Schemes Within Schemes or How to Lower Healthcare Costs

There are many people with many different ideas on how to fix the high cost of healchare in the US today. My take is that the government has barriers to entry, enforced shortages and too much regulation and red tape which account for the high cost of healthcare. There are others who believe much differently. In a discussion in the forums I was given a list of "fixes" for the problem and I'd like to explore them at length, point by point.

One thing to keep in mind is that for each piece of legislation pending in Congress, there is an army of special interests and lobbyists that are trying to get the laws written to benefit them. What I will attempt to do is give reasons why someone will beneift from the adoption of a certain point and why ordinary people will suffer is a particular point is made law.

What I will do, as this list is extensive, is post the different "fixes" give a sinopsys as to why it won't work and create a more detailed "why" in a linked hub for those who want more information.

This will cripple the development of new drugs.

1) Put limits on the % of profit earned on drugs and assistive devices, medical equipment, etc.

This is a common populist prescription for dealing with the high cost of drugs and other medical devices. Limiting profit will limit the incentive for companies to take the risk to develop new drugs. This "fix" will make it much less likely that new drugs will be developed in the future.

Why should people become doctors, physician's assistants or nurse practitioners?

2) Put limits on the % of profit earned by physicians and health care providers.

Again, this is a bad idea for the same reasons as the first "fix". By limiting what a doctor can charge for treatment, you basically turn them into a slave. Many people are not aware that Cuba's "enlightened" healthcare system incudes holding a doctor's family hostage when that doctor is seconded to someplace like Venesuela because otherwise the doctor would defect. In Havana, many doctor's actually drive taxis as they can make more money as a taxi driver than they can a doctor.

Or Health Insurance is a Right!

3) Institute some of the same regulations on health care insurance providers enumerated in Obama's bill (I agree with the bill here about not allowing health insurance cos. to deny people with pre-existing conditions, pricing regulations, etc.)

It would be nice if we could have unlimited resources to do anything in the world.  The truth is, we don't have unimited resources so we have to decide how and what to do.  By adopting this provision we would soon see all insurance companies go under.  I'd argue that the way we use insurance today is not the best use of it at all.  Why should we have to use insurance to see a GP, for instance?  Wouldn't that money be better saved for something more important like, I don't know, chemotherapy treatments?

Or Setting one government agency against another.

4) Focus more on preventive care to reduce the number of emergency room and critical/intensive care incidents and hospitalizations.

This one makes sense on the surface and most people, including myself, woudl support such a thing.  This is, however, a personal decision is it not.  Would you hold a physician accountable if their patient had an unhealthy lifestyle?  What about the fact that the FDA and Department of Agriculture subsidizes and allows harmful additives to our food supply that can cause chronic illness or kill you?  Who, exactly is responsible for that?  Doctors?

This is actually one I can get behind and is the topic of a hub of mine.

5) Create more openings in colleges for nursing and other health care programs. When I went to college, I had to wait 3 1/2 years to get into the program, there was not enough room! It's this way all over the country - create more room, more instructors, for health care professions. Then there will be more health care workers.

There is a simple reason why this won't happen.  Money.  If you limit the supply of something, the cost goes up.  For well over a century now, medical schools have been turing prosepecive students away in droves.  Why?  Well if you limit the number of students, you limit the number of doctors.  If you have a limited number of doctors, you get job security and you get to charge more for your services.  Sounds more like a Mafia racket than somone concerned with your well-being. doesn't it?

Again this is a personal choice.  How much time can you afford to spend taking care of a relative, which takes time away from your career and/or children?

6) More support for home-care. Many, many people that are in nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and psychiatric hospitals could be taken care of by their families at home. Give people training and/or tax breaks or whatever it takes so they will be more inclined to care for their "loved ones" at home. Americans do not make themselves responsible for sick family members - this is a throwaway society - we throw our family into "facilities" when they get sick instead of taking care of them. It's time Americans got some responsibility. That mentality of "stick Grandma in the home" so our lives won't be "inconvenienced" is not only cruel and selfish, but also very expensive and we all bear the burden financially. As an RN, I have seen hundreds, if not thousands of people in these facilities, who could very well have been taken care of by their families with hardly any trouble at all.

I'll probably not win any friends for my views here, but we must all of us be responsible for ourselves and make sure that we can be taken care of when we can no longer provide for oursleves.  Parents are supposed to raise their kids to be independent and productive members of society.  While children have some responsibility to see thier parents are taken care of in turn, that does not mean that the adult children have to live their lives for their elders andy more than their elders lived their entire lives for their kids.

Or if you want a quicker way to put doctor's out of business:

7) Stop placing restrictions on malpractice suits - doctors now think they are God, and they don't have to provide good service because there's nothing we can do to them if they don't.

There is a much better way to fix these problems than suing doctors out of practice.  That would, after all be like killing the goose that lays the golden eggs, would it not?  More healthcare providers would force doctors to be more solicitous of their patients if for no other reason than to continue to have patients.  Doctors think that are (tin) gods because there are not altertatives to seeing one.  Laws and other regulations have seen to that.

Or Eye of Newt and Tongue of Toad:

8) Encourage natural and herbal remedies and practitioners and make this part of the health care delivery system, provide more true diet and health care education to teach people how to take better care of themselves. (Not just treating symptoms, like we do now!)

This problem is due to two other problems.  First, it is illegal to get a patent on a "natural" remedy.  Why do you think we have things like synthetic hormone replacement therapy instead of natural hormone replacement?  Especially when the synthetic hormone therapy has been linked to things like cacer.

The other half of the problem is the licensing of doctors.  You're only allowed to practice as a doctor if you have been trained in an allopathic (symptom treating) school.  That is why doctors treat symptoms, that's what they've been trained to do.  Again, laws and regulations that limit your choices and dictate the type of care you can recive.  Gotta love the nanny state.

Can you say War on Drugs:

9) Another very good way I can think of just off the top of my head is for the government to loosen up the restrictions on what drugs we can buy over the counter.

It'll never happen.  There are so many narcotics floating around out there now, you don't have to go to your courner drug dealer to get high anymore, you just have to look in someone's medicine cabinet.  Again drug companies will never let this happen because it will cut into their profits.  Heck they've been trying to get vitamins and supplements regulated for decades now.  Just think of how much money they could make if they could list Vitamin C as a drug and not as a vitamin.

I'll really not make friends with this statement.  Government regulation and red tape is responsible for most of the healthcare cost problems we have today.

Don't believe me?  Check out the linked hubs.  Dig a little deeper. Challenge what you know.