Like it or not, he's absolutely correct that we spend way too much treating disease after the fact, and not enough on preventative medicine, nor is he wrong in stating that we can provide better care and still spend less money. An ounce of diagnosing dangerous conditions and preventing diseases from developing or worsening is 100x more efficient than treating full blown, chronic conditions. Our system is rife with unnecessary medications, tests (including expensive ones), surgeries (unnecessary ones - back surgery is a prime example of this), and a lack of coordination between treating primary care physicians and specialists. You could gut 25% of medical costs in this country, saving hundreds of billions of tax dollars, and improve care at the same time.
I'm sure I don't have all the facts but this looks to me like Obama is going to cut medicare re- imbursements (one example) to hospitals. How is this going to reduce health care costs? If the gov't pays the hospitals less for tests, procedures, the cost is still there. I'm sure the gov't will fund the program under some other name and call the medicaid reduction in reimbursments as cutting costs.
You could gut 25% of medical costs in this country, saving hundreds of billions of tax dollars, and improve care at the same time. ------------------------------------------------------- And probably alot more. I was disabled 30 years ago by one doctor who prescribed steroids and it took other doctors 15 years to figure out what was wrong with me, because the sons of bitches never even looked in my medical records. Why? Because they were more interested in examining my wallet than my records or my body. I had two unnecessary operations and avoided another one that another quack tried to give me before I received a double hip replacement. On the first hip replacement, they had to give me five pints of blood after surgery because this bastard stitched me up without stopping the bleeding. He was playing golf that afternoon.
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE55A54E20090615 "If we do not fix our healthcare system, America may go the way of GM; paying more, getting less, and going broke," he said. Look what the piece of shit president worries about all of the sudden. Lying scumbag. Talk about paying more getting less.
If everybody died 6 months earlier than their "expiration" date - we'd save BILLIONS. No how do we figure that date out, and how do we get around those pesky moral dilemmas? Of course I'm being facetious, but really, the costs of terminal care in the last 6 months of one's life is staggering.
How about culling the sick and aged? Some 5-cent .22s behind the ear could save $Billions, $Trillions.
As long as health care is considered a right and not a paid for service it will always be fucked up in some way. Having said that, if I was broke and sick, I would hope I'd be taken care of.. Its a complicated issue.
Focusing on their quality of life if they have terminal illnesses, rather than letting people suffer in exchange for an extra month or so, really could save billions and trillions (over time). There are ETHICAL as well as financial consideration at work here.
There is some truth to this, but the real question is who decides? I don't want some Obama drone deciding if I can have life-saving treatment. We know how that will work out in practice. Most of us will be denied, but big Obama supporters will magically go to the front of the que.