Fixing Healthcare by Steve Mussey MD
How do we fix our expensive, inefficient, administrator heavy health system?
Let’s try Capitalism!
Free market forces. Efficiencies! Excessive testing so facilities can maximize profits! Advertising to get patients to demand expensive drugs they don’t need! Insurance to blunt the financial impact of medical choices! Selling procedures to make money rather than help patients!
Okay….. Never mind….
How about…
Strong centralized planning! Controlling prices! Careful distribution of services where they are needed most! Strong government to prevent abuse! Bizarre incentive systems! Controlling doctors!! Doctors getting frustrated! Inertia!
Oh! My favorite: VA Health system!!!!
Okay…. Never mind….
How about…
A careful hybrid utilizing the best of both worlds. Regulation only where it is needed. Strong controls to prevent abuses of the marketplace. Regulations creating bizarre incentives which allow ridiculous profit opportunities and abuse. New regulations to close the loopholes of the old regulations and create new loopholes! Extra paperwork to control the private sector. Inadequate doctor pay!! Weird new abuses popping up every day!!!!
Okay… Never mind…
This is the part of the article where the author delivers a common sense appeal to an easy solution.
Guess what! I’m out of ideas. That’s it. I ran the scenarios and the outcome is clear:
We are all doomed.
Enjoy your summer….
It’s good old high-school algebra. You are on a train heading east going 90 mph that leaves San Francisco at 9:00 AM. Fred is on a train heading west going 110 mph that leaves Reno at 8:57 AM and is traveling on the same track. The trains are now six inches apart. Due to insurance regulations, the owners of each train line will receive $1,000,000,000 if they collide. No members on the Boards of Directors are on either train. What will happen? Convert to the metric system and Euros, and write out your solution. Extra credit for sketching diagram.