Posted on 08/09/2009 12:44:59 PM PDT by St. Louis Conservative
In yet more disappointing news for Democrats pushing for health care reform, Douglas W. Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office, offered a skeptical view Friday of the cost savings that could result from preventive care -- an area that President Obama and congressional Democrats repeatedly had emphasized as a way health care reform would be less expensive in the long term.
Obviously successful preventive care can make Americans healthier and save lives. But, Elmendorf wrote, it may not save money as Democrats had been arguing.
"Although different types of preventive care have different effects on spending, the evidence suggests that for most preventive services, expanded utilization leads to higher, not lower, medical spending overall," Elmendorf wrote. "That result may seem counterintuitive.
"For example, many observers point to cases in which a simple medical test, if given early enough, can reveal a condition that is treatable at a fraction of the cost of treating that same illness after it has progressed. In such cases, an ounce of prevention improves health and reduces spending — for that individual," Elmendorf wrote. "But when analyzing the effects of preventive care on total spending for health care, it is important to recognize that doctors do not know beforehand which patients are going to develop costly illnesses. To avert one case of acute illness, it is usually necessary to provide preventive care to many patients, most of whom would not have suffered that illness anyway. ... Researchers who have examined the effects of preventive care generally find that the added costs of widespread use of preventive services tend to exceed the savings from averted illness."
Elmendorf offered this assessment in a letter (you can read it HERE) to Rep. Nathan Deal, R-Ga. Rep. Frank Pallone, Jr., D-N.J., Henry A. Waxman, D-Calif., and Joe Barton, R-Texas...
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.abcnews.com ...
America cannot afford communism.
Clearly Elmendorf hasn’t been caught in the sack with anyone, nor taken any tainted dough. They just haven’t been able to turn him, have they?
That means there’s only one, er, *solution* left.
I would avoid traveling alone if I were you, Mr. Elmendorf. Godspeed!
Stay clear of the Fort Marcie Park area.
Elmendorf is a Dem (or at least was appointed by Dems), but at least he’s been an honest broker.
>> Stay clear of the Fort Marcie Park area.
...and Chi-town, too.
>> Stay clear of the Fort Marcie Park area.
...and Chi-town, too.
>> Elmendorf ... was appointed by Dems, but at least he’s been an honest broker.
An honest Dem, appointed to a Congressional post? Their vetting process must’ve broken down somewhere. Rahmbo, call your office...
common sense.. liberals hate it
Notice how this is a blog post and not an actual news story. That’s because ABC Snooze would rather you not be told this.
I just hope it’s not too late to ‘prevent’ Obama from ruining America.
this article made me laugh...
This article is quite true.
The cost of providing routine screening for a large number of people exceeds the cost of treating those who don’t come to the doctor until they are sick.
The reason for screening is for health, not costs. A person whose problem is caught and treated early is better off than if they had waited until they had symptoms, then went to the doctor.
With socialized medicine (aka rationed care), it’s a win-win. Not only can you save money by not providing routine screening, you can make the process to get an appointment to have symptoms checked take so long that the disease is incurable or very difficult to treat by the time the person gets an appointment. Then, you save money because you only have to provide pain medication. There are so many ways to save money with socialized medicine, I don’t know why everyone isn’t for it! /s
Why?
I’m a Dermatologist, a specialty renowned for not having patients die of our diseases. Although other life threatening skin diseases exist, melanoma is clearly the main exception to our reputation. Even though we’ve raised its cure rate to 90% nationally it still kills more than any other skin disease. On the surface it seems an ideal case for preventative medicine. It is easily, quickly and cheaply detected at highly curable states without any technology more expensive than a Mark I eyeball. Dermatologist eyeballs work best although nobody can claim to be perfect, but many primary care eyeballs work reasonably well too. Yet the ‘official’ groups setting standards for preventative medicine continue to not recommend routine melanoma skin checks on the grounds that they aren’t cost effective. I guess it’s more cost effective to let folks die of the racist cancer (white incidence is 15-20 times greater than black incidence; although the cure rate in those rare, unsuspecting, black patients, due to later diagnosis, is 2/3 that of that in the nervous white patients) than to spend a few minutes looking them over.
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