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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.
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- Americans hate health reform but like what it would do
- Countries with the most expensive healthcare
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Health care skyrocketing costs and unavailability is a direct result of government interference and regulations. Prior to 1960, there was no health care problem. No that the interference and regulations have completely screwed up what used to be the best health care system in the world, what is being proposed? More government interference and more regulation. The system is dead.
Before Medicaid I remember people not having their Rx for insulin filled because they had no money for the pharmacy. My dad owned a retail pharmacy. Sure not being able to afford your medication is no health care problem. You just get sicker and go to the ER where they treat you and give you another Rx that you can't afford to get filled!
Because there were not HMO's back then. The creation of HMO's is when the prices started to skyrocket.
Healthcare is a disaster. In June, 2007 my daughter who happens to be mentally handicapped was scheduled for gall bladder surgery in the hospital in Vinita, OK. The doctor who performed the surgery was a disengaged, unsympathetic butcher. He butchered her duodenum, her bile duct, and the removal of the gall bladder and what should have been an overnight recovery turned into a complete botch. After noticing bile leaking from her wound as I was geting her out of bed for some walking exercise the nurse realized the problem and notified the medical staff. The butcher contacted OSU medical sin-ter(it is a sin they are open) and a friend of his to cover his ass and she was evacted to Tulsa OSU med.
After the butcher's co-hort inserted a stint in the bile duct to stop the duct leakage she lay for over three days with bile leaking from the wound. It took me up to an hour most times to get the attention of a nurse to observe the problem and I often had to go to the nurse station where her nurse was bs-ing and physically drag her down to my daughter's room for help. All she would do was either replace the bandage or put more gauze over the bandage in place. What an idiot!!! On the fourth day I finally got a nurse to have an intern look at the situation. Immediately he scheduled emergency surgery to investigate the continual leaking of bile. Why could that idiot nurse not have caught this? I knew it was a problem. But it was too late the bile had already attacked her intestines and they were burned and inflamed.
She spent three months in that God-forsaken (hospital?) with pretty much the same lack of quality care for the balance of her stay. Her physician at the hospital was a young woman just our of school who had no bedside manner. She constantly had me up and down with her comments. One day everything was rosy (and I would cancel my plan to have her transferred to St Francis in Tulsa) only to have all hell break loose the next day when I talked to her.
I even whitnessed a staff member bringing in meals for my daughter and a blind woman who was in the bed nest to her without saying a word and placing the meals beyond the foot of the bed before exiting. Had it now been for me the blind woman would not have even known she had food, nor without me feeding her she would nat have eaten. The staff would have come back later, notice the untouched food, and returned it to the cart without a word. Totally heartless, uncaring staff at the hospital.
Had I known up front about this hospital I would never have allowed her to be taken there and she would have gone straight to St. Francis and been out within a week.
The staff also were constantly coming in trying to ask my daughter questions, asking me if she was my wife? She has little speech capabilities. They did not even read their charts before checking their patient. They were totally ignorant of the fact that she was mentally handicapped and my daughter.
Their holistic?(BS) healing was a joke also. They sent a bill to my house after my daughter had recovered at my house for another three months and returned to her caregiver for their (services?) for $3k which escalated to over $18k before it was all finished. They are bilking the Medicare system also. I talked to the billing collection dept and explained that she had no means of income and was mentally handicapped and he said he did not care he still had to follow up on the bill. That was when it was just $3k. Guess they know how to milk the system.
Also, the butcher of Vinita never once followed up or inquired as to the status of my daughter. As far as he knew she died.
When I was in nursing school my Med-Surg teacher used to say nurses are the worlds most trusted profession...A long line of nurses behind you worked hard to make that so...DO NOT DESTROY THAT! As she was speaking I would look around the room, and see people playing with their phones, and looking at their nails and I thought to myself this is hopeless.
Right now, anything said on any subject coming out of California is suspect, Cal. has swallowed way to much of the Democratic koolaid and is in need of a major operation to cure it's Ill's, as for the so called medical panel, most of it's members want to see a single payer system (socialized medicine) and for good health care that's a state issue to lay down regulation and the private medical industry's job to provide it, if it's not being done don't blame the entire industry, just fix what has the problem. People realize, good health care is not cheap and to think differently is dangerous, application of health care can be improved and streamlined thus reducing some costs, but that is usually in the administration side. This country has the best HEALTH CARE cheapening the application will only reduce services.
I worked for a medical device company (they eliminated my position - cost cutting, you know. indeed they layed of 200 people at the same time). They are publically owned and my division was to increase revenue 10%. So - prices went up, shipping costs to the customer were multiplied, vendors were switched to cheaper vendors...with cheaper parts which resulted in delayed production because the parts were non-conforming. And the margins were considerable.
It's all business and if it's healthcare, we all pay for corporate greed and the need to keep the stockholders happy. Because a business cannot show a smaller percentage of growth. And the hospitals pay for this...passing on the cost to their patients.
The healthcare situation could be simplified so much easier. The problem is that when someone has a gall bladder removed Joe A will pay 3000 while Joe B will pay 2500..This cost is hidden and patients never know. We might say show the prices and competition will lower prices..The problem with that is it will lower quality as well. The rich will get the best doctors while the poor get the guy who graduated from Panama. ALL medical services and treatments need to be capped. One govt regulated price for each procedures. Joe A and Joe B will now both pay 1500 and it will be able to keep their doctor. This will lower health insurance and we will all get quality care. We will never have affordable healthcare as long as doctors charge 10,000 dollars for a minor 1 hour surgery. Doctors, hospitals, and pharmecueticals are the ones gouging americans..
You think it is a mess now, just wait for the "top heavy" Obamacare to be implemented! Scary!
This can be explained in one simple overused phrase.... Too many hands in the cookie jar.
How many pencil pushers and panel members and committee members does it takes to run a hospital? Well it obviously isn't working at all. Far too many people getting paid for no services rendered and health care should not be seen a cash cow for people to get rich.
The problem is Obamacare and the Republic plan are both wrong. Obamacare is just completely unsustainable while the Republican plan will turn it into two levels of care and like shopping in a store.
I agree. And compound this by the acquisition of medical services by investment groups. Integris is a good example. They are buying up hospital and medical service companies all over. Of course, they have their own Chief Execs and staff to manage their business so you end up with more overhead to pay for as they are trying to increase the bottom line.
tens of thousands died because of health care providers not washing their hands before seeing other patients? And gun control advocates say we need to address the availability of guns? I guaranty you tens of thousands is a higher number than people dying because they were shot - let's address what is a bigger problem. Oh and by the way with Barrycare it's only going to get worse - more red tape = more unnecessary deaths
The operation that really needs to be done to improve health care is to remove lawyers and insurance companies.
The Obvious reason why are health care system sucks is because of Government. Those a-holes keep on sticking there brown noses were they should not or they don't belong. The power is suppose to be toward the people not these a-holes! They make new laws up all year around and make bills that what we don't need. Obama is the 2nd worst president this countries history he makes him own health care plan and messes up health care even more then it was before. He adds things in that have nothing with health care or that will help us just to make money on the side. All the rest of his ideas are just to find a way to throw a penetaly at you so he and Government can find a way to screw you and line there pockets with money and find a pay to put you in prison. All Obama done is spend, spend, spend, spend money that we do not have. We are broke what part of that don't the American people understand, what part of that don't the government understand. What you mean you will buy a car that you don't have money for. then you wonder why you people are in dent to someone. What is next people you going to buy with you body parts. Oh I don't need a leg I will buy that swimming poll I don't need with my leg. Give me a damn break. This country needs to get it's priorities and it's morals back in check. You to me are all nothing more then little 5 year old kids wielding you dads gun one day you will shoot you self's in the foot. Oh wait you already did that. Well next time it will be worse!
Welcome to south Florida Miami area the capital of Health Care fraud!!! If you want to learn more about the subject. With food stamps, we create a society of big pig chunky people... the they become sick (Diabetes, cholesterol etc.) the become desability..... and we the rest have to pay until they die....
US health care a mess? CHRIST!!!! What was their first GD'ed clue? This is the only retarded country on earth and in history where a seasoned crackheads, meth lab operator casualties, illegal alien, prison inmates and other highly esteemed members of America's society are considered a higher priority to getting treated for some idiotic injury--including those inflicted by kops than an uninsured trades person with a broken hand, leg, etc.... trying to make an honest living. I KNOW THIS FOR A FACT, because this is EXACTLY what happened to my carpenter neighbor.
I am really looking forward to seeing this idiotic system implode. it is LONG overdue because such a worthless, over bloated, inefficient and corrupt industry was never meant to exist--at least not in a capitalist economic system.
Since I am self employed, am doing everything I can to dodge taxes at city, county, state and federal levels. Is this the kind of MENTAL ILLNESS what I want my tax dollars going to? I think not. More than 75% of the morons employed by the GD'ed government can't even spell their own names yet, they are running this country? Into the ground maybe. This is what you get when you elect RETARDS into public office. CLUELESS RUBES who don't have enough going on between their ears to get out of the f*cking rain yet, they are on their knees blowing every exec in the industry for their campaign contributions and passing whatever legislation they want.
Yep, that's the American way.
What is really funny is you will have some brainwashed right wing imbecile coming to the defense of this dilapidated POS system and call it the "best in the world, ...and if you don't like it go to Russia". LMAO!!! I hope these idiots are among the first to become victims of tis fine health care farce.
Case in point: Some of you might have read this somewhere.... A 52 year old woman got stung by a scorpion and was billed $83,000.00. $40,000.00 ea for two vials of anti venom and $3,000.00 of doctor and hospital bills. Her insurance company paid $57k and he was left holding the bag for the rest.
In Thailand that same treatment for the same issue........ $4.00 That's right, $4.00. What a bunch of suckers. Make sure you proudly wear that red white and blue each and every time the system corn holes you. Ya wanna make yer uncle proud!!!
The FBI won't investigate healthcare while Al Qaeda Med students in Glasgow announced that, "those who cure you will kill you."
Actually we didn't need so,e high priced institute to tell us it's broken.
Just try using the system and you'll know.
Mostly it's a mix of greed, incompetence, disorganization, bad attitudes, back room deals, drug companies and lobbyists, and so on.
Will that actually ever be 'fixed' by our leaders? Not likely as long as big secret money pays them to leave their operations alone.
It's a non-competitive, self-serving system that serves everyone's needs and desires except the patient's.
Your right on the dot Flylowguy. All of these others blaming it on fat people and so on are in some kind of wonderland. The kind of greed push in the USA is so un American and jacked up it may never get fixed. At least we have a few looking at the situation to help stop the medical world from running young families that have a sick child or family member dropped from a work supplied insurance program and put out of the home. I've seen a beautiful young family with two young boys go broke because of greedy medical cost that no average family in the world could pay.
If healthcare were like shopping ... any homeless person with a iphone, ipad, and coach purse could walk into Macy's and buy anything they wanted for free. The caviat being that all of the rest of us hardworking americans that aren't scamming the store have to pay for it.
Oh, and that clerk at Macy's behind the counter ... spent over $250k and 12 years on college to learn how to sell all those wonderful clothes. They don't get paid either!!!
Sure: And while Dr's want to be doctors to make big bucks and drive fancy car's while paying for the college they went to blaming it and everything else, they forget about the oath that has pretty much become a joke. along with why the idea of producing medication to help the sick has became a money deal instead of why they are making it in the first place, Along with hopitals that have become the most expensive hotel in the world and the high cost equipment was made with the dollar in the brain of the manufacturers. How does that saying go, What has a man that buys the world but losses his sole?
With Obuma around it will only get worse. Get rid of the bum!
I see a lot of post from people that know nothing about health care or what the corporations and greed because of investments have done taking over hospitals and medication manufacturers that up insurance cost and cause them to drop sick people from the coverage. I've seen families put out of the home and lose most everything they have because of a child coming down with leukemia. You sick people blaming it on over weight and other stupid things need to grow up and get out of the gym thinking that's a fix and look at the real world. The care system Obama is working on isn't even in effect all out yet. You that try to blame that are prejudice or just don't want to wake up.
I hear the usual back and forth argument about health. What you don't see is any political party talking about ending their anti -trust. Insurance and baseball are the only entities that are shield behind this. If we allow insurance companies from other countries that have a handle on the cost control to compete or even start up companies we might see a better result. That being say both parties talk market solutions meanwhile the market is rigged. Both parties are both buy insurance and drug companies.
Buuuutttt!!! There is an ongoing monopolizing of Massachusetts Hospitals currently under way. It in turn now makes one feel like a customer. Don't let anyone fool you. If there billing was audited they would go nuts. I mean every bill and not just 2 or 3 percent. So while the Monopoly gets organized what more can the LCC do to take control of everything of value. Pssst!!! Buy out either the Insurance people or the Auditing branches of the insurance companies. It's not conflict of interest now. It becomes a Constitutional abnormallity whereby the Supreme Court will say it's OK because and LCC is a Corporation and Corporations are people too. What a bunch of crap. If one more Republican appointed Judge gets a seat on said court it's over. This country is kaput. No more Freedom and Democracy. Just a big fat Dictatorship where our elected (joke) officials are like Putin, on permanent vacation.
I agree with the ARTICLE 100%. Every time I see a Doctor or procedure I ask how Much and I NEVER get a price. Just pay the CO-PAY, they say the INSURANCE will take care of the rest !!!
Does that sound LIKE A RIGGED CORRUPT System. IT DOES TO ME and what kills me I PAY FOR IT on the BACKSIDE and I CAN NOT BELIEVE or FATHOM at times HOW OUTRAGEOUS the charges are. To which I have no say or control or even the INSURANCE COMPANIES they are all part of the EVER HIGHER PRICES. Sure it benefits them not YOU and I. And the LOBBYIST that PAYOFF the POLITICIANS !!!!???????.
Thank GOD for some relief with Healthcare reform or the Massachusetts Healthcare system.
WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT HEALTH MESS...? come to Miami Florida and see how every day this is
front line news... Here is the capital of the health fraud. My neighbores barely work.... most of them say: I HAVE DISABILITY CHECK every month... (and food stamps too) they look healthyyoung and strong... coming to america and in the first 3 months got a disability check!!! Food stamps... now they fat fat fat... now they sick... diabetis, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, etc. Now healt care agency have to provide every thing... until the nation declares itself in bankrupsy
I have a basal cell carcinoma and it will not be removed by Mohs surgery because I am a Medicare/Medicaid patient. I was run over and dragged underneath by an underinsured 17-year old and I was unable to work for three months and now I can't get a job. The doctor who was scheduled to do the operation requires that I sign that I will pay. I never noticed that in the Hippocratic oath.
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...
You are so right. VIRTUALLY EVERYTHING outside our borders is better. You can pretty much say the same about the Canadian Health Care system. It blows the US system out of the water--BIG TIME! The doctor I saw a while back in Vancouver actually talked to me! He did a in depth interview of what was bothering me--he even asked a few redundant questions to see of any of my prior response might have changed through out the course of the interview. Very thorough. very professional. He talked to you...not down to you. Anyway, here in America, their mission is cart'em in the front and roll them out the rear in the least amount of time possible, and above all grab that insurance money!!
Yeah, thanks for the news flash! Glad to know its now official.
wait, if the illegal muslim gets relected, this will get worse, and people will die because his program decided that you werent worth the money, too old, not worth the effort??? and just look at the accountability of the hospitals, we build them for the doctors to work in, did anyone ever build you a workshop??? then they charge you $2500 to $5000 a day to be there??? ill stop here, so i dont have my remark collapsed??? but there is a lot more! ! ! !
retiredsgt,
You most probably will have your remark collapsed with the "illegal muslim" line.
The problem is actually farts like you who got what you asked for.
"Obamacare" will not lower the cost of Healthcare because in order to fix a broken system, Obama had to subsidize Insurance companies (aka Socialism-for-Profit) thanks to G.O.P. and Democrat-Conservatives. His original proposal was "the public option" (Medicare for All).
The fabrication by Congress and lobyist that this would've raised your prices is a fallacy. If you read a bit of History, you will see that Healthcare prices started to skyrocket when Medical Insurance took over after W.W.II, Before that, doctors had to keep prices low to compete with each other- like all other professionals. There was no "cash cow" to milk.