On Sun, Aug 2, 2009 at 5:01 PM, Dana wrote: > > I have recently been researching the costs of certain drugs and procedures > and I have found a flaw in the idea that we can reduce costs through > competition
Apparently one of the ideas floating around is to allow people to shop for insurance plans across state lines, which you can't do today, on the theory that greater competition for insurance plans would bring down costs to the consumer. I'm not sure how, though, at least not on the scale that we need. It still all comes down to numbers - a big demographic shift away from youth toward age, and therefore not enough dollars coming from younger, healthier people to fund older, less healthy people. So what can we do? We can squeeze costs, we can squeeze the rich, we can squeeze the young, we can squeeze the doctors, we can squeeze the insurance companies, we can squeeze the lawyers, but ultimately, we have to squeeze the patients. Whether through rationing of care in a single-payer system or the limitations of the current insurance-based system, patients are going to get squeezed. And that's the first and last problem of the current debate - no one on either side of the debate wants to admit that patients are going to get squeezed, because when we say patients, we are really saying elderly voters. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Want to reach the ColdFusion community with something they want? Let them know on the House of Fusion mailing lists Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:301337 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.5
