Thursday, September 17, 2009

"How American Health Care Killed My Father"

I've been meaning to post this article from The Atlantic for over a month.

Money quote:

"To achieve maximum coverage at acceptable cost with acceptable quality, health care will need to become subject to the same forces that have boosted efficiency and value throughout the economy. We will need to reduce, rather than expand, the role of insurance; focus the government’s role exclusively on things that only government can do (protect the poor, cover us against true catastrophe, enforce safety standards, and ensure provider competition); overcome our addiction to Ponzi-scheme financing, hidden subsidies, manipulated prices, and undisclosed results; and rely more on ourselves, the consumers, as the ultimate guarantors of good service, reasonable prices, and sensible trade-offs between health-care spending and spending on all the other good things money can buy."

1 comment:

Denise said...

You know, the thing is though -- American healthcare also helped make sure his father made it to 83. Which, is still a ripe old age. And you can't tell me that we would have lived to be that old no matter where he'd lived. This guy made some valid points, and clearly has raw, personal feelings since it involved the loss of his father. But truthfully, part of the problem with healthcare in this country is the American desire to live forever, and seemingly not age in the process. Not realistic.