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

To: i-node who wrote (24633)	9/1/2012 6:00:04 PM
From: skinowski	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

I understand Skinowski's complaints; however, if you aren't going to allow markets to decide total reimbursements from half of the health care economy, I don't see how a market-based solution works at all. So, it is probably not a bad alternative, all things considered. The problem is that they fiddle with the RVUs to allocate more money to one specialty or another I'm not complaining. I gave up private practice 6 years ago and my RVU's, these days, are generously supplemented by hospitals (part A)... I'm a happy camper. If my RVU's would not get supplemented, I'd be broke. The national average supplement paid by hospitals per each full time Hospitalist position is close to $150K. This is how much it takes to balance off the "wise" allocation decisions on the part of Medicare. I don't know if you read my conversation with Lane, but to me it was important - I actually understood better how the system works. I have no doubts that Dr. Hsiao and his group are people of integrity and not shills for the government. They did as good a job as they could developing a way to compare brain surgery with well baby visits and with chest cat scans and a million of other things. The problem is - implementation. There is no way to avoid arbitrary fund allocations by biased bureaucrats. Besides, our greater economy already has a unit which allows to measure and compare the values of an infinite variety of things and services -- it is called US dollar. By the time bureaucrats are done assigning RVU's (at $35 apiece) that's all they are doing -- fixing prices as expressed in dollars.

To: i-node who wrote (24633)	9/1/2012 6:43:51 PM
From: skinowski	Respond to of 42652

Just wanted to bring this up here.... Message 28378217

To: i-node who wrote (24633)	9/1/2012 7:41:22 PM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 42652

if you aren't going to allow markets to decide total reimbursements from half of the health care economy, I don't see how a market-based solution works at all. It doesn't, which is why mixed systems inevitably push us to one extreme or the other. Right now the momentum is toward greater socialization. I don't see anything changing that other that doing it, watching it fail aka hitting bottom, and then letting a market system arise from the ashes. That's extremely unlikely, certainly in our lifetimes. Meanwhile we keep putting band-aids on the mixed system. So, it is probably not a bad alternative, all things considered. As band-aids go, probably the best of bad alternatives.