A recent Op-Ed piece in the Washington Post has some seductive logic. Unfortunately it’s still Op-Ed and not facts.
The five “myths” the article attempts to bust are:
1. America has the best health care in the world. John McCain summed it this way- the problem with American healthcare is it just isn’t very good. American healthcare is very good at somethings. But there’s a huge amount of American healthcare that just doesn’t work. It doesn’t stand up under genuine scientific scrutiny. Unfortunately that doesn’t mean that a physician won’t try to sell an unproven therapy- or worse a proven ineffective therapy. There are wide disparities in the quality of healthcare depending on geographic location. Some patients get pretty good care. Others… not so good.
2. Somebody else is paying for your health insurance. This one is so patently absurd that I didn’t know anyone actually believed it.
3. We would save a lot if we could cut the administrative waste of private insurance. The problem is that there is an enormous amount of waste in the current system. CEO and administrator salaries, like many American businesses, are obscenely overblown. CEOs continue to get larger bonuses while services decrease and co-pays increase. The Wash Post author is just wrong on this one.
4. Health-care reform is going to cost a bundle. This one is a matter of definition. It simply depends on the reforms instituted. Bad reforms won’t help and they’ll cost big.
5. Americans aren’t ready for a major overhaul of the health-care system. In one respect Americans aren’t ready. If each consumer continues to insist on every treatment, every time without regard to the costs to the healthcare system and regard to cost-benefit then reform will fail.
Read the article and think about how much you’d really like to pay for your healthcare. Do you really want the care rationed and by whom?
It’s your health. Take part and take care.
