The reason for those “uneeded” procedures is because people sue them all the time. They have to practice medicine defensively.
Tort reform first.
Get Government and Employers out of medical insurance - let me buy my own policy with whatever benefits I want and can afford. Keep me, the patient, in the center (because I am paying the bills), and we’ll see how many tests and procedures are really needed. Home Owners Insurance wasn’t meant to cover broken windows and screens. Medical insurance was never meant to cover everything either. Hospital costs went up when Medicare contracts drove the train by paying a high % of the hospital’s “costs” - Charges skyrocketed. The patient was a mere pawn on the chessboard. This is about personal responsibility and freedom - get individual control back, and the costs will go down. It’s the only way. This is something that cannot be tweaked back to normalcy.
Once someone else is paying, you lose all decision making.
This should be between people and their doctors, this would never come up if everyone paid their own way.
I don’t understand how anyone can believe the government can compel someone to make a particular purchase. Even if someone buys the premise non-activity in the health insurance market is in fact participation, and therefore can be regulated under the commerce clause, I do not understand how purchasing a product can be compelled. There has to be much more to allow this.
The mandate is nothing more than a quip-pro-quo to the insurance companies to compensate them for the requirement to cover those with pre-existing conditions. It is a direct subsidy.
There are other ways to drive the necessary purchase of health insurance (tax credits, etc.). The individual mandate would set a precident for the federal government to mandate the purchase of anything. It is not narrow, because ObamaCare requirements are so broad.
Isn’t this the whole issue concerning Tort reform that Howard Dean said the Democrats were afraid to touch? If we only had a half hearted attempt at Tort reform, one half of ObamaCare would be unnecessary.
The cost of medical services in the U.S. is directly related to: the vast number of illegal aliens receiving free care. Next of course meritless litigation adds to the cost. In addition, we have the so called “poor” receiving their freebees. I’m sure there are other factors but those that I named are pricing the middle class out of health care.
To the Editors of the Sacramento Bee: You could end “unneeded tests” without Obamacare if you instituted tort reform, but you consider the lawsuit lottery to be a civil right of Eric Holder’s people, so that will never happen.
No extensions of patents for meds, no patents for taxpayer funded research.
Watch the prices fall.
Like so many other editors of American newspapers, they need to grow a brain. Leftist idiots, all of them.
>p?
P.sS. Editor without a brain, it is totally unconstitutional, just as you are totally ignorant.
The threshold for assignment of blame is easy in the minds of jurors. Don't ask physicians to take personal risks which no reasonable person would take. Leave the practice of the art of medicine to those who are capable in that practice. Get the lawyers out of it. Change the laws to what would be reasonable. If we do not we will find ourselves with conscripted physicians who work at the pleasure of beaurocrats who know nothing but accounting lines and moral relativism. It is getting very late to do anything about it.
“Bone Scans for women under age 65”.....hmmmm...are they talking about the DEXA? If so, that seems contrary to good medical planning.....sheesh. (It’s good to know your bone health in your 40-50’s....so that you can “bulk” up your bones appropriately for later age IMHO.
Probably the best solution all-around would be the following.
1) End Medicare. If older people cannot afford health care, they should be moved into a system designed for state healthcare. This would also mean an effective end to Medicaid, with states getting block grants, left up to their own management, for the poor.
2) Strictly limit insurance pooling for ordinary health care, to catastrophic coverage. HMO pooling would be pay as you go, with no government funding. Doctors already “outside of the system” of government funding and insurance have found they can charge 50% less, and still have higher profit margins, as well as provide quality care.
3) Disassociate health care from employment. If an employer wants to offer health care, it must be fully funded, not insured, and pay as you go.
4) Take most liability out of malpractice. Malpractice should result in loss of medical license. Only if the license to practice has been revoked should a physician be subject to civil litigation.
“To cut health costs, doctors, hospitals must end unneeded medical procedures”
Sure...
As soon as you explain that to the ambulance chasers.
We all know that “unnecessary” Procedures in the Hospital magically become “necessary” Procedures in the Courtroom.
What a bunch of Obama butt kissing idiots.
How about not paying for treatment of the common cold? If you’re going to be serious about cutting cost, then be serious.
Tort reform. The procedures are CYA for doctors to avoid lawsuits. Remove the lawsuit threat and docs will order what they need for a legitimate diagnosis. It would help to get the freeloaders off the doctor’s back as well. Mandating treatment for people who can’t or won’t pay for services makes it necessary to burden other patients to make up the losses. That is wrong. Socialism is always a failure...no matter what method is attempted to implement it.
Tests like ECG, CXR and head CT are usually unneeded. Just like driving a car without an airbag or seatbelt. The problem is that when you restrict your range of indications, you miss some important diagnoses. Well, at least if more people die earlier, medical costs will go down.