Health Care
My good friend Bruce wrote in a recent piece:
I agree with him.
Republicans blew it--on this and so many other issues--when we had control. Trying to keep demand down on health care is doomed to failure. Americans will not put up with restrictions on the quality or length of the lives of themselves or their loved ones.
The answer is supply side. We should be doubling and then doubling again the number of medical schools in this country. Doctors have imposed limits on the number of medical students-- there are about the same number now as 25 years ago, when there were less of us and we were demographically much younger.
We should have built dozens of new medical schools, or provided financial support for the independent creation and expansion of existing ones. Competition would go a long way towards lowering the cost of and increasing the access to medical care.
There obviously is no silver bullet. However, a combination of vastly increasing the supply of medical care providers, health savings accounts, public clinics (especially for Medicaid patients), the computerization of medical records (so you don't have to fill out the same damn clipboard 804 times), some med mal reform, and reasonable restrictions on insurance companies makes the most sense.
I like President Obama. I honestly do. However, this is the second time that he has pronounced the need for a solution to a problem NOW, and then let Congress come up with a "solution". It failed miserably with the so-called stimulus "plan". And it is failing now with health care.
Pres. O will get a bill. But it will be a bill cobbled together by the likes of Pelosi and Reid and Frank & Kennedy--4 people I guarantee few Americans would be happy to have babysit their kids, let alone decide the fate of our nation.
The question should not be why is health care so expensive. It's so expensive because it saves lives.
The question should be how do we save everybody's life.
I am really disappointed with the turn this health care debate is taking.
I agree with him.
Republicans blew it--on this and so many other issues--when we had control. Trying to keep demand down on health care is doomed to failure. Americans will not put up with restrictions on the quality or length of the lives of themselves or their loved ones.
The answer is supply side. We should be doubling and then doubling again the number of medical schools in this country. Doctors have imposed limits on the number of medical students-- there are about the same number now as 25 years ago, when there were less of us and we were demographically much younger.
We should have built dozens of new medical schools, or provided financial support for the independent creation and expansion of existing ones. Competition would go a long way towards lowering the cost of and increasing the access to medical care.
There obviously is no silver bullet. However, a combination of vastly increasing the supply of medical care providers, health savings accounts, public clinics (especially for Medicaid patients), the computerization of medical records (so you don't have to fill out the same damn clipboard 804 times), some med mal reform, and reasonable restrictions on insurance companies makes the most sense.
I like President Obama. I honestly do. However, this is the second time that he has pronounced the need for a solution to a problem NOW, and then let Congress come up with a "solution". It failed miserably with the so-called stimulus "plan". And it is failing now with health care.
Pres. O will get a bill. But it will be a bill cobbled together by the likes of Pelosi and Reid and Frank & Kennedy--4 people I guarantee few Americans would be happy to have babysit their kids, let alone decide the fate of our nation.
posted by A Red Mind in a Blue State at 5:35 PM
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