Consumer Driven Health Care: Add your voice

Consumer driven health care is another sham about to be pulled on the American public. It reminds me of when the cable companies wanted a monopoly and promised that this would keep prices down. After they got their bill past, cable bills went up the next billing cycle and have never stopped rising. Now the insurance companies want “consumer driven” health care. So, with the help of a media that is either too corrupt or lazy to investigate the truth, they feed the public lie upon lie. Yet even with the constant barrage of these outright lies from the health insurance companies, polls show that single payer health care is gaining support and the majority of people now for it.
Imagine if the mainstream media actually reported facts, instead of being a shell for big business. People might find out that:

Over ninety percent of Canadians are pleased with their health care.

Canadians now live longer healthier lives than Americans and more children in Canada survive until the age of one.

The amount Canadians spend on health care is vastly less than that spent by Americans.

Major foreign companies are now choosing Canada over the USA to build new plants, and state health care costs as the primary reason. Toyota is the most recent example.

Canadians do not wait any longer for necessary surgery than we do.

Two years ago, when we had insurance, my wife waited nine months for back surgery. While the doctors agreed that she would not walk until after an operation, the insurance company made her wait while they fed her drugs the doctors said would not work.

Now we are uninsured, I’m afraid if either of us needs surgery again our wait will be a tad longer. That would be until dead.

The title chosen, "Consumer Driven Health Care" encapsulates the problem. One receiving health care is not a consumer, but rather a patient.

Being a consumer assumes that free market concepts apply. In a free market the consumer is free to consume or not, or has many options. Obviously a consumer needs to eat, but not necessarily bread, or meat, or soft drinks. There is an immense variety of choices which can provide a good (or terrible) diet.

In a free market the provider also has the freedom to provide or not. Neither of these conditions apply to health care. For example, if one has appendicitis there are two choices: appendectomy or death, which for most people is not really a choice. On the other hand, most emergency wards are obliged to perform appendectomies whether or not the patient can afford the surgery. Where's the choice? Obviously free market rules do not apply.

Certainly it is healthy for patients to be cost conscious and being so can help keep costs low. But treating health care as a commodity is not the answer.

The answer is a national, single-payer health system which applies health care to all citizens on the basis of national health priorities. First priority should be prevention, and then, treatment of illness. Quasi-health concerns such as anti-aging cosmetic surgery, massive fertility therapy (increasing the population is not a national need), and maintaining hopeless cases on life support should be paid for by individuals able to afford it.

Our efficient Medicare and Medicaid programs have proven that a national health system not only works, but is the cheapest and most beneficial way to solve the health care crisis.

Nice series, but it seems your subject is not Health Care, but Medical Care. Consumer driven health care means selecting one's ancesters well, having a reasonable standard of living, pushing for a clean environment, becoming a vegetarian and purchasing running/walking shoes with the money saved.

Medical care is in crisis today in the USA. The answer of course (not perfect) is a single-payer system.