Doing Healthcare Right

George Rebane

There’s no doubt about it, we don’t do healthcare right.  As every leftwinger likes to point out, we pay more for healthcare per patient and per capita than any other developed country with liberal governance.  Their solution is to nationalize America’s healthcare industry – aka adopting a ‘single payer’ system.  Given our inability to do bureaucracies right, every proposal to nationalize winds up raising our cost of healthcare and hiding such increases under variously camouflaged wealth transfer, money printing, and federal borrowing programs.

None of the proposed solutions are sustainable in the sense that they are able to keep a constant level of healthcare services within a non-increasing total cost share of GDP.  As documented numerous times in these pages, this is nothing new.  Even the progressives’ poster-child countries for nationalized healthcare have not been able to fashion or operate sustainable healthcare systems – they’re all reducing services and/or eating up bigger shares of their GDP.  None of these systems can last forever, as they continue kicking the cost can down the road.

Our private, semi-subsidized healthcare system is still the best in the world for delivering clinical care, new medicines, technology advancements, and innovative medical procedures.  Where we screw up badly is how we handle all the back-office stuff confirming the levels of delivered care and arranging for their payment through multiple agencies and from multiple sources.  That bureaucracy is enormously costly and screwed up to a fare-thee-well.  And folding these legacy processes and procedures within today’s bureaucratic mindset into a nationalized structure promises to deliver chaos on steroids.

McKinsey & Company, through its Center for Healthcare Reform, has completed a massive study of our healthcare industry, and identified specific improvements through which we could save more than $250,000,000,000 annually.  They have published their findings in a 76-page report titled ‘Administrative Simplification: How to save a quarter-trillion dollars in US healthcare’.  This is probably the most important new finding to come along that can move the healthcare debate off dead center and save enormous amounts annually.  You don’t have to read the entire thing to get the important details of how and where these savings will be realized.  The report begins with a 6-page executive summary with graphics that gets you up to speed.  Read it so that you’ll know what you’re talking about the next time you decide to sound off about healthcare reform.  (H/T to correspondent)

 

Comments

[Scott O]

I don't even have to read the report. The single biggest savings to our health care 'system' is every individual having a healthy diet and lifestyle.
There are no excuses for Americans to not do vastly better than they do at present to take care of their own health and to take responsibility for informing themselves and following through with self control and discipline.
But of course we love to blame others so it's a non-starter.
The next biggest problem is no matter how healthy you are all your life, in the end your body will go wrong in some way that just might be a sudden fatality event but most often is a long term 24/7 care situation.
Check out the stats on Alzheimers.
Since civilized people reject the idea (rightly so) of survival of the fittest, we find our genetic pool to be increasingly filled with more and more health problems. People with poor eyesight (I raise my hand) are allowed through technology to thrive and propagate even more people with poor eyesight.
Women dying in childbirth (often taking their child with them) used to weed out the problem to a certain extent. Cesareans are costly and increasingly common. Who would deny them? No one I know.
So - we are apparently stuck with doing nothing more than working around the edges at reducing health care costs. And it makes jolly good fun to turn it into a political issue, so let the games continue.
I applaud George for bringing up the subject and certainly we can do better than we are, but this 'problem' is just too big a money pot for so many folks and far too good a tool for politicians to let go of.
Good luck.

[scenes]

Twitter Thread:

"NEW: for the last few weeks I’ve been digging into how the huge pressures on the NHS — both immediate and longer-term — are increasingly forcing Britons to go private."

https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1519706451912142849

added: Personally I don't have much of a dog in the fight. Big industry. Complicated. It could simply be that we are hitting the limits of human ability to construct complex systems combined with decreasing value on the margins as we find new ways to keep people alive for another two months.

[scenes]

Scotto: " but this 'problem' is just too big a money pot for so many folks and far too good a tool for politicians to let go of."

Plus there's the problem of fixing the jet while it's in the air.

" in the end your body will go wrong in some way that just might be a sudden fatality event but most often is a long term 24/7 care situation."

I must say I'm damned sick of people who fight against physician-assisted suicide, especially with theological arguments. You'd think (you'd think) that my body is the one thing I actually have control over. Evidently not.

[Don Bessee]

So at the same time brits are being forced to go to private med care the national health is doing shit like this -

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2022/04/29/birthing-person-midwife-students-taught-how-to-deliver-babies-through-male-genitalia/

;-)

[scenes]

re: DonB@12:58PM

lol. sweet.

"It also inserted a section explaining that female to male transgender patients may have to give birth through an artificially constructed “penis”."

It would have been fun to explain the normalization of mental illness to my dear departed parents. The folly of humanity is endless.

Next up will be the surgical conversion of people into plush animals.

It seems to me that a lot of the expense of medicine isn't Crazytown but is institutional cruft. For the sake of argument, let's say you need an out-of-town procedure/test since a county of 100k can't support all the myriad medical specialties.

. Drive to Mercy San Juan for 10 minute pre-procedure appointment. Naturally, BP and O2 is measured.
. Drive to Mercy San Juan for COVID test since it isn't kosher to do it elsewhere.
. Drive to Mercy San Juan for procedure.
. Drive to Mercy San Juan for 10 minute post-procedure appointment. Naturally, BP and O2 is measured.

You can assume that most appointments are 1-2 hours late.

Would it be better if Costco or Amazon ran the world? Dunno. Would there be a significant change in all-causes mortality if a lot of this went away? Dunno. Can it be crazy-making? This is a thing I know.

[Scott O]

scenes 10:51 - "I must say I'm damned sick of people who fight against physician-assisted suicide, especially with theological arguments."
Careful, careful - there are other 'arguments' involved.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-is-canada-euthanising-the-poor-
The govt may claim to care about you but once you start costing them money...