Quote:
Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch
There's a problem with effective spending and getting bang for the buck, not the amount of money spent.
Thats one of the reasons why Obama's health care reform isn't strong enough. Its one of the reasons why Canada's health care system is failing. We just throw money down a well and have no expectations that its being spent effectively and actually providing services.
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This is something that I'm intimately familiar with, and have heard this lament many a time.
Absent a single payer system#, the only way for the US to begin to curb their systemic costs is to promote and further publicize treatment guidelines, attempt novel ways to limit Medicare practices that abuse the system, promote trials for cost efficiency / clinical efficacy (CER), and promote exchanges to open up the marketplace.
All of these provisions (some in multiple, trial form for future assessment) are in the healthcare bill that is to be phased in, so I'm at a loss to understand what more the proponents of healthcare reform could want *for the time being*. Rather, we hear red herrings like tort reform and such that do not meaningfully impact costs or the fundamentals of the system (see Texas).
# I think there is little doubt that a single payer system in the US is a no go at this point politically, socially, and economically (wrt the associated industry).