Why health care competition won’t work
http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/27/opinion/etzioni-health-care-competition/index.html?hpt=hp_bn9
I was quite skeptical when I read the title, but decided to read it anyway since it is a subject I follow fairly closely. It is quite interesting in looking at the psychology of health care users and to me the conclusion is quite clear, for-profit health care can never provide acceptable care over the long run. Only having non-profit organizations that make decisions based on the greatest good for the greatest number at the least cost could possibly provide the best care overall. I believe that we here in the US have proven beyond any reasonable doubt that maximizing the money spent on health care does not actually increase the health of the population (indeed, in my mind, it clearly is reducing the health of the population). It seems we need to move to a paradigm where any new drug/treatment must prove itself to not only be better than any alternative, but its cost/benefit ratio has to be superior as well. I believe that in our highly politicized environment this is the socialist idea of ‘evidence based medicine’ and is being denigrated by our current crop of (idiotic) GOP candidates. Of course, since our society is turning anti-science, it makes perfect sense that scientific measurements of health outcome should be considered inferior to any other way of measuring such things.
