Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: i-node who wrote (6158)	2/17/2009 1:47:13 PM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 42652

And if you get some government committee making health care decisions, trying to quantify which lives are and are not worth saving, it is a very steep slippery slope. Apparently, this is where the Obama approach is heading, and I'm concerned about it. I don't share your specified concern about government committees. I think that the risk they present is more "mindless standardization." I seriously doubt they will be making the kind of decisions you're talking about, if I understand you correctly. With regard to the former, it might turn out well if they have a lot of transparency and outreach in what they come up with. One of the features of my ideal system, posted the other day, would be published standards of care, even the mindlessly standardized ones. Then you know what you're going to get and can make a determination of whether or not you consider it adequate. With regard to the latter, I think that there should be a public discussion of how much the health care system, be it a federal system or a private one, is prepared to pay to extend life by x amount. And also what should be covered. I'm having a discussion on another thread that's really off topic there. I mentioned that from a public health perspective and from a public policy perspective, the decision by Medicare to not pay for serum vitamin D testing made sense. My rationale was that, since virtually every adult in the US is vitamin D deficient, since vitamin D is apparently dramatically effective against the diseases of aging, vitamin D3 supplements are cheap, and since overdosing is all but impossible, it would be cheaper for everyone to just take the supplements rather than paying for the test to prove that the patient is deficient before being put on the supplements. The counter argument is that it would be comforting to know for sure how deficient one is and that the supplements are working, which is true. The question is whether Medicare should pay for testing everyone. They pay for flu shots for everyone because they are proven to save lives. Comfort over one's vitamin D level just doesn't have the same cost effectiveness. Still, people will ask for/expect that comfort. Politics might force Medicare to provide them. The point of that anecdote is that we should be having national discussions about what insurance should pay. If that government committee made that happen, in the sunshine, it might be a good thing. Those who like the concept of a centralized database with all your health records in it have never dealt with IRS. There are trade-offs here. I got the radiation from two extra CT scans last summer that I would not have gotten had the records of previous ones been available. There is cost in not having the data available and shareable among all of a patient's health care providers. If you go with an insurer like Kaiser, you get the benefit of a data base. I'd like to have that. I recognize the "IRS" risk. I think I'd prefer to take my chances with the data base. It is just that anytime you lay on that kind of bureaucracy it is going to make trouble somewhere along the line.... The problem is less the bureaucracy than the politicians. I spent a good part of my career trying to make the best out of the hash that Congress created. Not only do they meddle where they don't belong, they don't think their actions all the way through. Much legislation has bits that are diametrically in opposition. It's horrid. Bureaucrats take the half-assed and try to make it tolerable. It would be better in many cases if Congress had just stayed out of it, but once they're in it, the bureaucrats are our best hope. The problem is the laws, not the bureaucrats who implement it.