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Subscribe to RSSIf banking were like health care, it would take days to get money out of an ATM because the records would be lost. If airlines were like health care, pilots would decide on their own which safety checks to make, if any. If shopping were like health care -- well, you get the picture.
It’s a mess, the Institute of Medicine says in a report released on Thursday. The U.S. health care system wasted $750 billion in 2009, about 30 percent of all health spending, on unnecessary services, excessive administrative costs, fraud, and other problems. As many as 75,000 people who died in 2005 would have lived if they got the kind of care provided in the states with the best medical systems, the Institute found.
The report, issued just as candidates for Congress and for president make health care reform a central part of the national debate, doesn’t pull any punches. The panel of experts assembled by the Institute, an independent body that is supposed to provide a non-partisan last word on important issues, leaves no doubt that U.S. health care now is anything but the best in the world.
"The threats to Americans' health and economic security are clear and compelling, and it's time to get all hands on deck," says Mark Smith, president and CEO of the California HealthCare Foundation in Oakland and chairman of the panel.
"Our health care system lags in its ability to adapt, affordably meet patients' needs, and consistently achieve better outcomes."
But there's hope. "We have the know-how and technology to make substantial improvement on costs and quality. Our report offers the vision and road map to create a learning health care system that will provide higher quality and greater value," Smith says.
“What I am seeing around the country is that people are absolutely committed to reform,” says James Conway of the Harvard School of Public Health and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in Massachusetts, who served on the panel.
“Whether you look at the Republican platform or the Democratic platform, you find in pretty strong language the importance of developing a high quality health care system.”
One of the biggest problems is that health insurers, hospitals and health systems don’t learn from their mistakes, the report says. Half of all health care professionals still neglect to wash their hands properly before seeing patients, even though it’s one of the main causes of infections that kill tens of thousands of patients every year.
An organized system that finds out what went wrong and where, and then provides for the health system to correct those mistakes right away would save money and lives. It’s possible in a computerized world, but it’s not happening on a systematic basis. Hospitals that report every single infection and ruthlessly track down where it came from have found they can cut infection rates to zero, for instance.
Yet just this week the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that a third of Americans have high blood pressure and only half of them have it under control. There are dozens of drugs to treat it, not to mention diet and exercise methods. It took 13 years for one of those drug types, the beta-blockers, to become the standard of care even after they had been clearly demonstrated to work, the report says.
What’s missing, the report says, is coordination. “What I see is people doing a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Everyone has their little initiative. And back at the ranch, the doctor, the individual provider, is drowning in the sea of initiatives,” Conway says. “What is missing is a much more systemic and collective response.”
The report points to two main problems. “One is the increasingly unmanageable complexity of the science of health care. During the past half-century, there has been an explosion of biomedical and clinical knowledge, with even more dazzling clinical capabilities just over the horizon,” the report says. But the current system doesn’t help providers learn this material and it doesn’t give them any incentive to apply it.
“Second is the ever-escalating cost of care, which is widely acknowledged to be wasteful and unsustainable. Unless ways are found to provide more efficient, lower-cost health care, more and more Americans will lose coverage of and access to care.”
Conway praises the Massachusetts health care system, which he says is organized with the patient in mind. The report also says government initiatives, such as the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) and the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services Innovation Center are good ways to test and apply proven treatments and methods for paying for health care.
“Until we organize the health care system around the people we are privileged to serve, we aren’t going to figure it out,” Conway said. “I don’t think we have done that before -- we haven’t organized it around the person with cancer. That would be a remarkable change.”
Some ways to get there? Let people see what various treatments cost up front. Employers, who cover the health care costs of 55 percent of Americans, can help, too, the report says. They can use their buying power to demand high-quality, high-value health care, and get their employees involved in wellness programs.
So what would happen if shopping were like U.S. health care? "Product prices would not be posted, and the price charged would vary widely within the same store, depending on the source of payment,” the report says.
Related stories:
- Romney attacks Obama over Medicare
- Americans hate health reform but like what it would do
- Countries with the most expensive healthcare
Leave a Comment:
The truth is..You are going to die regardless..Next Number please..
I have MEXICOCARE hahaha I live on the border in Arizona. My dentist is a two minute walk into Mexico. He has more advanced equipment than any dentist on the US side of the border. I get my teeth cleaned for 500 pesos or roughly 46 dollars. I had a cap replaced for a whopping 30 dollars. His office is full of Mexicans and Americans getting quality affordable dentristy. FU AMERICAN DENTAL SYSTEM!!!
Two doors down from my dentist is my pharmacy. I get prescription pills of the EXACT same quality for 23 american. The same pills are 250 dollars. FU PHARMACUETICALS!!
The same goes for my doctor. A 3 day hospital stay being attended by every specialist there is and getting homemade excellent mexican food....600 dollars....FU AMERICAN MEDICINE!!!!!!
I get 20 times the care just by walking 2 minutes across the border than I would ever receive here. I am treated with respect and have great doctors...
I'm sure it's cheaper treatment when everything from the building , land, permits, labor, education are really cheap. What you want is excellent care provided by people who work for next to nothing and are lucky to have clean drinking water.
OBAMA CARE is what is making the health care system a mess! OBAMA is one big MESS!!
Perhaps all patients would be better served if they took responsiblity to LISTEN and DO what their doctor advises. GET your prescription filled. TAKE IT until completed. EAT right. EXERCISE. How many children end up in the emergency room when their MEDICAID ALL EXPENSES PAID coverage already paid for them to see a doctor, and GET the medine for FREE. And, oh yeah, Mom and Dad are too lazy to take care of them? The HOSPITAL should not be DAY CARE for worthless parents.
Middle class families do not have ANYONE paying all their med bills, no questions asked. OBAMACARE is just expanded MEDICAID.
TAKE RESPONSIBLITY FOR YOURSELF. YOU have to make an appointment. And SHOW UP. Medical care is accessible to EVERYONE in the USA. Oh, but you may have to pay for it. You don't mind paying for big screen televisions and satellite tv. And, oh yes, that fancy cell phone. But wait...you are getting that for free, too.
By da Way…….Did any of these Republican TeaBilly Conservative Politicians Vote to Repeal their Own Socialist Healthcare that they Receive.? You know…………da one that that Covers them and their Families (Including Birth Control) all paid for by Our Tax $$$$$$$$.
I hear Crickets Chirping……
Lets break this down in simple terms. Republican TeaBilly Conservative = Self Righteous Hypocrite.
i don't remember the democrats voting to include themselves in obamacare!
If everyone thinks that it is a big mess now wait until Obamacare TAX kicks in. This will be a much bigger problem added to the already strained medical profession.
It will actually get much better when "Obamacare" kicks in
Sure it will; add 10 to 30 million more people to the free/ cheap medicare/ medicaid dole but don't add any more doctors..... Hhaha!
The FDA does not want natural remedies to be to be used. Their big excuse: it is "snake oil" or "a quack product" which will poison you. Translation: We will not make Billions if this is allowed.
Let Ayurveda doctors from around the world get together and standardize natural health remedies. Keep in mind natural remedies DO NOT produce dangerous side effects the way "modern" pills do!
Everybody knows something needs to be done with the Entire Healthcare System. This Plan is not Perfect but it is a Start. Has da Republican TeaBilly Conservative Politicians (Da Party of No) offered any other Solutions or Ideas on how to Improve on this....and move Forward? All they are doing is Screaming Repent, Repeal, and Replace.
I think we all know da Answers.
You BetCha.....Fer Sure.
Well, now we are geting down to the nuts and bolts ... its just terrible that all the years this could have been corrected it was never addressed! Just terrible! And we wonder why this country was running
in the red! Thank God or who ever you believe in ... for finding us a leader to address and fixing the problems!
Well done President Obama, ... now we just need to keep you there to finish the job!
Hopefully he will fix something besides giving illegals citizens rights and gay marriage.
Republican TeaBilly Conservative = Social Natzeeeeeeee’s.
Name calling already?
Let's give ObamaCare a chance! If nothing else, we all agree the old HealthCare system of the Insurance Companies has been pitiful. With ObamaCare, the healthcare industry will have to trim the profit-taking and give us actual healthcare services or they will have to refund some of our premiums. The cost of healthcare has gone up yearly for 75 years in a row. Under ObamaCare, the premiums have only increased less than 4 per cent per year, with the refund system in place, and this is the lowest increase for healthcare in decades!
If we find that ObamaCare has issues we would like to change, then we can can fix it! That's what our representatives were sent to Washington to do! Republicans, who want to repeal ObamaCare altogether, would return us to the dark ages of healthcare excesses once again. That is a step in the wrong direction and we all know it!
Repealing regulations on healthcare providers, or on corporations, or on exporters, or on the banking industry, or on the Oil Companies does not reduce their ability to serve our nation. A strong set of regulations and guidelines still provides for a level playing field for whatever industry is affected. Rules don't ruin any industry, when the rules are industry-wide! It reminds them of their responsibilities to our planet, our atmosphere, our health, our population, and does not diminsh them in any way, while giving them a level playing field to compete upon.
Republicans, who constantly try to convince us that rules and regulations stifle our industries or increase our costs, are lying to us! Regulations may limit the billions in profits the Corporations make, but it makes the products better, enables creations of new money-saving technologies, safer and less destructive to our people and our planet!
De-regulation is not a solution to anything except providing more of the same problems we fixed with the regulations in the first place! Why people listen to the Republican Bullsh*t is beyond any rational thought!
Why should we listen to a Party who represents the profits of big business, while refusing to even negotiate for jobs in the House of Representatives? Republicans refuse to even negotiate! 450 bills have been filibustered and not even allowed to be discussed at the hands of the Republicans in the Senate....I repeat, not even allowed to be discussed on the floor of the Senate!
In the Republican majority in the House of Representatives, five Infrastructure bills, proposed by Obama, have been voted down, while Republicans refuse to even discuss the bills or negotiate to make them possible.
When Republicans tell you Obama has failed us, remember it is Republicans who refused to represent you and negotiate for you! A Republican Party, whose only goal is to make Obama look bad, while our citizens need jobs, and Republicans refuse to even negotiate the bills presented to them because they might give Obama a victory is not "serving our nation, as they pledged to do", when they took the oath of office! Republicans do not care about us. It is as plain as day! Any Party that refuses to negotiate needs to be replaced! Republicans refuse to negotiate!
Romney refuses to show us his taxes! Romney wants to increase our defense department by 2 trillion dollars by removing our safety nets, for continued wars in Iran, Syria, Libya, while refusing to tell us what the trillions will be used for until after he is elected! Romney wants to reduce the rights of women to make decisions about their own families. Who the hell does he think he is? He wants us to trust him, while he wants our future generations to make do with less, while approving massive tax reductions for himself and the Rich! Trickle Down Economics has never worked, and Romney and Ryan want to take our benefits, create new wars, and try it again! Who the hell do Republicans think they are? Why does Romney have to hide money in nine countries if he loves America? SHOW US YOUR TAXES, ROMNEY!
Healthcare isn't trimming the profits they are firing long term employees & replacing them with students & new grads. They are cutting hours , not providing benefits and cutting back on the number of people employed. Your services are going to be quality with a capital K!
Rules don't ruin any industry, when the rules are industry-wide! It reminds them of their responsibilities to our planet, our atmosphere, our health, our population, and does not diminsh them in any way, while giving them a level playing field to compete upon. <~~~ Unfortunately China and other countries do not play by our rules...which is why industry moves there.
We do not get our healthcare in China!
The reason industry moves to China is never out of patriotic duty to our nation.! It is for greed! The Republican Party, two weeks ago, blocked a bill that would have removed the rewards in tax breaks for companies who move our industries overseas! Ths same bill would have rewarded American businesses for bringing jobs back! Republicans blocked the bill with their majority! Who serves the needs of China? The Republicans do!
Lets all push for free travel to Cuba where we can join Michael Moore in line at a medical center!
Ah, you've never been to a doctor's waiting room, then the hospital waiting room, then the lab waiting room, & so on. You must be spectacularly rich.
How about sharing some of that?
Nothing requires you to wait. I have walked out on doctors when the wait exceeded 30 minutes (and received their apologies). If you don't care to walk out, have a pizza and some beer delivered...it tends to speed things up. Fortunately there are enough doctors where I live that I can pick another.
for all the idiots blaming "obamacare" you are just that.... I D I O T S !!!!!!!!!!! Obamacare hasn't even gone into effect yet. It wont come into effect for at least another year!!! you ARE Idiots!!!!!!!!!
Pardon me Einstein...parts of Obamacare started going into effect June, 2010. We just haven't gotten to the tax yet. Typical dumocrat!
Republican TeaBilly Conservatives love to Contorl Women’s Minds and Bodies. What’s next? Are they going to make all the Women in the U.S. Dress up like “Cousin It”?
You BetCha…Fer Sure.
Not to worry. I am sure women will be allowed the convenience of killing unwanted babies no matter who's elected. Go figure, and we condemn China.
OBAMACARE is a big step in the right direction to reform this mess...People who say this will triple cost and is a govt takeover and other nonsense are quite simply opposed to OBAMA and the democratic philosophy. The Affordable Care Act once it's implemented fully will bring a halt to senarios like the following. A woman I know fell off a 2nd story deck. She is part of the working poor and she has NO insurance. She can't afford it and is a temp worker now with no benefits. She had a good paying job before with healtcare but was layed off due to company profits declining. She went to the emergency room and she had an MRI, Xrays ,blood tests and she was found to be free of broken bones and internal injuries and she went home.. They kept kept her there for 4 nights and she told them she was uninsured and they knew she was uninsured. She received a Bill from the Hospital for $26,500 DOLLARS!!! She will of course not be able to pay and will need to file for bankruptcy. GUESSS who will pick up this Bill. THE AMERICAN TAXPAYER Not a REPUB or a DEM....THE AMERICAN TAXPAYER. You conservatives have done absolutley nothing for 40 yrs about this problem and now you have the nerverto snipe and whine about A president who like BILL CLINTON tried to address this problem and has always been blocked by your rightwing extremist party. OBAMACARE is a good starting point and will be adapted and modified and WILL reform this broken system. You rightwingers are full of crap...
Well now she will be required to buy a health care plan. And the bill will be picked up by the taxpayers anyway! I know someone who came here from England for emergency care because she had waited 6 months with a Pulmonary Embolism, but no there's no rationed healthcare you'll just die waiting for approval.
I graduated from medical school in 1968. I am currently a Radiologist with dual subspecialties. Since going into practice I have seen the progressive decline of American medicine facilitated by government intrusion and blatantly crooked insurance companies. It is impossible to submit a legitimate bill to any of these organizations without encountering a fecal brained idiot with a third grade education who will cancel it for reasons too ludicrous to admit. Every government spook and billing personal know nothing about medical practice nor do they have any concept about the damage they ultimately perpetrate. I have since quit taking insurance and absolute refuse to see any patients on medicare or any of the sleazy state sponsored system. The HMO's are also big offenders. They offer to send you a given number of patients if you agree to cut your fees. Then they never pay for obscure reasons. Frequently they go bankrupt or re-organize and agree to pay 10 cents on the dollar. What they do is so much worse than anything the Mafia can accomplish and they do it with the blessing of the government. I can't tell you how many patients have died prematurely because of these government and HMO administrators. Medicine is doomed in America because of these scum sucking slimebags. The only hope is private enterprise.
Airborn,
The people you're complaining about have degrees in business & economics. They're supposed to know more than you.
Wouldn't you like to see them required to operate on a non-profit basis? Just for the entertainment value.
Remeber, Obama's plan doesn't start until 2014.
Where is the money coming from to fix all this? Well, maybe the CEOs could fly last year's private jet instead of getting a new one this year, & maybe management could do the same with their yachts, & the pharmaceutical company chairmen could find happiness with 6 insted of 7 mansions. After all, these folks have business, not medical degrees.
Some things should never be operated on a for profit basis. Like orphanages, the United States Marine Corps, & our health care.
Please note. The Massachussetts plan which the Committee said represented the best in health care is virtually the same as Obamacare which will be implemented in 2014. Unfortunately, we have to wait until 2014 because that was a concession that Obama made to the Republicans.
Obama has to quit making concessions to the Republicans.
The difference is this; when Romney presented that plan it included a single payor option. When Obama presented it, that option was considered socialist, & left out.
healthcare people making more, more unions, more mandates, more lawsuits, more chronically sick people living longer (very expensive and uncomfortable) and inflation of our money supply reducing buying power:: drives up costs which make insurance less affordable especially to the lower incomes.
So why does a MD order intervention for an abdominal bleed in an accident victim who is for all intents and purposes brain dead?
America's Biggest Welfare Queens, Big Oil and Big Finance.
America's five largest oil companies receive $20 billion in welfare annually, largely through tax breaks afforded to no other industry. Big Financiers pay half the personal tax rates of their brethren at community banks.
Republican TeaBilly Conservative Politicians will do Everything in their Power to keep this is Place.
If you want to know the Truth follow the “Money Trail”. It will usually lead to the Lobbyist, Special Interest and the Self Righteous!
Until tort reform and ethics come into play, the system as a whole will continue to pour money down the drain!
Medical personnel are afraid of being sued, so they order excessive testing, and when something goes wrong and the patient sues, it jacks up the cost of insurance, plus MORE tests are ordered in the future. No case is treated on an individual basis any longer. It's called a vicious cycle, and Obamacare CANNOT stop it or legislate it.
As far as I am concerned YOU are the most correct person on this comment wall!
Doctors have to take the biggest share of the blame on this. There are TOO many half-wit doctors out there today. Too many specialists. If you have a problem with your toe you have to see a specialist! Which costs you twice as much because you have to see your family doctor for a referral then pay the specialist big $$$ to fix your darn toe. It's the same with every common procedure today! There is also a shortage of doctors who can troubleshoot a problem to the source of the issue. If they can't throw a darn pill at the symptom and make you happy they don't have a clue what to do. Doctors licenses should be yanked after so many patient complaints or after these patients mentioned in this article die when they could have been saved. We have to weed out the worthless doctors just like any other profession. The food we eat is also another major drag on health care. Until we stop putting things in our mouth that aren't good for our bodies we should expect to be sick. For 3 years I struggled with digestive issues but no doctor could find anything wrong with me. I even made 2 trips to Mayo clinic but nothing was found. I even had doctors tell me I didn't LOOK sick or want to put me on antidepressants! I began to watch what I ate and realized that when I ate diary or anything with wheat in it my symptoms flared up. I essentially figured out my problem on my own! Thank God for the Internet!
So, if doctors suck, why not address it in the future fixes for ObamaCare? We now have a framework that took almost one hundred years to get passed! Use it! Why would Republicans not , today, pass an amendment that would fix these problems by setting limits and guidelines on how many educational slots are open for each of the medical specialties based on the needs of the population and the healthcare profession?
Nope, Republicans would rather just toss all of our gains into the waste bin of history, and take us back to less care, less oversight, less regulations, less outcomes, less, less , less. Republicans are the Party of Less! Republicans would gut the Healthcare of our Americans, while Romney proposes to double and triple the size of our Defense industry, while lowering taxes on those who have too much already, and refuse to spend it in America! We aren't out of Afghanistan yet and Romney wants to start wars in Iran, Libya, and Syria, and God knows where else his Neo-Con advisory team will have us go, unfunded, into the battlefields Republicans never enlist to serve in! Five sons of Romney, and not one patriotic enough to enlist! Maybe the service is only for the poor and not to be supported with rich folks who hide their riches in other countries!
SHOW US YOUR TAXES ROMNEY! YOU COULD VOLUNTEER FOR SERVICE IN OUR MILITARY NOW IF YOU ARE SO IN FAVOR OF MORE WARS! MAYBE YOU NEED AN UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL LOOK AT WHAT YOU SEND OUR CHILDREN OFF TO FIGHT FOR!
I hope Obama shows off his Purple Heart tonight.
It's all about money and billing medicare for as many tests as possible. Just before I retired, I broke my big toe at work, "not kicking the supervisor", Work-mans comp took x rays, sent me back to work pushing steel racks around. That's OK, but when it became infected I had a few problems getting antibiotics, I would not want to have a serious injury dealing with them
By da Way…….Did any of these Republican TeaBilly Conservative Politicians Vote to Repeal their Own Socialist Healthcare that they Receive.? You know…………da one that that Covers them and their Families (Including Birth Control) all paid for by Our Tax $$$$$$$$.
I hear Crickets Chirping……
Lets break this down in simple terms. Republican TeaBilly Conservative = Self Righteous Hypocrite.
Well, democrats are on the same cadillac program so why don't they repeal it as well, or is it you're just fixated on bshing repubs while dems do the same thing?
chirp, chirp, chirp........
Mitt "F da Poor" Romney and Paul “Middle Class Warfare” Ryan are nothing more than Two “Howdy Doodie Political Puppets” sitting on da Koch Brothers and Sheldon Abelson’s Lap.
You BetCha....Fer Sure.