AMERICA has a talent for wasting money on health care. It has devised many ingenious ways to do this. A patient may see many skilled specialists, none of whom co-ordinate with one another. Payment systems are unfathomably complex and highly variable. Doctors order duplicative or unnecessary tests. The country excels at treating sick people and does a horrible job keeping them from getting sick in the first place. All these problems, however, are due to a simple, structural failing: the more services a hospital provides, the more it is paid.
EDITORIAL COMMENT: "Bloodthirsty Warmonger" believes in true healthcare reform that does not involve the government takeover of the healthcare industry. What this country needs are changes that address the deficiencies listed above, reduces the amount of CYA paperwork that doctors and hospitals have to produce so that they can spend more time actually examining patients, eliminates the artificial barrier between physical and mental ailments, and devotes more resources to preventing disease, drug abuse, and unhealthful conditions.
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