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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (2811)	11/9/2007 5:25:06 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 42652

I think the differences in costs have more to do with other differences in the health care system. Importantly we pay more for prescription drugs and we pay doctors (and I think to a lesser extent other health care workers) a lot more. The later might not change easily, and the 1st could be changed, but only at the cost of greatly reducing R&D on new drugs. There are also more subtle differences in "medical culture" that can be important and aren't always dependent on, at least not solely dependent on, who pays the bills. In the US for example there is a larger than normal emphasis on "defensive medicine" (partially but not entirely due to our tort system), and more emphasis on massive interventions at the beginning and end of life even if the cost is high and the odds of it making a difference are low. Giving the uninsured, insurance will mean that they get more tests that might discover problems that would otherwise become expensive. But the test themselves cost money, and are subject to both false positives and false negatives (and a false positive can not only result in unnecessary treatment which can be expensive, and can be harmful) Also if they are covered they will use health care more often in other ways besides these routine tests. Once can argue that people will do better if they get the coverage, but the argument that it will actually save money seems weak to me. I don't see any free lunches here.