for gov funding to go to mere 'treatments'.) The for-profit pharma industry has PLENTY of Capitalistic incentive to develop treatments that people must take. This enhances their profitability of course. Federal funding should go exclusively to areas that the corporations have little or no incentive to research in. Such as natural compounds that are un-patentable or off-patent, so-called 'orphan drugs' where there is not enough profit potential for corps... and CURES, (such as genetic and vaccine research), not mere treatments, etc. 4) Reforms/Improvements to the medical profession, and in medical professional licensing. (With the AMA reporting that fully 50% or so of all malpractice claims are against less then 5% of physicians... obviously insurance costs for many good practitioners are driven up by a few 'bad apples'....) 5) Reforms to government pharmaceutical procurement guidelines. 6) Technological changes in health care delivery (like the ones Bush proposed in the SOU address): mandated nationwide bar-coding for pharmceuticals. (You would not believe the numbers of deaths and injuries each year in hospitals, etc, from prescribing mistakes....) This alone (technology improvements/ national mandates) might be able to knock another 10% or so off of health care costs.... 7) Legal reforms can certainly be part of the solution, too... (but, several States --- CA, OK I believe, for example --- actually saw their medical costs increase even faster when they introduced caps on tort awards... so I would not expect really big savings to be gleaned from this alone.) There seems to be NO SOLID evidence (from unbiased, peer-reviewed study) supporting such a contention. You are certainly free to dream though.... 8) Trade barriers/Protectionism in products and services also hugely drive up costs for Americans. In short: BIG PROBLEM. No 'easy fixes'... but a whole LOT of areas in desperate need of reforms... with problems MADE BY OUR OWN GOVERNMENT heading the list.