To: i-node who wrote (706561 ) 3/30/2013 9:24:31 AM From: Alighieri Read Replies (1) | Respond to I think his concept of HSAs from birth is a great starting point -- where people are actually responsible for what they spend. MARTIN: If you're just joining us, I'm speaking with Dr. Ben Carson. He's the director of pediatric neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. He's speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference later this week and he's getting a lot of attention for comments he made at the National Prayer Breakfast which was last month. Talk a little bit more, if you would, about - I know your interest in some of these issues goes beyond health care, but health care is, I think, the area that you know best. What is it that you think - the particular nugget that you would want people to come away with? What you think would be better? CARSON: Well, first of all, in order to have good health care you need a patient and you need a health care provider. Along has come the middle man to sort of facilitate the relationship and now the middleman has become the primary component with the patient and the health care provider at its beck and call. This is totally upside down, and anything that we do that enhances that middleman and decreases the doctor-patient relationship actually exacerbates the situation rather than making it better. So what - the reason that I proposed health savings accounts for everybody starting at birth, is because you very quickly accumulate an amount of money that you can use for your interactions with those health care providers. Also, you develop a very good doctor-patient relationship and also because you now have some responsibility for that account, you're going to be looking for good bargains. Other people are going to be making sure that they provide good bargains. You bring the whole health care system into the free market. And that's going to help to control cost as well. CARSON: Well, you know, I've been talking about it for a long time. If you go back and read my 1999 book called "The Big Picture," a lot in there about health care. I've been very concerned about how we do it. And I wouldn't characterize myself as criticizing the president. I've been talking about these things long before he was on the scene. So it's not so much a criticism of him as it is placing out there some other ideals about how we get this thing under control. And, you know, we spend twice as much per capita on health care in this country as the next closest nation and yet we have tremendous access problems. And I believe there are some ways that we can do it which would provide very excellent access to everybody at substantially less cost. My personal goal every year is to NOT meet my insurance deductible, because I don't want to pay that money (and only once in the last ten years have I paid the deductible in full). I don't want to spend that money because it comes out of MY pocket.
