Liss Is More - Lotta ins. Lotta outs. Lotta strands in old Duder's head.
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October 22, 2009

Perhaps this is one reason "our Health care costs are high"...and thank goodness.

There was an accident near my house yesterday. Someone on a bicycle ran into someone in a car. The bike rider lost. I did not see the accident but my road was closed when I got home, so I knew something serious had happened. A few minutes after I got home I heard the sound of a helicopter flying very low. I went out to see what was going on and saw a medevac copter landing on the soccer field of the school up the street. The local ambulance corps caring for the injured person drove up to the school and transferred them into the copter and off they went. I pray that they will be fine.

Anyway, I have done some research into the claim that the US spends more per capita than any other country on health care. This is true, without a doubt. But my research, cursory as it is, lead me to the conclusion that we spend more BECAUSE WE CHOOSE TO SPEND MORE. This is a very important point. There are a lot of very expensive, intensive health care options which we choose to take advantage of.

This medevac option is probably one of them. I live in a small town in southeastern PA. No more than a few thousand people. And yet that copter was there wihin 20 minutes of the accident. Now, someone is going to pay for that service - probably the injured party's insurance company. I am sure that it is very expensive. And I am sure that it is worth every penny.

There were no medevac helicopters when I was a kid and my parents were responsible for paying for my health care. I pay much more than my parents ever thought of paying for coverage for my family. Some of that amount that I pay is because medevac helicopters are available and are used whenever they are useful - like the bike accident outside my home last night. Would I opt to pay less and not have access to medvacs? Would you? If ubiquitous access to medevacs are part of the reason that our health cares costs are so high then what does it mean to when our politicians say that "we must bring down the cost of health care."? What are they planning on cutting out?

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September 26, 2009

Arrogance - "Designing" a Health Care System

It’s crazy for a group of mere mortals to try to design 15 percent of the U.S. economy. It’s even crazier to do it in a few months.

Yet that is what some members of Congress presumed to do. They intended, as the New York Times put it, “to reinvent the nation’s health care system.”

Let that sink in. A handful of people who probably never even ran a small business actually think they can reinvent the healthcare system.

via thefreemanonline.org

All other arguments aside, do you really think that our esteemed members of Congress have any clue what they are doing? Barney Frank? Nancy Pelosi? Harry Reid? Do you really want these guys deciding how your health care is provided?

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September 26, 2009

Health Problems Health Care Can’t Fix

While Americans may have a lower life expectancy than other affluent countries, the disparity is mainly due to Americans' poor personal health-care practices -- not to any flaw in health-care treatment. "The U.S. actually does a pretty good job of identifying and treating the major diseases. The international comparisons don't show we're in dire straits," says University of Pennsylvania's Dr. Samuel Preston, a researcher who has studied the matter.

The real problem, it turns out, is that Americans are accident-prone, health unconscious slobs. Until the mid-1980s, the U.S. had the highest per capita cigarette consumption in the developed world, and the U.S.'s obesity rate today is more than twice that of Canada and ten times that of Japan. These aren't problems of the health care system (i.e. in the diagnosis and treatment of disease). These are problems of behavior. Adjust that data for the higher U.S. incidence of homicide and obesity, and Americans actually have the highest life expectancy in the developed world.

via online.wsj.com

The reasons that we do not have the highest life expectancy in the world are self-inflicted. We smoke too much, eat too much, eat the wrong things and lead a stressful life. These are not things that the health care system can control.

On the other hand, all the maladies caused by these self-inflicted wounds are expensive to treat: cancer, heart attacks, diabetes, etc. This is one reason we spend more than other countries.

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