We need to return to the notion of "health insurance" instead of "health care payment plan." Today's "health insurance" couldn't be farther from insurance; it is merely a health care payment program today. Used to be, insurance was insurance (that is, insuring against major, unpredictable loss). Today it is simply a means of paying for health care (e.g., you have at least 6 months' advanced notice that you are going to have a baby, so that should not be an insurable event; also, annual physicals are, well, annual, so insurance should not cover them).
Expanding on #1, government dictate on what must be covered by health "insurance" raises premiums, since now practically everything health related must be covered. If health insurance covered only truly insurable items, then premiums would drop.
We need to bring the consumer closer to the transaction. Today, people pay $10 to go to the doctor for every sniffle; those doctor visits cost upwards of $100. Used to be, patients paid for regular doctor visits out of pocket, and insurance only covered major, unpredictable things. This over-consumption is causing prices to increase.
We need to get rid of the notion that employers provide health insurance. Prior to WW2, people bought their own health insurance; salary freezes during WW2 caused employers to look for other ways to woo employees. We individually purchase auto, life, and other kinds of insurance; health insurance should be the same way.
Consumers should be able to buy insurance across state lines. If I see a health insurance plan in another state that I like, I should be able to buy it.
It isn't wholly related to health care, but to properly fix our health care system we also need tort reform. The one change of making it a loser-pays system would go a long way to doing that.
Also, if Congress really wanted to help control the price of drugs, they could:
Make it easier to get a drug approved and to market (cutting regulation cuts costs, which cuts prices)
Doing these things would go a long way to fixing the problems in our health care system. Further government intervention is not the answer; every time government has intervened, prices have increased. If we truly want prices to decrease, we need to eliminate or limit the government intervention.
09:26 am This is cool - 55 operating systems on a PowerBook. Courtesy of VirtualPC, of course, but a really interesting one is HanoiOS, which is run "within VMware within Linux within Virtual PC within Mac OS X." :)
08:02 am As I was just reading bandicoot's update about going to the dump, I remembered something from my childhood. Long ago, my grandparents did not have curbside trash pickup, so they used to load the garbage into the trunk of the car and take it to my great Uncle's house. Uncle Hugh lived on a huge (well, not that big, probably 75 acres or so) farm, and part of it was a ravine next to a road through the property. We used to take the trash and just throw it over the edge. I wonder how big that pile is now. I bet it's pretty odorific too.
There's lots of fun memories over at Uncle Hugh's place. He lives in the house where my grandfather was born. Behind the house is a small storage shed with a couple of rooms (which may be the original house, I'm not sure) and hidden stairs leading down into a well. There's a newish (at least 25 years old now) 3-car garage, and across the way there's a barn and another very old storage shed. There's a deep pond on one side of the field. Their main crops are (were?) tobacco and corn, but there were several others as well. John Mark, my mother's cousin, who was born 10 years to the day before I was, used to go deer hunting in the back fields. We'd be sitting at dinner (the mid-day meal) and would hear POWwww..... and then a short while later POWwww......
Oh yeah, the property and my Great Aunt & Uncle were featured in a Maxwell House commercial a few years back. (Maxwell House reps were on their way to a shoot and saw my Great Uncle's house and dedided to skip the shoot and use this house instead. Very cool.) I'm sure my mother has the ad on tape - I should digitize it and post it the applicable parts of it.
Update: Depending on the, uh, "sensitivity climate" at your place of employment, these may not be "work friendly." Current Mood: I am so Le Tired! Current Music: Double-You Tee Eff
