healthcare reform-smoke and mirrors
You go to see your doctor, he sends you to a specialist because he is afraid of making a mistake. You end up paying for all these additional tests. If we reformed tort law and lowered the premiums for malpractice insurance, maybe our doctors wouldn't be afraid to make a diagnosis on their own without all the additional specialised tests.
New drugs are prescribed a year or two earlier in America than Europe and they pay 50% more for the same drugs i.e. the rest of the world gets a free ride while America subsidises the cost of R&D for the drug companies.
The central problem is that most Americans get their health insurance through their employers that can buy health insurance with pretax dollars while individuals can't. The doctors get payed for the number of tests they do and the insurance company passes along the cost to the employer in the form of higher premiums, who will pass them along to workers in the form of lower wages. The proportion of the cost of employer provided health care insurance shouldered by employees is almost 100%. Last year, employer provided health insurance reduced wages by 7.9%.i.e the stagnation of middle-class incomes in recent years.
A government plan could wipe out a lot of private insurers since unlike a private insurer, it would not have to make provision for future liability, it could simply stick the bill on future taxpayers. Medicare, has unfunded liabilities of $36 trillion.
Only 4% of American doctors have a fully functional electronic medical-records system, Obama wants to rectify that and alleviate having to redo tests, a step in the right direction.
I usually pride myself on being able to understand economic principles; healthcare was somewhat a mystery to me. I concentrated and wrote down all my thoughts here.
Seems to me we should fix what we already have rather than trying to redesign the whole thing.
New drugs are prescribed a year or two earlier in America than Europe and they pay 50% more for the same drugs i.e. the rest of the world gets a free ride while America subsidises the cost of R&D for the drug companies.
The central problem is that most Americans get their health insurance through their employers that can buy health insurance with pretax dollars while individuals can't. The doctors get payed for the number of tests they do and the insurance company passes along the cost to the employer in the form of higher premiums, who will pass them along to workers in the form of lower wages. The proportion of the cost of employer provided health care insurance shouldered by employees is almost 100%. Last year, employer provided health insurance reduced wages by 7.9%.i.e the stagnation of middle-class incomes in recent years.
A government plan could wipe out a lot of private insurers since unlike a private insurer, it would not have to make provision for future liability, it could simply stick the bill on future taxpayers. Medicare, has unfunded liabilities of $36 trillion.
Only 4% of American doctors have a fully functional electronic medical-records system, Obama wants to rectify that and alleviate having to redo tests, a step in the right direction.
I usually pride myself on being able to understand economic principles; healthcare was somewhat a mystery to me. I concentrated and wrote down all my thoughts here.
Seems to me we should fix what we already have rather than trying to redesign the whole thing.
