[Oe List ...] shoulda kept my mouth shut!

[Judi White]

Yesssss!
--
Judi White
25 North Lake Street
Crescent City, FL 32112
Phone: (386) 569-6956

---- R Williams <rcwmbw at yahoo.com> wrote: 
Some key insights from the Atlantic article referenced below, if you haven't read it.  (It is long.) 

We keep thinking what we need is more "health care."  More health care drives the cost up.  What we really need and want is better health.  Changes the whole vision.
We have become overdependent on insurance or other third parties to pay for our health care.  As long as someone else is paying for it we don't bother to ask what it costs.
Whatever the costs, there's no one to pay for it but us.  Example: The money a business spends on employees' health insurance comes out of potential pay raises for those same employees.
The medical industry relates to the insurance companies and Medicare as the customer, not the patient.
When the government puts a cap on Medicare payments the doctors simply order more tests and other procedures to make up the difference.
 
The article is worth the read--whole new perspective.  Check it out.
 
Randy


--- On Sat, 9/5/09, W. J. <synergi at yahoo.com> wrote:


From: W. J. <synergi at yahoo.com>
Subject: [Oe List ...] shoulda kept my mouth shut!
To: "Order Ecumenical Community" <oe at wedgeblade.net>
Cc: dialogue at wedgeblade.net
Date: Saturday, September 5, 2009, 7:38 PM






Colleagues, as the guy who started the healthcare 'reform' discussion snowball rolling down the pike, I'm aghast at the quantity and quality of email I elicited. I guess if you stand at a whistlepoint and just whistle, all kinda stuff is gonna come down on you. So I've been trying my best to wade through the virtual pile without choking my remaining brainpower on the somewhat vague and often reductionistic ideological perspectives, some of which are not grounded in the Order's historic experience and geo-social analysis. 
Problem is, while I'm at heart a radical Leftie (you know--an old-fashioned Pinko, etc.), I can always come up with very convincing illustrations of why More of the Same Big Government Solutions is not gonna work. The deep dislocations are simply ignored by a patchwork Bandaid fixer-upper reform effort that essentially stabilizes and sustains the current system, unchallenged.
That's why I found the LONG article Randy recommended below so helpful. It strips away assumptions about how the current system works efficiently etc. and looks at how it works profitably, given who the 'real' customer is (insurance/government). 
BTW my closest friend is actively dying of metastasized brain cancer in a hospice nearby. You could say that the cancer process is replicating exponentially, and is therefore highly 'profitable' in commanding his dwindling bodily resources. Unfortunately the cancer's 'success' will kill the patient. (Is there a clue here about unrestrained healthcare?)
Unfortunately the author turns out to offer Republican-type Big Brother solutions! 
You know, like everybody is forced to have a Health Savings Account, which the homeless/impoverished will get for free. Problem is, the homeless aren't gonna shop around for the most cost-effective medical care under his proposals. Instead they're gonna avoid medical care so they can keep the HSA balance at the designed max and 'skim' the surplus to meet other needs. 
So it's hard not to get stuck with what is basically a two-tier system. The poor will continue to be treated for free (hopefully with a better-designed delivery system emphasizing prevention), while the rest of us will pay for it and hopefully find a way to shrink the overall system costs.


More later,


Marshall


BTW, if you're interested, there is some powerful stuff written (some by moi) on my dying friend Elliot's website: elliotklein.net. Check it out.




From: R Williams <rcwmbw at yahoo.com>
To: Order Ecumenical Community <oe at wedgeblade.net>; Colleague Dialogue <dialogue at wedgeblade.net>
Sent: Friday, September 4, 2009 4:47:25 AM
Subject: [Oe List ...] "How American Health Care Killed My Father"






Conservative columnist David Brooks has an op-ed in this morning's New York Times in which he references an article in the current issue of The Atlantic entitled "How American Health Care Killed My Father."  Anyone who questions that our health care system is indeed broken (and broke) should read this article.  The author further states that the reform now being proposed (not real sure exactly what that is) won't fix it.
 
www.theatlantic.com/doc/200909/health-care
 
Randy


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