I Am Not A Monster
Can't we tone down the rhetoric long enough to agree on some very basic premises?
- It is a great tragedy when a person dies prematurely for financial reasons
- It is a tragedy when a person becomes indigent or bankrupt due to medical expenses
- It is most appropriate for the patient to be in charge of decisions regarding the level of his or her own care
- Individuals have many opportunities that go wasted to improve their health through lifestyle choices
- Divorcing costs from decision-making leads to unnecessary expenses
- The profit motive has fostered many great advances in the field of medicine
- We can't afford all the guns AND all the butter (economics 101 [or 10], anyone?)

I'm open to nominations! What else can we agree on?

I think people should be able to buy catastrophic coverage (which is not legal in many [most?] states) and pay for routine treatment on their own, even if they need to compensate by buying an older car, a smaller house, or a less rad TV. I think doctors, nurses, and hospitals should have to make their charges public. Those things alone would drive down health care costs considerably. Churches should be providing primary care services for those who still can't afford it.

I think we need to face the fact that most of us can afford to spend a LOT more on our health care than we do now. If you had to give up unlimited texting for a year to pay for a medical procedure, would that really be a tragedy? Medical care is very important, and now that we have the array of technologies that we have, we should expect cutting-edge treatment to be expensive. Because it is. Budget for it.

On the political side, here are my comments:
Funny to see the Democrats turn into the party of black and white. "Health care is a right". There are different standards of care, and even with the most extreme treatment available, nobody lives forever. There are treatments that incrementally prolong someone's life. We can't keep everybody on them forever. Who would you like to be in charge of deciding when to stop resuscitating you, putting nourishment in your feeding tube, defibrillating you, or pumping oxygen into your lungs? What does "fair" mean in this context? One size does not fit all.

(I'm probably more testy than a Christian ought to be, but I'm so tired of the "they're cold &%^$8#@ who don't care about poor people")

Labels: healthcare, politics

- posted by Lenise @ 11:06 PM |

 
All Clear
Daniel's hip has been given a clean bill of health. No wacky-looking frog-leg braces for him!

Labels: babies, healthcare

- posted by Lenise @ 3:03 PM |

 
On My Way to Work
Can't stop to chat, but the lightning update is my C-section has been scheduled for February 8th. I made it through the night (unlike last time they scheduled a birth for me), so we'll see. We're working on a contingency plan, though, and my parents are on stand-by =]

Labels: baby 3, healthcare

- posted by Lenise @ 6:47 AM |

 
No, Pontification Is
*Sigh* I saw this link on the news page at work, and followed it, hoping for an interesting article. I have only read it once, but upon one reading, the article seems to be a circular casting of aspersions on the drug companies, Congress, president, insurance companies, and (lest we leave anyone out) the medical profession. Apparently all of these parties are conspiring to make us pay as much as possible for prescription drugs because they somehow stand to gain from the pharmaceuticals' mammon (there was at least some mechanism given for the others, but no rationale for how the health insurers clean up on this deal...)

Advertising for drugs costs consumers money. Advertising is profitable. OK, which is it? Or are you saying, Mr. (probably Dr.) Davis, that consumers will happily agree to a higher sticker price on drugs if they're told they need to cover the cost of TV and magazine advertisements? The reason drug companies advertise is to sell more of the medications, which spreads out their R&D cost, making the drugs CHEAPER. Sure, if they could sell the same volume without the ads, it would be even better for all of us, including the drug companies.

It is not, of course, surprising to read this shallowly reasoned tirade in the Chapel Hill News, though I'm sure they have a high opinion of their journalistic standards. After all, if they can't complain about Pfizer, BCBSNC, W, and those overpaid MDs, what's the point of it all? It is NEVER the consumer's fault, I mean, aren't we all entitled to the absolute best quality of life we can have? We certainly shouldn't have to pay for medications! After all, doesn't Joe Schmoe deserve medications to lower his cholesterol so he doesn't have to stop eating pork rinds and get some exercise?

I've posted a little about this before, but the truth is that we take for granted that we should have a very high standard of medical care, while in villages all over Africa people are dying for lack of $10 worth of antibiotics. Don't Chapel Hill liberals care about that? Isn't that the sort of thing they love to play the "insensitive, uncompassionate" card on conservatives for?

Obviously, in the U.S., we have a high standard of living, and our medical care and medical expenditures reflect that. That's not necessarily wrong. What's wrong is trying to cast blame on everyone involved in the equation for trying to deny consumers what we are due. We aren't entitled to spend other people's money to ease the consequences of our bad decisions, or even our bad luck. We have been trying to make this a right for everyone, and enough people are taking the system up on it, that (surprise, surprise) it's getting awfully expensive.

We're not good at the hard answers to the realities of life. Sorry, folks, but there's NOT enough to go around. I think people getting expensive heartburn medications ought to be paying for them out-of-pocket, and let insurance cover a higher proportion of expenses for conditions which are more serious, but that would take a lot of work, and probably wouldn't be very popular. The truth is, it's a complicated situation, and casting blame on parties who are all in the business of helping people to better health is neither helpful, nor good.

Labels: healthcare, policy

- posted by Lenise @ 9:55 PM |