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3 Responses to “There are No Easy Answers”

1. 1
   bobfoster Says:
   September 20th, 2008 at 7:36 pm

   I am astonished that the most obvious change isn’t listed above.

   - Cut the per-patient cost of medicare and medicaid

2. 2
   az85255 Says:
   October 1st, 2008 at 10:17 pm

   I agree with Mr. Foster that the root cause of the issue is not being addressed. Medical care is too expensive. Pharmaceuticals are too expensive. Insurance takes yet another piece of the proverbial pie. It seems to me that it’s simply a matter of supply and demand. Supply is currently artificially restricted by powerful lobby entities, which results in higher prices.

   Remove the artificial barriers that shore-up doctor’s profits. Restructure the monitary and educational thresholds to becoming a general practitioner. I’m sorry, but what a primary physician does is *not* rocket science. In fact, it’s easier to become a “rocket scientist” (PhD) than it is to become a doctor. Why should it take over a decade to become a generalist? If your not working in an Operating Room, doing research, and so forth the current threshold is simply ridiculous. There is a lot of talk currently about making energy research and development a national priority. Well, I submit that we should make increasing the supply of medical personnel a national priority. Turn the medical “industry” back into a profession entered into by folks that want to make a difference and help their fellow human being–not just get rich.

   Drug companies and their ridiculous profits–in the name of paying for research–at the expense of United States Citizens needs to stop. Implement international cross-border market forces for pharmaceuticals. It’s a well known fact that the same drug is often cheaper in foreign markets such as Canada and Europe. Restructure patent law so that exhorbinant premiums are not charged for name-brand drugs. Perhaps allow competitors to license and produce a new drug for a fixed fee as a percentage of sales. Create a new body of government research entities–similar to our national science, technology, and energy research labs to help offset the high cost of drug and other medical development. And like the national research labs, provide competition to bid on development contracts and create effective technology transfer programs to move from the lab to industry.

   This is a problem that we *can* and must solve. I’m sure there are plenty of other great ideas out there to lower the fundamental cost of healthcare. Ultimately, it’s just common sense. Choose the special interests Of The People and not that of powerful and wealthy lobbies. Open up the supply spigot and remove the artificial elevation of profits. Make increasing the supply of healthcare professionals a national priority. Make it attractive for our young people to become doctors and nurses via educational cost and length modifications. Such an approach would surely help expand our disappearing middle class and the growing gap between rich and poor. Last but not least–allow international drug markets to function.

   Thanks for your time…

3. 3
   Elvey Says:
   October 29th, 2008 at 2:09 pm

   Having a million of our smartest citizens spending 10 years of their life doing little but memorizing megabytes of information, and the rest of it serving as little more than expensive databases for that information is a PHENOMENAL waste of resources. I’m talking about doctors. Someone with a year’s training using a smart diagnostic tool (on a PDA such as a Palm or iPhone) containing gigabytes of combined knowledge of some of our best doctors is superior to a doctor in ability. Certainly, we need doctors to do research and to develop and improve such tools, but we don’t need at least half the doctors we have. Basic versions of such tools already exist, and are used in medicine from time to time.

   (How many gigabytes of text are in a full set of medical textbooks? About 0.1 gigabytes. About 1 GB if you include the pictures and compress everything.)

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