Socialized Health Care in the USA

[kandrathe]

Yeah, they just do it for the money. You can save just as many people by bleeding as you can by all that fancy new crap. X-rays are really just faked pictures. And antiseptic procedures are just based on superstition. Blah blah blah.

I'm not talking about the people who provide the care, because they mostly genuinely do care about improving lives. I'm talking about the business of health care. There is no incentive for the business of health care to scrimp, or reduce the costs incurred by any patient when its "the insurance company who pays". As long as the insurance company will pay for whatever procedures are asked, then the practitioners will have carte blanc. With malpractice on top, there is every incentive, both financial and legal to perform every test (without much concern for expense) to confirm a diagnosis. There is a big difference between getting an x-ray(~$250), versus getting an MRI ($1000 to $3500). I'm not an advocate of Dark Ages medicine either.

I'm a pretty pragmatic person, so all in all, for all the money we spend on health care in the USA, where does it show in our mortality rate? The mortality rate seems to be pretty stable at ~8.0 to 8.8 per 1000 for the past 3 decades. While, "In the United States, which has had both a high level of health spending per capita and a relatively high rate of real growth in that spending, the share of GDP devoted to health grew from 8.8% of GDP in 1980 to 15.2% of GDP in 2003 (Exhibit 5)." (source) Our health care per capita is at least double to triple other developed nations.

Also, from that same source above, "Despite this relatively high level of spending, the U.S. does not appear to provide substantially greater health resources to its citizens, or achieve substantially better health benchmarks, compared to other developed countries."

I'm not against Obama per se, but against anyone in Washington (of whatever party) who attempts to further make the USA more of a socialist state than it already has. The trend we need is for people to be more responsible for their own life long well being while they are young and healthy, rather than expect the State to collectively tax the people at a high rate to redistribute wealth (economic vitality) to the less productive, and in this case infirm.