Marginal Revolution: How to debate health care policy
How to debate health care policyHealth care policy should be debated through micro-facts. Let’s consider a few:1. American health care outcomes look much better once we adjust for race and other demographic factors, including violence and car crashes. Some groups — such as Asian-American women — have remarkably good health care outcomes.
2. Some of the health care savings of other systems occur through price effects (e.g., doctors are paid an average of $60,000 in France) and do not involve real resource savings.
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There’s more, and a common-sense set of ground rules at the end. Looks good to me!
via InstaPundit
I hate to see someone reinforcing the distorted concept that physician incomes are the bulk of health care costs in this country.
If you go to the hospital, the bulk of the expense is not your doctors’ bills. I prescribe and monitor the results of medications each of which cost multiples of what my fee is for doing so. Being in rehab I prescribe what I suspect must be at least hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in DME, not to mention charges from home health agencies.
My fees are a bargain.
I think #4 was the most interesting of his points. It’s why I’ll be on a 2 – 3 year retirement plan when the big Socialism Bomb hits medicine; the bills will be paid in full for 2 – 3 years, then when the country finds out the tab, the clampdown will start. It’s all downhill from there.
I just want to say thanks for posting all that you do on this site – it has provided me with great exposure to both the serious and funny sides of medicine – I applaud you!