Health Care Reform

Got some of my joking out of the way with the last post, but I have to wonder if we are going to see any kind of real reform. Real logical reform. You know. The kind that will improve illogical elements of something that is not really broken.

Here are some of my thoughts:

• Why are health costs so high? Everything involved should be looked at. It's obvious that certain Democrat 'sacred cows' (i.e. trial lawyers) are excluded from the discussion. (Akin to homeland security ignoring the borders).
• Why do we not discuss the business costs of health care? Just the costs related to setting up and operating a practice can be astronomical. Can we expect that these costs are not passed on to the consumer?
• How much does fraud and frivolous litigation contribute to the rising cost?
• Can the great unwashed expect that this coverage will extend to all citizens. Will politicians and our betters exclude themselves from participation?
• What about competition? And does the reliance on insurance company control limit competition? How many of you go to a certain doctor only because he or she is approved on your plan?
• Can I make a side deal to a pharmaceutical company? Or hospital or clinic system?
• What ever happened to catastrophic health (hospitalization) insurance? Is plain old catastrophic health insurance even available? You know, a lot of us are old enough to remember when hospitalization insurance was all that you carried. If you think about it, the threat of something catastrophic or major that requires a hospital stay is really the only thing that should cause worry. If I was younger, I also would worry about the cost of childbirth. But other than that, I can take care of myself and at the present time, I am.
• Can and should Physicians Assistants and Nurse Practitioners become the backbone of our health care system. My last check-ups involved ninety per-cent of the time spent with a Nurse Practitioner drawing blood. Seems like this would work well for rural counties and urban neighborhoods.
• What about Medicare? A lot of people have paid into these systems for a good portion of their working lives and this becomes something akin to a social contract between citizen and government. This is why we want to think any thoughts of socialized medicine through so that the next generation that spends into a program for thirty or so years won't be so ready for insurrection when the system is scrapped for being unsustainable. I could write more about this but I'll just state that with 401K's going to hell, housing prices falling and unusually high-unemployment for people with degrees, many of the things that people believed in are gone.
• I can't tell you exactly when, but dying is going to be in my future. I don't know about you, but all I want is a little dignity at the end. I don't want my family to watch me suffer and I really don't want to have anything extraordinary done if the end is near. I do, however, want to be the person who still makes that decision if I still have my wits about me or I want it to be the decision of the person that I designate if I am permanently addled.

Folks, I just want to hear what I have not heard so far. Now, I don't know all the answers (this is not my field), but my trust of my government (this is not their field) is at an all-time low. And what I am hearing at the moment is not alleviating my lack of trust.