My personal views may be unpopular but I have been in health care since 1976 in a variety of settings. I would like to offer my support of a government-sponsored insurance plan, as long as controls are in place to keep over-utilization under control and quality care assurances to decrease medical errors and avoid under-utilization. The health-care market has failed to help keep costs under control by creating a use-more, make-more mentality.
I have seen numerous ways to control costs in managed-care companies, this being the most successful to date in my opinion. In regular fee-for-service systems, the more-you-use, the more-you-make mentality is rampant. Providers have to have the latest and greatest technology and then the consumer and insurance companies have to pay for it.
Limits to services based on age and profiling, of all people, are a way to control these costs. While unpopular, this control of utilization would reign in the persons who use millions of health-care dollars.
Also, end-of-life issues should be more openly discussed and persons with terminal end-of-life issues should be provided comfort care only instead of the vast array of high-dollar treatments. I have seen many of these patients continue to be a “full code,” meaning they use all treatment options available.
Unless we become a leader among the industrialized nations in managing our health-care system, we will eventually fail all of our citizens.
David Cranfill
Marysville
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