|
|
COMMENTS:
Voted : The US spends 2.4 times as much per person as other developed cntrys.
I've been reading a great deal too and it's alarming. The quality of care and innovation is great, but so many hospitals and now even Doctors have become "Medical Corporations," that more and more, it's become about revenue and profit. There was a study done several years ago (name escapes me, but it was by the World Health Organization) and the conclusions were that given how much we spend on healthcare, the comparison to results is not good. In other words, the care/cure rate/survival rates are fine, but given that we spend so much more than nations with comparable results, it skews us down dramatically. Also factored in was the massive amount spend on "holistic" medicines, cosmetic surgery, etc.
Ultimately, the conclusions I read were basically that we are spending an exorbitant amount of money on healthcare and despite being leaders in some medical technologies and practices, the amount spent throws it off the charts.
The first thing I think we need to do is to cut waste and fraud and to re-align the medical field to be about curing sick people and not about corporations or profits.
it's so rediculous.
what I found out in the recent days is that most medicine for hypertension is $4 a MONTH, at walmart.
if we get people on these before they have major heart attacks, you save about $500k per person.
it's just plain stupidity to not have everyone diagnosed and on it. it's double stupidity not to.
by LCD on Thu Nov 05, 09 4:33pm
[+]
^ I've listened to a doctor formerly with the Dept of Ag. explain how certain normal stats like blood pressure are raised for that very purpose. He explained that many people who walk out of the doctor's office with a diagnosis of hypertension and a prescription in hand don't really have "high blood pressure". A very large number of those don't have a chronic condition and could very well be treated with herbs and diet. But if that's done, it means millions in losses for pharmaceutical companies.
As for what I know about healthcare... I've had several good lessons in the past, most recently when my grandmother was in the nursing home. When a physical therapy company comes in to give vocational and speech therapy to a 97 year old woman who will never walk again and who speaks more clear English than the people attending to her, it's not hard to see that money is the real motive behind much of the "care".
And it continues because people don't care. All too many people have the attitude of "I don't care, it's free. Medicade's paying for it".
Voted : Universal Health Care could be made so simple.
Don't you get a "tax-break" for paying Mortage Interest, etc, already? Don't you get a "tax-break" for charitable donations, etc, already?
Why couldn't we be given a "tax-break" for health insurance premiums??
Nah. That's too simple.
^Thanks for your input. However, could that policy do more than delay the day of reckoning, given that US health care costs keep rising much faster than inflation? Also, what about denial of health care to those with pre-existing conditions (whether Down Syndrome or anything else)? What about lifetime and annual caps, and rescissions? Just a few thoughts.
|
|
