14 Points Needed To Renovate The U.S. Health System

Introduction:

This essay is about the national health care debate, surely to heat up in the future, between those who believe one unified public system is most fair, efficient, and able to deal with new issues best, and those who believe that public systems can't control prices without price controls, and that price-controls always lead to shortages; called rationing. The latter would let consumers make choices in the "marketplace." Today, the consumer is mostly left out-of-the-loop when it comes to making these choices.

1 believe it important to state at the beginning that finger-pointing and blame will add nothing to ths debate. I thuds it best to just acknowledge that in the latter part of the last century, medical knowledge exploded, and with marvelous new medicines, technologies, and equipment, the archaic and fractious so-called health-system showed signs of failing.

To a certain extent, we are all players; as consumers, patients, and voters. But the real movers and shakers are the big guys; the insurance companies, the hospitals and chains of hospitals, and the drug companies; and the biggest of all: government. Someplace in between are the doctors and all the myriad other health care providers, though not united as a force with one voice. Since most workers get their insurance through their employers, employer groups or coalitions are gaining clout. Over-shadowing these players are the various branches of federal and state governments, and the politicians who write the rules that guide these branches. And of course, the President, who is in the best position to take the lead in guiding the nation's thought on drections to take in the shaping of health-care policy.

This from: Costs, Politics of Health Care Will Dominate Debate in '03, Wall Street Journal, Laura Lundro, 1-2-03. A survey conducted April-July? 2002 by the Kaiser Foundation, Harvard School of Public Health. Here a list of concerns?flom both the publics' and the doctors' perspective:

The General Public-
38%  Health-care costs
31%  Prescription drug costs
11%  Corporate bureaucracy
6%  Availability of care

The Physicians-
28%  Malpractice insurance costs and lawsuits
27%  Health-care costs
22%  Problems with health plans
19%  Availability of care
16%  Uninsured/underinsured
14%  Declining reimbursement
13%  Prescription drug costs
11%  Managed carelHMOs
5%  Medical errors

Defining and expressing these concerns and searching for solutions to these concerns is the subject of the remainder of ths essay.

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