Originally Posted by
Ken Fitzgerald
Uh...Rob.....what's wrong with profit in a capitalistic society?:
Capitalism is fine. But I think a myriad of examples exist from the recent past where government services were privatized and the costs went up and the service declined.
Certainly there are times when cost for treatment should have a seat at the table. But it should not by default be the primary factor in determining care.
It comes down to a moral decision. Do we value human life over profit? It really is that simple. Take the profit out our current health care delivery system it becomes vastly more available to everyone.
The CEO of United Health received $753 million for a five year compensation package. Not including the perks of limos, private corporate jet and so on.
Again it really boils down to whether we want to reward the corporate elite with lavish lifestyles or spend those resources providing care to our fellow Americans. And yes, it is that simple.
There's a lot of gnashing of teeth over the failure to enact meaningful tort reform, but tort reform would only affect the average persons ability to hold negligent doctors to account and not save any meaning full amount (less than 1% of a doctors overhead).
If we want to reduce expense in the current health delivery system lets look at the additional staffing and resources doctors have to expend to handle insurance claims. Estimates are that 25% of a private practice staffing and resources are used in insurance paperwork. The medical records field is growing by leaps and bounds. This American Life did an excellent story on the complexities of filing claims with the insurers. Each procedure has a code and no two insurers use the same exact code. And should you forget the suffix or otherwise not use the correct code, well there's a form for that too.
What the insurance companies do is immoral, unethical, evil and indefensible.
Last edited by Greg Peterson; 11-20-2009 at 2:52 PM.
Measure twice, cut three times, start over. Repeat as necessary.