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What missing in our health care system? Competition!
(by Luigi Luciano - May 01, 2008)
With potential candidates talking about free health insurance for all it made me think about what other alternatives there might be.
Did anyone think about lower costs? Letting the free market run the system instead of the government?
I was reading a few articles and one was from the Limbaugh Letter of April. He pointed to an article that was in the New York Times written by Allan Hubbard the director of the National Economic Council. He wrote: “ Imagine how the world might look if patients, armed with information about the price and quality of health care, set out to find the best possible value. We saw this with Lasik eye surgery…the price fell by almost half, and the number of procedures performed increased tenfold from 1998-2002, as more doctors began providing the service and customers hopped around.
In 1998 Lasik cost was about $2,200 per eye. Now it has dropped to $500 to $1000 per eye for a better procedure. It is called free market.
John Stossel reported Health-care costs overall have been rising faster than inflation, but not all medical costs are skyrocketing. In a few pockets of medicine, costs are down while quality is up. Dr. Brian Bonanni has an unusual medical practice. His office is open Saturdays. He e-mails his patients and gives them his cell-phone number. A doctor in Tennessee I talked to publishes his low prices, such as $40 for an office visit.
Most doctors would say you can't make money this way. But Dr. Robert Berry told me you can. "Last year, I made about the average of what a primary-care physician makes in this country," he said.
Berry doesn't accept insurance. That saves him money because he doesn't have to hire a staff to process insurance claims, and he never has to fight with companies to get paid.
His mostly uninsured patients save money, too. Unlike doctors trapped in the insurance maze, Berry works with his patients to find ways to save them money.
"It's coming out of their pockets. And they're afraid. They don't know how much it's going to cost. So I can tell them, 'OK, you have heartburn. Let's start out with generic Zantac, which costs around five dollars a month.'" When his patients ask about expensive prescription medicines they see advertised on television, he tells them, "They're great medicines, but why don't you try this one first and see if it works?"
Sometimes the $4 pills from Wal-Mart are just as good as the $100 ones.
Read on what he says Walmart is doing: Speaking of Wal-Mart, medical clinics are popping up in Wal-Mart stores and in other similar markets. The clinics offer people with simple problems like sore throats and ear infections relatively hassle-free care ... cheap. Almost everything costs $59 or less. And the clinics are typically open seven days a week.
Grace-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute, a health-policy research organization, explains how these clinics thrive: "They're figuring how to do something faster, better, cheaper! They're responding to consumer demand because they see that they might make some money on this."
When consumers pay for medicine themselves, saving insurance for the big things, and doctors deal directly with consumers, doctors begin to compete. They start posting prices and work to keep them low.
And consumers gain more control of their health care. Instead of governments and insurance companies deciding for patients, patients decide.
This is the problem with people like Hillary and Obama. They think that everyone should have insurance paid for by the government. It is proven that the old fashioned way is good. Let the doctors compete and prices will drop.
This is not a priority for the Democrats though they keep pushing for Socialism. They think that the government needs to provide for the people.
Meanwhile almost everything the government has gotten involved with has been a mess. Our social security. Almost wiped out. Medicare and Medicaid so full of corruption and abuse it is sickening. Welfare helping people in need? Not really - mostly helping people steal from the system legally.
All the Democrats think about is how much more money they can take from the working person and give it to the people that do not work. They fought so hard for those economic stimulus checks the government is handing out in May but they had to have it so if you make to much money you get nothing back even though you paid your taxes but if you made just a little amount of money you get a full rebate. Is that fair to the people who paid all their taxes? I don’t care if the person made a million dollars it is just not fair.
But this is what these Democrats do they prey on the people who are less fortunate than most. They want to promise them entitlements from the government because they feel they can buy the votes. Because if the Democratic candidates really had to run on issues they would lose.
People need to wake up and finally realize that there is nothing that anyone will get for nothing. The only people who get something for nothing are the people who do not pay into the system. If you are an average worker you are screwed and with Hillary and Obama you will be screwed all the more.
Socilazed medicine is not good at all. Really talk to people who have had serious illnesses that live in countries with socialized medicine.
I send a out a daily message to a group of people that at times have prayer requests. This is one I received last week.
Kenneth who lives in Sweden and is currently on chemo for colon cancer. Because of socialized medicine, his treatment has been delayed. He has been in and out of the hospital because of low blood levels. Please pray for him, his wife Geri, and their 3 children as he undergoes his treatments, and for a full recovery.
People that tell you that socialized medicine is good have probably have not had serious health issues and had to wait for Chemo treatment knowing that it was killing you to have to wait.
We need to get the government out of our lives not running our lives.
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