Letter: Real reasons for high healthcare costs

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

I am interested in the reasoning of Mr. Keelan where, in the truth of the matter column, explain why the exorbitant cost of healthcare.

He thinks that the costs began to rise when the board of the bed was no longer used. In fact (I was there in those days of age), lists of bed contained only the patient's vital signs and nursing notes. They were not used for billing. If the registered nurse that the patient was given an aspirin, we try our best to keep this information from the patient, because when the patient left the hospital and received his bill, may find that aspirin had cost $ 20 . This can cause a relapse of his heart disease, and the doctor and the hospital will probably be sued. Retention of patient information was the first recorded example of preventive medicine.

Medical costs are really exorbitant. Somehow, we have developed a care system that spends twice as much per person than any other industrialized nation, and our health outcomes are poor compared to the rest. The root cause of the problem actually dates back to Hippocrates. Athens law tried to Health Care (HMO a Greek) for services rendered to one of his patients. After months of bickering about the lawsuit, Athens maintained that the service requires prior approval Hippocrates and refused to pay. This led to Hippocratic oath against all insurance companies. Unfortunately, the oath
full of words of four letters, but his editor will clean up a little, and this became the Hippocratic Oath. In any case, doctors have hated insurance companies since then.

Mr. Keenan thinks that we should not blame the health insurance for all that is wrong with the cost of health care. He is right. Doctors are part of the problem. We overtest due to the threat of malpractice suits. Overtest us we can not live with some uncertainty, and our medical culture teaches us to test and treat despite the benefit to the patient is small. Overtest us sometimes because we make a living proof. In addition, patients are part of the problem. They carry an unhealthy lifestyle and medical care expect to pick up the pieces. They expect too much from technology. Ask for tests and treatments that have little value, but have heard on television or the Internet. Finally, our society is part of the problem: violence. Substance abuse. Smokers. Poor nutrition. Obesity. The lack of education. Newt Gingrich. The list is endless.

But back to the issue of health insurance. From the time of Hippocrates, the sector of health insurance has done little to make us healthier. The industry is mainly interested in the outcome. In 2010, the top five for-profit insurers earned $ 11.7 billion in profits. Some of us are insured by Cigna. Its CEO was removed in December 2009. That year he received a salary of $ 18.8 million, and as a parting gift gave her a package of additional bonds worth 110.9 million U.S. dollars. Does your insurance premium rises Cigna in 2010? Have you ever wondered why? Insurance companies waste 30 percent of his cousin in the administration of their plans and dividend payments to shareholders. In addition, make life miserable for his doctor with his questioning of claims, its drug formulary, its restriction of services, its insistence on documenting sense of attention, and requests for prior approval of services. It's enough to make me sick, but then I got sick, my doctor would have to see and submit a bill to my insurance company. You could refuse to pay for the service, as there is no medical diagnostic code for "Insuranceopathy." This would probably make me sick doctor, and so on until there was more to the left doctors in Vermont. Therefore, must stay healthy to avoid a crisis in the state.

We have a large number of people without health insurance in Vermont. The insurance industry has not and will not help with this problem. I support universal health care in Vermont. A single-payer system (not the insurance companies for profit) has the potential to make health care more efficient and less costly.

Read more http://www.benningtonbanner.com/opinion/ci_18168164