Health Care: Decreased Coverage, Higher Premiums

Listening to the news tonight, the anchor was reporting on the latest agreement between General Motors and the UAW. Their solution to GM going bankrupt was to cut health care benefits, either by decreasing coverage, increasing employee premiums, or both. I’m sure this is a terrific solution for GM.

However, in thinking about it, I’m guessing that shifting the high cost of health care to the employees is simply going to mean that employees will seek less and less health care. Guess who this hurts – the health care industry! Isn’t that ironic!!

I’ve already noticed a real increase in advertising by most health care providers (doctors, hospitals, drug companies, even the AMA!). I suspect that they are going to be hurting even more. The net result of this is that finally, costs will come down. I’ve address the high cost in other writings, and how a lot of the blame rests with the insurance industry. Maybe the trend of cutting benefits will finally turn this around.

This can’t help but influence prices in a downword trend! (Is that wishful thinking, or what!)

Medical Costs and Advertising

The drug companies probably say that they advertise to inform the public. This should not be necessary.

Drug companies have advertised in magazines for as long as I can remember. It is only in recent years that they have been allowed to. (I wonder which politicians they paid off to get this privilege!!)

This raises a couple of issues: Are our doctors so dumb they can’t diagnose conditions and prescribe the appropriate drug? Also, think of how much less our drugs might cost if they didn’t advertise! (Some day when I have time I’m going to see if I can get advertising figures. These are public companies.)

We apparently see the advertising, then convince our doctors we have to have it. Could it be that the doctors are being paid off by the drug companies also? Is that why they send in the sales girls to flirt with the doctors? Makes you wonder!!

Carson City and the Water Supply

Carson City has had a problem with it's water supply for a very long time now. I've lived here over 30 years, and it seems there's never been enough. There's either not enough ground water, or not enough wells, or not enough distribution. And yet the city keeps letting the developers build new homes!

Yes, it could be that the advertised growth rate of three percent is a reasonable growth rate, providing all the things are in place to provide water, and yet there isn't enough water. The answer seems to be that those of us already living here need to give up our quality of life, some of which depends on water.

I seem to remember some years ago that the developers were complaining about limits on growth by stating that it would "put them out of business". Well boo hoo! Maybe it's not always in the best interest of the city and it's citizens for builders to keep on building! I'll never understand why this is of benefit to anyone but the builders and city hall anyway!

I would hope that we, the people that live here, could elect intelligent people to run the city, rather than those that are "in bed" with the developers (or other special interests, for that matter).

It's time our elected officials started representing the people!!

The High Cost of Health Care

Every day we seem to hear more about the huge problems caused by the ever increasing cost of health care. The government's response is to have more insurance. My feeling is this insurance is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

I believe that one of the reasons we are in the mess we're in with these costs is that insurance was made available to soften the blow of the costs. And it did! However, this meant that the health care providers were free to keep increasing their charges, and we really didn't have to worry about it because it was covered by insurance. I actually had a doctor tell me that once!

Granted, we need to have insurance, but we didn't need to have the medical providers taking advantage of the situation. Costs of medical care continued to skyrocket, and now we can't afford the insurance either! So what a mess we've gotten ourselves into. Although insurance covering the costs is nice, who do you think pays for the insurance? We all do. (Or at least we used to be able to!)

The other reason for the for the high cost of medical care is the huge cost of medical malpractice insurance. This is not the medical provides fault, it's strictly the fault of our greedy legal system. I'll certainly agree that we, the consumers, need to have a way to get compensated for medical mistakes, but certainly not to the extent that some of the courts go.

My solution to the problem of the cost of medical care is not to go the route of nationalized health insurance, or to simply keep increasing the insurance available. The government needs to get off the dole of the medical providers and start forcing controls on them. Since the medical providers don't seem to be able to control themselves, I think this might be something the government should take care of. Secondly, I think controls should also be placed on the legal system, to the extent that when the is some kind of malpractice on the part of a medical provider, limit the settlement to the cost of taking care of the person for as long as they are affected by whatever happened. Big attorneys getting big bucks for "pain and suffering" is rediculous! Sure, the harmed person gets some too, but it must be limited. The way things are, I'm sure that the attorneys (you know, the ones we always see advertising in the media) make contact with anyone hurt, and convince them they can live the rest of their lives on easy street.

I'm certainly a beliver in free enterprise, in fact feel very strongly about it, but when people get too greedy, something needs to be done!

In summary: The goverment needs to put controls on the charges allowed by medical providers, and limit the awards for "pain and suffering" for injured parties.