Medical Care -- The Dems And the Republicans Both Have It Wrong

It's not that the Democrats want to provide health care for all and that the Republicans want to give tax breaks to the rich and deny health care to the poor.  Rather it is that American healthcare, which is several times more expensive than that of other counties such as Canada, Germany, and Great Britain, is entirely out of control.

Obama's health plan mislabeled the Affordable Health Care Act reduced the charges to people on Medicaid and raised it to most everyone else.  I can't read Obama's mind, but my guess is that as the huge costs of his plan became apparent those costs would be transferred the the government; in other words, to you and me through taxation.  It would become a national plan.

The Republican approach to health care pursues a different avenue.  They try to create a plan that falls within budgetary constraints.  These's only one problem.  It's impossible to devise such a plan where many of our poor would find themselves, either without coverage, or with inadequate coverage.

What neither party is willing to do is tackle the real problem; namely, the galloping increases in the cost of healthcare.  The Sage of Omaha himself, Warren Buffett, pointed out that that in most areas we've been able to reduce costs.  TV's don't cost what they once did.  Cars are now made at lower cost than was once possible.  (We keep adding new items to cars, e.g. back cameras, navigational devices, blind spot indicators, etc.  These add to a car's cost and yet we've managed to keep the vehicle's cost within the consumer's budget.)

So let's consider for a moment what is contributing to our mushrooming medical costs.  Not necessarily in order of importance, but one of the first things that occurs to me is our refusal to accept death.  Diabetes was once a death sentence.  The only treatment was slow starvation.  But, then insulin was discovered and diabetes was no longer a death sentence.  Despite the discovery of insulin, this disease still requires a patient to follow a prescribed diet.  Failure to follow the prescribed diet will lead to debilitating and, ultimately, fatal symptoms.

Doctor-prescribed diets must be followed if illness is to be held in check.  Restricting salt intake for a patient suffering from high blood pressure is an example.  Smoking, careless use of alcohol, and the use of drugs are other examples.  But, now we come to the area defined by addiction, which unquestionably leads to increased medical costs.

Other areas of high costs are those associated with the start of life and the end of life.  If a baby had two hearts or some other serious malady, death followed.  It was accepted.  Now heroic efforts are made to save the new-born regardless of how premature or misshapen that baby might be.  There are religious issues that enter this discussion but they must be taken up separately.  Much the same can be said for dementia that afflicts many old people.

Then there is the cost of treatment of our wounded servicemen and women.  The cost of such treatment should not be rolled into the cost of healthcare.  It should be a separate item of our military spending.

There are many other aspects to healthcare that make this such a difficult area to cost.  Despite the high administrative cost of our hospitals, examples abound of patients that fail to get a medication prescribed by his doctor, or nurses who administer the wrong medicine or the wrong dosage to a patient.

Then there is the balance between a patient's rights to legal counsel and protection of the medical system against excessive litigation.  Equally important is that the standards met by doctors be monitored.  When such standards fail to be met, doctors must be subject to being fired.

It can also be argued that the medial industry has been far too slow to adopt newly developed but currently available technology with the potential for cost reduction.

It's a big area, but the Democratic idea of a single payor system doesn't necessarily get you to where you want to go.  But, then I don't see the Republican approach working either.  We may find that just as charter schools breaks up the hide bound methodology of the our public schools, a similar approach to medicine might do the same.