Submitted by Devon Stavrowsky, Jul 11, 2007 04:39

About 85% of the people in this country (the Good ol' USA) have what is actually pretty decent health care. That leaves roughly 15% without. What that means in real terms is about 15% get caught by the safety net when they absolutely have to have health care, and 85% probably use more health care than they truly need (or at least a goodly percentage of the 85% do).

Few, in this country, who actually need health care end up having to do without (though I will grant the tab they get stuck with can be awfully punative... that's the REAL issue... not lack of availability). Or put another way, the number who actually need health care, but end up having to do without, is probably significantly smaller as a percentage of our doctor-going public than die waiting for health care to arrive in many a more-socialistically inclined system. What we're really being asked to do is to dumb-down the system the 85% enjoy to accomodate the 15%; to subvert the working system so that the minority can have a system defined for them.... even if it means nobody's system works worth a damned thereafter.

Part of the problem is that he working system is perceived as wasteful, arrogant, and overpriced, even for those who have it going for them. Mostly, that's because it is all of that and more. And the reason it is all of that is because even it has been perverted by attempts to stretch it into some kind of universality. The free market has little to do with health care in modern America anymore, laboring for survival only at the fringes where, for example, one drug companies competes against others, or a health plan carrier tries to lure clients from another carrier. But by the time their 'product' makes it into the system, it is swallowed up by price controls, subsidies, restrictions on distribution, and over-diagnosing, overtreating, and taking all kinds of oherwise unnecessary steps to avoid buying some lawyer a new house, ultimately at the health plan participants' expense. What we get in the end is highly controlled for us, and 'free market' has little to do with it.

If we are going to include more of those 15%ers and still have the system work, we are going to have to change the basic economics of the whole thing. Shakespeare had it right: "First, kill all the lawyers" (We really DO need tort reform in a big way). Then, health care has to go back to being free-market oriented, and paying for it has to come from changing economics on the front end.... the patient end... before the health care is needed. The patient should essentially be paying cash for his treatment, have the cash readily available for that purpose, and the doctor should not labor under the delusion that a bloated insurance-scheme price is going to be paid no matter what occurs or doesn't occur in the examining room.

Mandatory medical savings, tax-deductable, inheritable, and transferable within families (that we would pay our doctor bills from) would be a good start. If we did that, and clinics had to compete for our 'cash' business, health care costs would drop through the floor while quality improved.... as in all other aspects of American 'competetive' business..... and everybody would be covered.

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