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

To: Lane3 who wrote (6306)	3/12/2009 10:17:40 AM
From: i-node	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

I don't think ANYONE anywhere on the spectrum thinks we get good value for our medical dollars. Someone please correct me if I'm mistaken. I don't know about "good value". But I do know that technology leadership is an expensive game. We are effectively subsidizing medical technology around the entire world which benefits not just Americans, but everyone, everywhere. Because we place an exceptionally high value on human life. As I showed RW a couple weeks ago (on another thread, I think), most of the major drug companies are based in the US, and most of the others operate major research organizations here. And it isn't just drugs; techniques and procedures develop here that are utilized the world over. That is the price of being on the leading edge of technology. Efficiency improvements will lead to minor, if any, decline in costs. I know they all think we can do better, but physicians offices and hospitals are businesses and if there are efficiency gains to be had they're going after them. The argument that there is come corpus of money that will just appear due to efficiency gains is a myth. So, how do you cut costs without cutting quality? You don't. Not in a significant way. You can do like Canada and say to physicians, "You're on a quarterly salary. Once you've maxed out, you get 25% of what you bill". That will cut costs. But there is absolute, ample evidence it also cuts quality. The best minds will run like hell to fields where the pay isn't limited. You can tell drug companies, "You can't sell Zoloft for more in the USA than you do in other countries". Instantly, it is no longer profitable to manufacturer Zoloft, and it stops. Worse, it is no longer profitable to do the research for NEW drugs, because doing so will lead to drugs with only marginal value. You'd be asking the drug companies to roll the dice for drugs they can't recoup the investment for. No, thanks -- we'll just keep making aspirin. I'm all for reducing costs. But it is a mistake to do more than tinker around the edges with a system that works exceedingly well as it is.