American healthcare funding - part 2
I don't know if "Sicko" stimulated the debate over the future of healthcare in the U.S., or if the film simply made me more aware of the ongoing debate.
In any event, I just watched former Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis' video editorial on Medscape General Medicine 9(3) 2007, "Getting Control of Health Costs - For Real". Dukakis certainly doesn't have any illusions about market solutions to healthcare costs. Here is an excerpt of what he had to say on the subject:
"Virtually all of these proposals [for healthcare reform] are coming from people who tell us that if only we can create a healthcare 'market' and people can shop around for their healthcare, all will be well. The fact of the matter is that the market doesn't work in healthcare. It never has and it never will -- for reasons that should be obvious to anybody who has taken the time to study the subject."
Why doesn't the "market" work in this case? Here are some of the reasons I can think of.
Why doesn't the "market" work in this case? Here are some of the reasons I can think of.
First, most people aren't qualified to make medical decisions; they have to leave healthcare decisions to experts. A largely uninformed public is no market force and no match for the powerful special interests in the healthcare field.
Secondly, every dollar spent on healthcare is a dollar made by healthcare providers. These healthcare providers obviously intend to keep it that way, whether their products and services are useful or not.
Lastly, and I think most importantly, the big players in the healthcare field, especially pharmaceutical companies, have no intention of permitting a free market. Why leave purchasing decisions to consumers, if the companies have the money and power to manipulate legislators and regulatory agencies, take over medical education, and bribe and intimidate individual doctors to ensure that their products and services are the only conceivable, the only legal treatment options.
The individual is clearly powerless in this matter. One might wonder though why insurance companies and large employers accept the status quo. I don't know the answer, but I suspect that the insurance companies make money by dumping expensive clients, and that companies pass their employee insurance costs on to their customers. Of course passing these costs on to their customers isn't so easy once you lost your competitive edge, as U.S. car manufacturers have found out.
I couldn't agree more with the influence this big pharma companies have over society in North America. I live in Canada and here we have a serious problem of a population who is severely uneducated on proactive health and sadly for the most part rely on reactive therapies.
As was mentioned above, these companies are working as hard as they can to not change the status quo. They are getting rich on our health...or lack of it.
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Health is of utmost importance and thus to make life better you can rely on so many things.
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Is this the best you could come up with for planting your URL on my site?
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