HEALTH: The current “system” is unsustainable; the answer is NOT Gooferment “healthcare”

Saturday, June 25, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/06/the_truth_regarding_health_care.html

The Truth Regarding Health Care
By Keith R. Jackson, M.D.

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There already exist many programs for the poor and uninsured. These could be streamlined and sensibly expanded. What would classify as a necessary addition to the equation would be possible assistance with deductibles and expansion of catastrophic insurance policies for the rest of us. Improving the portability of Health Savings Accounts, making them easier to understand and obtain, would address the former. A creative solution merging government assistance with HSAs and catastrophic insurance policies could go a long way toward appeasing both sides, even though they would scream that this “solution” is wrong. One avenue for saving is the cost of administration of the health care dollar. Private insurers’ administrative costs are surprisingly much higher than the government’s. There must be a “happy medium” there, with less bureaucracy in the former and more effective administration in the latter.

*** end quote ***

I think you can look at ANY Gooferment program and see a disaster.

As a first step, the current deductibility problem (i.e., healthcare expense is deductible to employers but not employees) has to be SOLVED.

Then let that work itself out by removing the Gooferment from the “health care system”.

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HEALTHCARE: Fully Private, No-Insurance Hospitals are possible

Monday, April 18, 2022

https://mises.org/wire/how-fully-private-no-insurance-hospitals-help-common-man

How Fully Private, No-Insurance Hospitals Help the Common Man
04/14/2022 Daniel Diefenbach

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How does one make an economic decision when the price of a good is not evident? To any adherent of the Austrian school, this of course is impossible. There is no way to decide whether to purchase something if the only way of knowing the price is after committing. For example, who would fill up their car only to see what the price was at the end? No one. In no aspect of life would this make sense, yet it is the standard in the American healthcare system.

**

In June 2021, the Mises Institute held the Medical Freedom Summit in Salem, New Hampshire, and one of the speakers was Dr. G. Keith Smith of the Surgery Center of Oklahoma, an institution that is truly free market and receives no money from the federal government. He spoke of the successes of his business and of the simple model he and Dr. Steve Lantier established in 1997. Smith describes their first patient experience as follows:

*** and ***

He later told the story of a Georgia man who was quoted $40,000 for his surgery at home. The Surgery Center of Oklahoma quoted him $4,000. Upset at having lost a patient to them already, the man’s hometown surgeon decided to match the price. The patient told Dr. Smith that the Surgery Center of Oklahoma “had saved him $36,000 and … hadn’t even performed his surgery.”

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Once again we learn that the Gooferment has really really messed up “health”, “health care”, “health care insurance”, or something else like our lives.

Just separate “health insurance” from employment by making health insurance premiums deductible from the top line, just as it is for businesses, and level the playing field.

After all you don’t lose your car insurance when you change jobs.  Why should health insurance be any different?

Argh!

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HEALTH: Viagra and Cancer – YouTube — and the FDA & AMA?

Thursday, May 24, 2018

Sometimes it can take years for serious side-effects to be recognized, so rather than just covering up symptoms with drugs, we should treat the underlying cause with lifestyle changes whenever possible.

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A reason why the FDA should be an ADVISORY agency.  That is, award the FDA “Good Housekeeping” seal of approval to those drug candidates that follow their regime.

Other drugs, not following their process, would be “Doctor and Buyer Beware”.  But as we see from this example, and many others, ALL drugs are “Buyer Beware”.

Maybe the ability to sue should be differentiated by “FDA approved” and “non-FDA approved” in some way.

In any event, it’s time to have the separation of Gooferment and Medicine.

Maybe the AMA’s monopoly on Doctors should be eliminated also.

If we trust a “shade tree mechanic” with our cars, then maybe we can trust out lives to a “Nurse Practitioner”?  Wait a minute, wait a minute, when I go to the “Doctor’s Office” sometimes the only people I see are the receptionist, the Nurse, and the Nurse Practitioner. Is the doctor even in the building or out playing golf?

Hmmm, seems like there’s a lot of streamlining needed. No wonder costs are out of control.

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HEALTHCARE: The Gooferment should NOT be involved in “health”, “health care”, or “health care insurance”

Sunday, May 15, 2016

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/05/13/stossel-hospital-bureaucracy-is-toxic-for-patients-heres-my-solution.html?intcmp=hpff

HEALTH CARE
Stossel: Hospital bureaucracy is toxic for patients. Here’s my solution
By John Stossel  Published May 13, 2016  FoxNews.com

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But Goldhill points to one favorable trend. “Increasingly, people have high deductible (insurance) plans … (I)t’s the most promising thing in health care.”

Many patients hate high deductibles. But they are useful because they make us realize that care is not “free.”
Patients with high deductibles and Health Savings Accounts ask important questions: “Doc, do I really need that test? What does it cost?” They shop around.

Suddenly, there’s the beginning of an actual market. When patients shop, doctors strive to please patients rather than distant bureaucrats. More doctors give out their email addresses and cellphone numbers, and shorten waiting times. Their bills are easier to read because the providers want customers to pay them!

Government and insurance companies don’t make health care free. Such third-party payments just hide the cost, which increases the costs and makes payment more complicated.

*** end quote ***

I’ve had really close contact with hospitals twice in my life where I was NOT the patient but the Patient Advocate. (Or PIA!)

The system is a mess.

I’m aware of one case involving my OLD friend where to break a log jam I volunteered to drive a blood sample from Charlotte to Chicago because the first one they took spoiled due to the delay in transport.

(Have to admit my OLD friend reported shocked look on the docs faces when he told them what he wanted to do. Magically the “problem” was “solved”. I knew that would be the response since I had a similar response at one point in my deceased wife’s care where I threatened — at 3PM in the afternoon — to take her out on the hospital driveway, draw a blood sample (I was a credentialed EMT at the time), and have it delivered by limo / escorted by a relative to the appropriate lab in NY. After they put their eyes back in the sockets, “magic” happened and the test was completed by the next morning! Never underestimate the value of a crazy PIA patient advocate.)

The disconnect between the “golden rule” (“he who has the gold makes the rules”) and good medical care is so obvious that only a fool would not make the connection.

Argh!

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