Frontline: Sick Around the World - my two cents

Here are my two cents on health care reform after watching an interesting documentary on health care in other countries.

My overview of the problems:
1. We spend too much (some doctors, equipment manufactures, liability insurance companies, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, some hospitals and other medical drains - make a lot of money). Statistics from the documentary - the US spends 16% of its GDP on Health care (and I don't think that includes out of pocket costs, only the government programs) and the average insurance company spends about 22% on administrative costs.

2. Many people have no coverage (which ends up landing on those with coverage if those bills don't get paid). This means many people do not get preventative care or are scared to go to the Dr. when a problem is small because the cost is so great and then finally do get help when it is late in the game and the fix is much more costly both to their health and in $$s for everyone.

3. We are not a healthy nation - overall we don't believe in a healthy diet or taking care of ourself. Capitolism has fed us lies to make a profit and mass media and ads tell us that the "High Life" includes delicious and un-nutritious fast food and a pleasure seeking sedentary lifestyle. In addition, we don't handle stress well and tend to have poor work/life balance. Many of our nation's health care costs are the result of poor decisions - and though obesity is an issue, it is far from the only issue. During the segment in Japan and Taiwan, it was apparent that they had different beliefs about taking care of yourself - both in diet and exercise.

4. We are sue happy with a capital S. Do we need to minimize mistakes? Yes! Should people be paid millions upon millions when mistakes are made - maybe not. When will be put limits to liability? The rest of the world laughs and runs Saturday night live type jokes about our Sue happiness. If we could see in really money how much more we would each get in our pockets each year if we limited medical law suits - would we change our minds? Because - yes we the health care consumer and tax payer are paying those bills too.

5. I'm not going to dive into this one too much - but many illegal immigrants don't pay into any system and use state health care systems and hospitals that can't deny them. California might have more insight, as many of their hospitals are going bankrupt due to this problem.

6. End of life costs - another hard topic - but I've heard estimates that the last 3 months of a person's life typically costs more medically than the rest of their life combined. Does this make sense?


Okay solutions - or thoughts on solutions - because the problems are way too big for a quick fix and also way too big for a band-aid (which is kind of what I think the current administration(House and Senate and all) is doing - putting a 1" gauze pad on a head wound).

I'm going to phrase my solution ideas as questions - as I am far from believing that I have the solution. However, I do believe after watching the documentary and living in New Zealand and speaking to friends there about health care - that our system is far, far, far from taking care of people as well as our other 1st world friends. In addition to not taking care of people as well, our system also is the leading cause of bankruptcy (talk about stress which causes more health care problems) - which all the other Universal health care systems say this problem is unheard of.

Solution thoughts:
1. Will there be people willing to be our providers, manufactures, pharmaceutical makers, insurance companies ... for less? (in most countries these people make significantly less) - this is a huge task to limit profits and to change the way we do things (like administration and end of life decisions).

2. Will we some how incentivize healthy decisions and preventative care?

3.Will we limit medical suits?

4. Will we own up to the fact that privatization mixed with state insurance for uninsured, poor and retired mixed with the non-insured isn't working and is going to make us all broke - one at a time?

5. Will we figure out how to manage immigration so their medical costs are covered?

Okay - so these are truly thoughts and not solutions - I'd need a book for that and like I said - I don't have the solutions! However, after being faced with $1300 a month group insurance on a less than $45,000 a year salary (which we said no thank you to), hearing my OBGYN say that his uncle's last words in the ER at the age of 50 something were "I can't pay for this, I don't have insurance" and knowing friends who make a decent living and can't afford insurance or get denied because of asthma when they are in their 20's, and ER visits that cost $10,000+ - something has gone terribly wrong.

If I were to vote today - I would select a fully universal system like Taiwan or Japan or even the UK over what we have now. A system that forces cost cuts, limits administrative costs, incentivizes preventative health, simplifies plans and takes care of everyone. I know that initially the pain would be severe and the headache big - but I believe it would be worth it. Ten years from now I think we would be happy with the decision and wish we had done it 20 years early.

If expecting education for everyone is not being a socialist, then can't expecting health care for everyone be the same?