I’ve been thinking a lot about healthcare reform in the US recently, due to both the ’08 election and Michael Moore’s Sicko film. So many people have so many ideas about what should be done with healthcare, and some are wacky and some are crazy. Personally, I don’t know exactly what should be done but I have a few thoughts.
The biggest problem with the healthcare system in the United States today is cost. Healthcare costs in the US today are rising for many reasons, including longer life expectancy, medical malpractice suits, and developments of medicines to treat problems that we never treated before. Costs are rising rapidly, and data suggests healthcare costs now equal 16% of GDP (this number is expected to increase dramatically over the next decade).
So how can we reduce costs? Obviously, we can’t ask people to live shorter lives. That’s way too ethically unsound. I have two suggestions.
- Focus on preventative medicine rather than reactive medicine. In the US today, we often focus on reactive medicine (fix a problem once it starts) more than preventative medicine (fix a problem before it starts). Doctors should be more proactive and be very serious about getting patients on healthy diets early, get them exercising early, and patients should be more serious about following their doctors’ guidelines. How do we make sure patients act proactively? See point #2.
- Dramatically increase deductibles. If people have to pay a significant deductible to go to the Doctor’s office, they will only go when they need to, and they will also live a more healthy lifestyle so they don’t need to go to the Doctor as often. These deductibles should differ based on whether going to the Doctor for a regular checkup (low price because we want to encourage this type of preventative Doctor’s visit) or a gastric bypass surgery (high price, we want to encourage people to intervene in their weight problems before they get out of hand).
Please post your thoughts.
6 Comments for Thoughts on Healthcare
Steve | August 25, 2007 at 9:12 am
Author comment by George | August 26, 2007 at 3:53 pm
Socialized healthcare will not work effectively in the US until per capita healthcare costs decrease dramatically. Socialized healthcare is expensive for a country as a whole, so if per capita costs are high, introducing medical care to more uninsured people is only going to drive up costs in total even more.
And yes, ER visits are expensive and can’t be prevented. I don’t think anyone knows how to drive those costs down except through becoming more efficient at treating people in emergency situations or increasing the number of docs willing to work in the ER. But ER visits, in my opinion, will always be expensive…
JJ | August 27, 2007 at 6:00 pm
Your wish came true, George. Your boy, Alberto, is outta there!!!
Author comment by George | August 27, 2007 at 10:40 pm
Ha, yeah I saw that. I was kind of surprised it happened at the time it did. I guess I’ve been in entering law school mode so I haven’t really paid a lot of attention to the news over the past few days. I did see slate.com did a piece on alberto leaving… I’ll probably go read that now.
Steve | August 28, 2007 at 9:24 am
Yeah it seems like the hype around him was kind of dying down… in the media at least.
Shaniqua | September 11, 2007 at 7:38 pm
1. Import doctors and nurses from the third world to the tune of raising the numbers by about 20%. make medicine a bit more completive than it’s been.
2. Socialize medicine. Get rid of the for-profit element.
3. Get rid of commercial health insurance in favor of payroll tax funded.
4. Stop telling people it’s perfectly OK for them to live to a 100. It’s not.
5. Reduce the terms of patent.
Socialized medicine won’t work in the US? Good thing that my vote counteracts yours.
I think these are good, reasonable suggestions. I have two questions, though, about unrelated suggestions. First, what do you think about a more socialized health care system? Secondly, a lot of the time high costs from health care come from emergency room visits that preventative medicine has no effect on. When I sprained my ankle and needed to get X-rays, which is a very minor reason to visit the ER, I received bills up until recently. And I was insured when the sprain happened. There are plently of people now that are uninsured who will no go into the hospital when they have a serious problem, because they can’t afford the cost. Do you have any suggestions on how to drive these kinds of medical costs down?