Thursday, December 27, 2007
Health care for all, paid by some - Over at Q&O, McQ has some questions about whether it's really the responsibility of the government to provide health care for all. Illuminating fact: "Did you know that 5% of the population spends nearly 60% of the health care dollars (and 10% spend 70%). In fact, .5% spend 25%." The resistance to required health care coverage in Massachusetts is primarily from younger, healthier workers who don't want to incur an expense for coverage they don't want. Maybe this is short-term thinking, but is it the government's responsibility to force them into paying for coverage? This is nanny state legislation coupled with an unfunded benefit. As McQ notes, health care rationing can't be far behind.
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Last time I looked, some huge percentage of health care dollars (80%?) were spent in the last year or so of various patients' life. Just think of how much money we could save by just letting those patients die a year earlier.
Only sorta sarcasm there. This is usually one of the first places that gets looked at when attempts are made to lower 'health care' costs. It's hidden by simply delaying or denying tests, new medications or treatments, putting age limits in place and so on.
If you're going to limit health care costs, you must go where most of the costs are: the aged, the terminally ill, those in horrific accidents, babies with defects and so on.
Oddly enough, doing this wouldn't alter average life expectancies because (see above) it would reduce the lives of a very small percentage of the population by a year or less.
I don't see many who want to discuss this.
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