In 1952 ...

Santa Monica Hospital rates - 1952

Charles Hugh Smith's take on economics, as stated before in BRT, is thoughtful, practical and wise, characteristics readily on display when discussing the fubar of healthcare and why it has to become either single payer or competitively transparent with emphasis on cash and carry, notions anathema to the powers at be who foisted this horrible system upon the US beginning around 1965.

For starters ...

1. License all M.D.'s nationally so they don't need to go through the absurd waste of time and money being licensed in multiple states.

2. Make all information on clinics, hospitals, surgeries, etc. public on the Web. Those doctors willing to take on the very ill will have more patients die than those who avoid the risky cases; it will be up to consumers to sort out the track record of the people who they choose to hire to attend to their health. (include patient outcomes & true costs of procedures and hospital per day costs) ed.

Pay cash, take charge of your health and question the validity of insurance and government entitlements are Smith's start points for changing the HC system for the better.

With no insurance or government program to bill vast sums, then every clinic, doctor and hospital in the U.S. would instantly go broke. Someone would pick up the pieces for $1 or whatever the auction price happened to be and start charging people $50 for a visit to the doctor--not a "co-pay" which was accompanied by a bill for $500 or $1,500 or $15,000 to an insurance company or the government, but $50 cash--that would be the total cost. People might decide they did not need to see the doctor every time they got the sniffles. They might ask the doctor if an MRI was really going to help diagnose their problem or if it was gilding the lily.

Last but not least.

Everybody's got an excuse in our current system, and perhaps that's why it is morally and financially bankrupt. The U.S. (and certainly not Santa Monica) was not a Third World nation in 1952; people did not feel their healthcare was deficient or poor. There was simply no money to pursue marginal returns except perhaps for a few millionaires seeking exotic treatments. Fine, it's their money; most died right along with the rest of us and at about the same lifespan.

As for "overall health" of the populace: what with the "diabesity" epidemic out of control due entirely to lifestyle changes, it's hard to say we've gotten 50 times healthier as a result of our healthcare costs rising 50-fold.

When it comes right down to it, the current system is based on this premise: the average American is too dumb to figure out healthcare for themselves and so we need a gigantic structure of "experts" to figure out what should be done and what it should cost. It's not even really "insurance" because everyone gets old, ill and then dies.

HC will change as the current system, like that of enormous college tuition costs and continued expansion of the incredibly wasteful military/industrial/congressional complex, cannot be sustained as the US cannot afford these and other outrageous expenses (Homeland Security anyone?) that are bankrupting the nation as we speak. People are starting to ask why we have such a crappy system and why it costs so much. In time, people will stop asking and demand change and now. The question to ask is, when will it happen. For yours truly, it can't happen soon enough.