On the Web: A Tragic Choice, Wasting Berwick, Cost Control, A Nurse’s Comfort Zone
An estimated 60% of American bankruptcies result from overwhelming medical costs. My uncle’s tale illuminates the dual tragedy of suffering catastrophic illness and being uninsured.
Read the rest of this troubling post at The Health Care Blog by surgeon John Maa if you doubt that we need health care reform in this country.
A measure of how unserious we are about fixing the problem of health care quality and costs in the U.S. can be found in reports that Don Berwick, President Obama’s choice to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), continues to have an uphill battle for confirmation, despite being widely acknowledged within the medical community as the best choice for the challenging job.
Since we’re talking policy, there’s an incisive post at the Health Affairs Blog on where our energies should—and should not—be going in controlling costs. Here’s an excerpt:
The current cry to reduce Federal deficits and debt growth by reducing Medicare and Medicaid entitlements is totally missing the key issue: the need to moderate all health care inflation. This should be the time for a national debate on how to best tackle the underlying cost problem, for the sake of our future, the economy, and access to health care.
The June 13-19, 2009 Economist editorialized: “America has the most wasteful […]