12ozProphet

No doubt we are on opposite sides of this and many debates. But with the problem with healthcare insurance coverage and hospitals/medical industry in this country is not the running rampant of free markets or the lack of public funding. On the contrary, we have a false market, not a free one. It is the fact that either privately or publicly we indirectly subsidize to the point that we as individuals lose sight of counting cost and quality of care. Allowing private insurance companies or the federal government to do that thinking for us will ultimately and always meaning rising costs and suffering quality of service. The problem is that currently we as individual consumers do not have the means to take our business elsewhere, like we do with almost every other aspect of our lives. Its the bait and switch of a free cell phone with a 2 year commitment-on a grand scale with larger ticket items of MRI’s and ER visits. We don’t know what these things should cost and don’t shop around, because of the current system that won’t allow us to.

“All of the actors in health care—from doctors to insurers to pharmaceutical companies—work in a heavily regulated, massively subsidized industry full of structural distortions. They all want to serve patients well. But they also all behave rationally in response to the economic incentives those distortions create. Accidentally, but relentlessly, America has built a health-care system with incentives that inexorably generate terrible and perverse results. Incentives that emphasize health care over any other aspect of health and well-being. That emphasize treatment over prevention. That disguise true costs. That favor complexity, and discourage transparent competition based on price or quality. That result in a generational pyramid scheme rather than sustainable financing. And that—most important—remove consumers from our irreplaceable role as the ultimate ensurer of value.”  -David Goldhill, from “How American Health Care Killed My Father” The Atlantic Magazine, Sept 2009

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200909/health-care

This is satire, right?

are you fucking serious ?

@Handselecta - it seems we’re pretty much on the same page actually. Good article, thanks !

@wtf - probably

@Horst - not in this instance

Yeah, this is confirmed satire. Funny stuff

fucking hilarious. On a side note, hospitals are having to buy special “Obese-Sized” Ambulances (normal ambulances can’t carry people over 350 safely), which are considerably more expensive, and people got outraged about enabling obesity, trying to say that they had to pay extra for they’re ER visits. I’m not a fat person, and its a far cry from privatizing Ambulance Visits, but this entry made me think of it.

http://abcnews.go.com/m/screen?id=7981746&pid=26