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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (28182)	4/28/2008 6:07:39 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Cost is cost. But cost of System X in country 1, doesn't equal cost of System X is country 2. Rate of death in childhood means rate of death in childhood. Average birth weight is average birth weight. The method of paying for health care, is only one of many factors for these concerns. Even the wider health care system (the doctors, nurses, technicians, hospitals, and the rules, regulations, laws, expectations, financial constraints, and medical culture they work with, rather than the insurance) is only one (multi-part) factor. Deaths attributed from errors in prescriptions mean exactly what they sound like. This is something that can be addressed without any changes to the overall structure of health care or health insurance. This is problem is the type of practical problem that I'd like to see addressed, before any massive reorganization is seriously considered. 'Compliance costs' of regulated medical providers in processing hundreds* of different insurance forms (vs. the costs when only ONE form of paperwork is allowed)* How would you get rid of this? Only allow one payer? the US's crappy system is objectively farther from 'optimal' then several of the others. Again it depends on which objective measures you choose, how you measure them, and how you adjust for factors that have nothing to do with the health care system. The only thing that we are clearly and objectively significantly worse than most other rich countries is cost, and how much of that is do to how our payment system is set up, is an open question. And part of the cost difference is drug payments (where we don't use government pressure to push prices down), but if we do, than we have no country full or large rich consumers to pay for development of new drugs after we stop forking over the bucks. Its may be considered unfair that we do this now, but "unfair" may be better than the alternative. No, our peer group of similar 'most developed' industrial wealthy Democracies is the place to start for comparisons. I agree.