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.