Health Care Thoughts: Question for the readers

By the good old USPS. What, will the next mandate be that you have to buy boradband? On my list of ‘wants’, which might just start to come in to play when O completes the grand bargain and I’m saddled with the Chained CPI, internet access is quite a ways down the list, after food, clothing, heating, etc. Dial-up is a real possibility, and maybe those of you who don’t want to think about us, those are the facts!

I enjoy your articles on here and usually, time permitting, click any links you provide. I think people, progressives, etc, etc should be specific in what we see as the solution to health care services in this country. Dentists and Eye Doctors are as close to a “free market” as we have in this country due to limited coverage from the Insurance Cartels. The rest of it is not and never will be a free market therefore Single Payer Medicare type coverage at BIRTH paid for by taxes is the only solution. Eliminate employer based health care coverage period and remove that burden from businesses. I think if you tried to start another blog as many as are out there you would lose readers compared to AB.

Many of those who advocate for the present system, who believe it’s spiraling costs are inevitable, contend that it is patients who need to be better informed — that being proactive will result in an optimal experience when illness strikes. What that seems to imply is that health care problems reside mainly with ill-informed patients, as if this were some sort of crisis stemming from simple economics, or making wiser choices and good financial decisions. Unfortunately, it’s not a mere economic dilemma, like how much do I want to spend on a new pair of shoes — often it’s an issue of life and death. The idea that anything as fundamental as health care has become unattainable for so many Americans because of arbitrary costs which have little, or nothing, to do with quality of care, a point addressed by those who naively believe in market-base medicine, is ludicrous. Our health care system most certainly is a broken system when we allow the priority or profits to subvert the essential purpose of such a vital service. That even one citizen in a wealthy country like America would be denied basic resources for health on the basis of price fixing (i.e., the chargemaster) is unconscionable. The problem remains as long as we delude ourselves to think it is about ‘how’ to pay rather than ‘why’ we pay such ridiculous costs.