Healthcare as we know it is a serious burden on the national economy. Partisans on both sides of the debate at least agree on that. Some project that healthcare costs will equal 20 percent of our GNP in the next decade if major changes aren't made. But what is the real cost of healthcare reform? Is a public option the answer? And is congress willing to make the necessary changes to fundamentally overhaul the system?
Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Reed Abelson who covers healthcare for the NYT, and Teresa Ghilarducci director of the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy at the New School on the economics of healthcare reform.
The Real Cost of healthcare reform is what what are currently paying minus the 30% administrative costs, minus the unnecessary treatments, procedures and prescriptions that are not needed and minus the excessive salaries paid to insurance CEO’s.
While the initial cost of publicly provided health will be high, it will in the long run be much, much less that staying with the status quo. What is not often discussed are the savings that will be realized after everyone is able to be seen and evaluated. The crux of public plans will be prevention and detection that will eliminate the current problem of people not getting treated until their condition becomes serious.
Regardless where we get our health care the people are paying for it and therefore deserve the best return on their dollars.
We need a public plan now for everyone that is accountable only to the people and Congress (and the only real puplic option is single payer.)
By maggiesboy on July 8th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
I enjoyed this discussion, though Lara, you talked over Dean a number of times.
I was surprised to hear Ms. Ghilarducci talk about the rationing that goes on in hospitals currently. I’m an intensive care physician, so I’m in the front lines on both end-of-life care and the most expensive care modern medicine has to offer, and we don’t ration in any commonly understood sense.
We weigh the risks and benefits of treatments and present these to our patients and families and discuss how to proceed, but we don’t ever tell anybody they can’t have a treatment or continued care due to cost concerns.
On the other hand, sometimes when we wish to transfer a patient to another institution for a treatment we don’t offer, private insurers (NOT Medicare) may refuse to pay and then the family wil be on their own, and as was pointed out, if they have the money they can do whatever they want. Almost nobody has unlimited resources like that however, so it is de facto rationing in that sense.
The closest thing, to my knowledge, of explicit permission to ration care is the Texas law signed by George Bush allowing hospitals to withdraw life support if care was deemed futile by the medical team.
Rationing by income, economic hardship, etc. is a different story and is rampant. It accounts for a substantial number of my patient population because, as we know, “you can just go to the emergency room” if you haven’t been able to afford health care for months or years, and are now so sick as to need admission to my intensive care unit!
I published a piece on my blog about rationing in general if you are interested:
http://cmhmd.blogspot.com/2009…..bamas.html
Cheers,
By cmhmd on July 8th, 2009 at 2:02 pm