NEJM health care plan opinion

[billvon 3,131]

Some info pertinent to the presidential campaign:

Controlling health care costs - a comparative analysis of the two candiate's health care program (summary: neither is very realistic)

[/url]http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/351/16/1591[url]

[TheAnvil 0]

Very interesting.

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[Lindsey 0]

http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/reprint/hlthaff.w4.354v1

This link is from one of the articles referenced in billvon's link. Apparently the growth of healthcare costs has slowed somewhat. Slowing the growth of insurance premium costs is lagging, but that should be expected.

While your article doesn't go into the details of Bush and Kerry's plans (I haven't looked into these myself either), I tend towards the more conservative side of this argument. If we were to look at trends for which illnesses are responsible for the greatest healthcare expenditures I would imagine that they are illnesses caused largely by bad habits: smoking, eating badly, lack of exercize. Trying to afford insurance is horrible. There's no doubt about that. We all want to fault doctors and lawyers though, while continuing to live lifestyles that make us sick. There are very few politicians who are going to be willing to stand up and say "if you want to drive healthcare costs down then quit smoking, lose weight, and go for a walk every day." I'm not saying that this is THE problem, but I would like to see people take some responsibility for themselves.

--
A conservative is just a liberal who's been mugged. A liberal is just a conservative who's been to jail