>FWIW the _Atlantic_ article is well worth reading carefully. I've >already forwarded the link with my recommendation to a couple of >other lists, and got a couple of comments back.
The problems the article lists are real; I won't argue that the present system is really messed up. However, the solution of having high deductables has been tried; and the results are counterprodutive. People under those conditions eschew paying for services until they reach crisis porportions, then they go in. They gamble that things will get better on their own, and if they lose, they only risk their deductable. Obama, yesterday, was right on target when he said there was no single silver bullet for this problem. But, we do know things can be better, because we are paying twice as much as the average developed country per person with worse than average results. FWIW, I've discussed this with numerous professionals (including my brother-in-law who is one of the few doctors who take Medicaid paitients and patients who can pay only part of their bill, a friend who was the chief administrator of a hospital ranked one of the 100 best in the US, before she went on to an even better hospital, and others who develop new products and are frustrated with how hard it is to get them past regulations and into use. Ironically, one of the things that John is ralling about has become the rallying cry for the anti-government groups: any attempt to decrease the spending of hundreds of thousands on the last month of life so mom or dad could painfully exist the world in four weeks insteasd of four days. Thank God my sister was a hospice nurse, so we knew enough to discuss this and let dad die when gangrine formed in his legs at 90 when his circulation dropped. We could have had an expensive painful amputation, used extrodinary measures, and he would have lived a couple more years in agony and dementia. We chose to let him die. Counseling on this is not a death panel, and Congressmen villifying this after promoting it is some of the worst bad faith I remember in politics. Dan M. -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web.com – Enhanced email for the mobile individual based on Microsoft® Exchange - http://link.mail2web.com/Personal/EnhancedEmail _______________________________________________ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
