Don’t miss this KevinMD.com/David Gratzer, M.D. post on how – despite the miracles of modern medicine — the poor incentives of the fractured U.S. health care finance system encourage people not to change unhealthy habits:
But if medicine has never been so advanced, the actual health of Americans is far less robust. The Era of Modern Medicine has given way to the Age of Preventable Illness. Americans have embraced a culture of extremes: too much alcohol, tobacco, drugs, and food, and not enough exercise and restraint. American leads the way in medical innovation, winning more Nobel Prizes in Medicine than all other countries combined. We also lead the world in obesity, and have the poor life expectancy statistics to show for it. [ . . .]
ObamaCare seeks to divorce people from the financial consequences of their health decisions — regulating insurance to treat people equally regardless of age or illness (community rating), offering many no-deductible services, mandating the coverage of other services, and sweetening the deal with heavy subsidies.
Let’s be clear: a patient with Schizophrenia shouldn’t be punished because his father and grandfather had the disease. But many illnesses are preventable. Rather than encourage health, ObamaCare seeks to socialize the costs of bad health.
As noted earlier here, perhaps the wisest investment in health care finance that we could make at this stage is simply better education?
tom,
i think we should stop wringing our hands so much about individual choices. people are living longer and better than ever as they embrace fabulous foods and laying around with electronic devices and beverages or drugs, as they grow ever-fatter on the way to dying earlier than those who choose “better”–but, we all die.
if we could purchase insurance that excluded whatever we dont want to cover, the insurance market would be fair and rational ie i would choose not to pay for drug or alchol related ills but my former smoking, love of food and loathing for exercise would cause me to retain tobacco and diabetes related coverage–just in case…..
i think we are all better served to advocate for free insurance markets and abandon all the well-intentioned yapping about “education”–i am educated, just undisciplined, lazy and self-indulgent, clearly within my rights–p.s. everyone in the u.s. is “educated, ad nauseam” about health stuff–stop throwing my tax money at more.
There’s not much money to be made in prevention. The Rx industry would go bust if not for pills for people with chronic diseases and chronic “diseases”.
Better education is a great idea, but conservatives would block any efforts to back up health education with anything that would make it a practical reality, such as lowering the cost of healthier foods.
The smartest solutions are better education and universal healthcare. They can, and should, go hand in hand.
The “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” folks
could maybe be very influential in helping to educate the greedy to consider the rest of society.
bill,
your assertion that”the smartest solutions are better education and universal healthcare” are opinions you are entitled to but be advised it is my opinion you are wrong on both—leave everyone alone, they are educated already at tax payer expense and have access to health care and insurance, also often at tax payer expense—tax payers are real people with real feelings and real rights and some of us are tired of you and others wanting to do nice things at OUR expense–spend your own money and do it–all you want to.
“ax payers are real people with real feelings and real rights and some of us are tired of you and others wanting to do nice things at OUR expense-”
As a taxpayer, I agree. Many of us are tired of you and others preaching about self-reliance while
supporting policies which primarily benefit the
rich, at the expense of the rest of us.
IMO, you and yours represent only a tiny percentage of voters. Most people agree that the role of government shouldn’t be limited to only serving the interest of rich people and large
corporations. Republicans know this, and that’s why they can’t win elections on the basis of their real objectives. So, we have to deal with scare tactics, voter suppression, Koch brothers and their ilk financing gullible tea partiers,
S. Ct. decisions giving businesses ever greater
means to influence our electoral system, and all the rest.
Of course, I’m sure your own views are are moderate and certainly centrist.
The elephant in the room is that the American healthcare industry is the most profitable one in the world. No politician worth his campaign contributions is going to mess with that cash cow. Republicans in their standard ignorance-enhancing style are deadly opposed to the healthcare act’s initiatives to study which treatments actually work. That would take jobs away from quacks and fools, and that cannot be allowed!