Friday, February 22, 2013

A must read

After reading the Time magazine article Bitter Pill by Steven Brill I'm left more discouraged than ever.  I'm also a little angry that the American people have been so duped.  We aren't the sharpest tacks in the box at times.   In the U.S., people spend almost 20% of the gross domestic product on health care, compared with about half that in most developed countries. Yet in every measurable way, the results our health care system produces are no better and often worse than the outcomes in those countries.

Although nothing in the article was a huge surprise to me it wasn't a time when I celebrated the fact that I was right. Who wants to be right about the fact that health care is eating away at our economy and our treasury.  Reading that  The health care industry seems to have the will and the means to keep it that way. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the pharmaceutical and health-care-product industries, combined with organizations representing doctors, hospitals, nursing homes, health services and HMOs, have spent $5.36 billion since 1998 on lobbying in Washington. That dwarfs the $1.53 billion spent by the defense and aerospace industries and the $1.3 billion spent by oil and gas interests over the same period. That’s right: the health-care-industrial complex spends more than three times what the military-industrial complex spends in Washington.

I hope everyone will read this article.  It is well written and in words we can all understand.  I wish I could believe we could change this but I'm just not sure.  

6 comments:

Meryl Baer said...

I bought the magazine this afternoon. It is depressing, but maybe the article and subsequent publicity is the start of something good - it will eventually force changes. We can only hope.

Olga said...

Thank-you for this recommendation. It is not surprising information, but I do hope it will cause an uproar for change.

Unknown said...

Finding myself how bankrupting fighting to outlive lung cancer actually is, I do not see much help ahead with increasingly higher insurance deductibles under Obamacare. While well intended no one took the time to set up cost controls, just coverage.

Caregivingly Yours, Patrick

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Florence said...

I read part of it but found it so upsetting that I didn't read the whole thing. I don't see how anything will be done about it -
Congress doesn't seem to be able to wipe their own behinds much less pass legislation. It's really depressing!

Diane J Standiford said...

It is sitting next to me, so far nothing I didn't know or haven't be SCREAMING about for decades! I am not hopeless though. I do my small part whenever I can--reporting scams, checking bills, speaking out, writing ltrs to ed, small stuff, but if we all do just one thing, carry one cause...I have sen good changes happen.