The Economist: American health care--what a waste

According to this article the health bill set forth by the senate finance committee will not cut spending to an appreciable degree. While the bill fulfills the democratic initiative to extend healthcare to more of the 4o million+ people in America who don't have it, I agree with this article in that perhaps the more important part of healthcare reform is to diminish its cost to the American people. The projected estimate of healthcare costs by 2050 is 20% of the GDP. This is not sustainable by any means and will ultimately lead to no one getting healthcare let along the millions of uninsured Americans currently. In my opinion, healthcare legislation should have one primary goal: to implement a financially sustainable healthcare system. This article offers three areas to address in order to achieve this goal:

1) Reform fee-for-service. Doctors are currently paid by how many tests they perform on their patients. This leads to unecessary procedures and wasteful medical costs. There neeeds to be a team of medical experts who can come up with a comprehensive and fair way to compensate doctors on how well they treat their patients as opposed to how much.
2) Reform tax exemptions for employer provided private health insurance. I'm not 100% sure what this means, but I think what it is is that currently health insurance purchased thorugh an employer is tax free. Thinking to my own payroll statement, my health insurance costs are taken out of my pre-tax income. This practice basically gives those people who get good group rates already from their employer based health insurance even more money via the government to pay for their health insurance. The government can not afford this expenditure. And people with employer based health insurance more often than not can afford to pay the taxes on their health insurance.
3) Medical tort reform. Apparently Obama's proclaimed inaction on mecial malpractice is what got him booed at the AMA meeting. One of the reasons doctors feel pressured to order extra tests is out of the fear of getting sued. Of course, I believe that a doctor should do ALL that is necessary for the best interest of her patients. But the fear of getting sued should not be the driver of any physician's behaviors/actions. I support a medical malpractice cap with exceptions. True negligence should be punished to the utmost degree, but patients should not be allowed to abuse the system at the expense of their doctors.


American health care: What a Waste