Moral of the story: don’t trust any statistics the politicians throw at you when they are trying to sell their so-called “healthcare reform”.

The idea that we can improve the system in any meaningful fashion with grab-bag legislation hastily rammed through Congress is past naive, and approaches completely idiotic. We badly need an extensive national health care review and debate. What we will get instead from hurried shoved-down-the-throat “reforms” is costly special-interest-feeding programs that do not even begin to solve the problems we need to address, could quite likely make them much worse, and do all that at great added expense.

Snake-oil and used car salesmen insist you must close the deal NOW.

If I agreed any more than I do, I would actually BE you, Tully. Nothing I have heard about the current reforms suggests comprehensive improvements based on substantial reforms. It all sounds like props and jury-rigging and nibbling cosmetically at the edges… .

“we don’t really need to replace this rotted beam, we can nail another to it, and it should hold OK for a few more years. And this door here is still good, is just needs a coat of paint. Oh, and a new knob. And it gets stuck because the frame is out of plumb, but we can plane a little off this top corner. The roofer said the roof really needs to be stripped and replaced, but screw him he’s just trying to pork us, we’ll find someone shingle a 3rd layer over it…it will look a little bit funky and it won’t last as long, but I’m sure it will be fine.

**sigh**

The government already has the perfect laboratories to test reforms in Medicare/Medicaid. Over the last twenty years these programs have “controlled costs” by cutting reimbursements, offloading those costs onto the private sector and (MCD) state & local government. In turn that drives up the cost of non-MCR/MCD health care even faster, while driving providers out of MCR/MCD. Right now roughly half of all doctors refuse to take MCD patients and 30% or so are refusing new MCR patients. Those trends are getting worse. That’s not surprising, as MCR/MCD are already almost half of all heath care spending in America. (Yes, folks, we’re already halfway to single-payer.)

The refusal to participate in MCR/MCD is understandable — it often costs doctors more just to file the paperwork than they get paid for providing the service. I know doctors who will willingly treat new MCD patients, but only for free. They WANT to serve their patients, they WANT to help the indigent and are willing to work them into their practice schedules, but the payment rates of MCD are so abysmal they lose LESS money by not filing for reimubursement at all.

(I even know one GP who doesn’t take insurance at all. Because he doesn’t have to file all that paperwork, he can work with half as much staff, charge half as much, spend MORE time with each patient, and still make as much money.)

It took decades to reach the current situation. The idea that we can improve the system in any meaningful fashion with grab-bag legislation hastily rammed through Congress is past naive, and approaches completely idiotic. We badly need an extensive national health care review and debate. What we will get instead from hurried shoved-down-the-throat “reforms” is costly special-interest-feeding programs that do not even begin to solve the problems we need to address, could quite likely make them much worse, and do all that at great added expense.

Snake-oil and used car salesmen insist you must close the deal NOW.