<div> </div>
<div>The dysfunctionality within health care is evidenced by the spiralling total cost for public and private plans as well as private paid and the value of services unrendered or unavailable for cost or regulatory reasons.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Using ABC (activity based costing) , we can document a "kazillion" instances of cost of some billable item not showing benefits appropriate for the device/service/drug/consult.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Conversely those with knowledge of healthcare economics can document how using QALY (quality adjusted life year) math can deem some relatively low cost ABC billed items not to be cost effective enough to cover.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>The root cause is perhaps twofold. </div>
<div> </div>
<div>Ist is transparancy of costs. In Canada we do not get access to a yearly detailed </div>
<div>bill describing each item and its billed cost. Secondly some items costing may be not tied to a single ABC and no sidenote to describe the contributing cost factors is made available.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>2nd and I feel most important is the inability and unwillingness to allow any citizen to have full access to any health related information so that they can independantly decide what action they want. The major players are comfortable to work privately with regulators and screen information. Doctors and other gatekeepers are not designed to be educators as they</div>
<div>must first manage the crisis cases and the routine tasks before anthing else.</div>
<div>There are better ways to deliver health information than the traditional providers.</div>
<div>The alternative medicine consultation system has good intentions but also its own sales adjendas.</div>
<div>The logical delivery is the lay media.</div>
<div>Regulators have made it nearly illegal to provide really unlimited access to fundamental science information.</div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div>Dumbed down lay media and approved advertising is perhaps the root cause of the health care economic crisis.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>I spend time anytime I want to search various university based journal , media and trade information sources.</div>
<div>The ordinary person either cannot or chooses not to do this.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>As a health product manufacturer I would have a much easier time to find my target market if they were more informed.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Governments might rather have dumb citizens who are managed, but I do not believe they have a vision of how</div>
<div>an open information access system might revitalize the crisis-managment portion so that it can deliver</div>
<div>those items less often to fewer customers.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>In effect this automates a self-driven health management protocol.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>So in reflection much as automation has made mass produced consumer goods possible , and automation of communication is the basis of the global communications net perhaps a new automation of diagnosis, consultation and</div>
<div>personally driven health management paradigm.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Morris Johnson</div>
<div>Box 10, Beaubier, Sk., S0C-0H0</div>
<div>Canada 306-447-4944 ; 701-240-9411</div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div>Message: 25<br>Date: Sun, 06 Apr 2008 05:07:22 -0400<br>From: <a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="mailto:ablainey@aol.com">ablainey@aol.com</a><br>Subject: Re: [ExI] Health system, again<br>
To: <a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a><br>Message-ID: <<a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="mailto:8CA65DCC17359C0-E2C-42DB@WEBMAIL-DG15.sim.aol.com">8CA65DCC17359C0-E2C-42DB@WEBMAIL-DG15.sim.aol.com</a>><br>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"<br><br>Anywhere that there is an interface between two organisations which charge each other for a service or product, there is wastage. This is true of any commercial bodies such as in a private health system and Even in fully publicly funded systems such as a national health service. In the case of national services, this is usually done to bolster inadequate budgets, but also because many people in the system get bonuses of some kind which they try to maximise.<br>
There is always someone skimming off the cream at these interfaces and it is fully accepted.<br><span></span>For some reason we don't like the idea of paying for someone else's health cover, Smokers being a prime example. But we have no problem paying for the CEO's new yauht and a box full of Cuban cigars.<br>
Cost cutting exercises, streamlining and?scrutiny of the system?generally forces these costs down through the chain to the first interfaces, so a tampon cost's $1200<br>Its a shame that such an expensive tampon can't be used to stop the heamorage of money!<br>
<br>Alex<br><br><br><br><br>ginal Message-----<br>From: Kevin Freels <a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="mailto:kevinfreels@insightbb.com">kevinfreels@insightbb.com</a><br><br><br><br><br><br>Personally I think that the concept of health insurance is what has caused the skyrocketing costs in the first place. People no longer saw nor cared what they were being charged because someone else was paying the bill so the market forces controlling costs were removed. It's the cost of BS we all pay.<br>
<br>For example - four years ago I took my 9 yr old daughter to the ER at 3 am because she had a nosebleed that started at 9pm and hadn't stopped. We waited 3 hours, then saw a Dr for 10 minutes who crammed what looked like a small tampon up her nose and sent her home. My cost was $75 for the ER visit. When I later looked up the detailed billing out of curiosity, I saw that the Dr charge was $440 for the 15 minutes and the "tampon" cost $1200! Plus there was another $300 worth of supplies and such. I called and asked the hospital about this obvious error and they said that yes, the bill was correct, the "medical device" they put in her nose was "medicated". I was supposed to return in 3 days to have it removed which would have been a $25 co-pay office visit ($120 in insurance), but just to spite the system, I pulled the thing out myself with no trouble at all and the bleeding was obviously gone.<br>
<br>I have no idea why nobody wants to address this issue. If Drs are in such short supply, maybe allowing more into medical school or? allowing? practicing nurses to? do more would be in order and help to drive some of these costs down. I think that the free market isn;t working because the market is not free.<br>
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