Yes, Elite Nannies Are Overthinking Healthcare Reform
In my second Healthcare Clearinghouse post I linked to a speech given by Senator Tom Coburn M.D. on healthcare reform. In it, Sen. Coburn makes this stunning statement:
"If you look at our health care market and what is spent every year, 75 percent of the money we spend is spent on treating five diseases, of which the vast majority are preventable, and we can lessen the impact of those tremendously through prevention strategies." (Those diseases by the way are heart disease, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes, and cancer.)
Wow. Think about that. Just five diseases are the vast majority of our healthcare spending. What's more, we have vast amounts of data and medical literature on these five diseases. We can predict their incidence pretty well and we even know effective strategies to prevent them. Actuaries could quantify and price out the risk of needing treatment for these five diseases easily. What's more, insurance companies could reliably give discounts to people who chose to adopt preventative measures into their lifestyles. In a previous post where I outlined a vision of health insurance that would cater to the individual and insure for the most obvious needs, I conceptualized insurance for just one common disease and then for maybe 5 common diseases. My thought was that you could build from there to encompass quite alot of health risks, but clearly we only need to address these five diseases to have a massive impact. People who wanted to have insurance for the other 25% of healthcare spending risk could get that too as a supplemental or from a specialty provider, much like there are specialty insurers for things like art, fine wine, boats, athletes' bodies and more.
Our healthcare system's problems are caused by flaws that are actually quite small and easy to fix. Aside from the terrible effects that a collectivized approach would have on our system and our liberty, a greater government role in healthcare violates the basic principle of choosing an easy solution over a hard solution that would have equal outcomes. A federal market for health insurance combined with unifying the tax treatment of purchasing healthcare insurance would largely unshackle the system to solve the problems it now faces.
"If you look at our health care market and what is spent every year, 75 percent of the money we spend is spent on treating five diseases, of which the vast majority are preventable, and we can lessen the impact of those tremendously through prevention strategies." (Those diseases by the way are heart disease, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes, and cancer.)
Wow. Think about that. Just five diseases are the vast majority of our healthcare spending. What's more, we have vast amounts of data and medical literature on these five diseases. We can predict their incidence pretty well and we even know effective strategies to prevent them. Actuaries could quantify and price out the risk of needing treatment for these five diseases easily. What's more, insurance companies could reliably give discounts to people who chose to adopt preventative measures into their lifestyles. In a previous post where I outlined a vision of health insurance that would cater to the individual and insure for the most obvious needs, I conceptualized insurance for just one common disease and then for maybe 5 common diseases. My thought was that you could build from there to encompass quite alot of health risks, but clearly we only need to address these five diseases to have a massive impact. People who wanted to have insurance for the other 25% of healthcare spending risk could get that too as a supplemental or from a specialty provider, much like there are specialty insurers for things like art, fine wine, boats, athletes' bodies and more.
Our healthcare system's problems are caused by flaws that are actually quite small and easy to fix. Aside from the terrible effects that a collectivized approach would have on our system and our liberty, a greater government role in healthcare violates the basic principle of choosing an easy solution over a hard solution that would have equal outcomes. A federal market for health insurance combined with unifying the tax treatment of purchasing healthcare insurance would largely unshackle the system to solve the problems it now faces.
posted by Donny Baseball at 9:51 AM
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