Wednesday, April 23, 2008

The Health Care Crisis

Health Care can be dwindled down into 3 basic parts: Cost, Quality, and Access. It is almost impossible to improve all three parts at the same time.

So far the media has focused on Cost and Access. Republicans yell about cost, Democrats rant about access. I think they are both important to the average American. My question is, what can we do now to improve our health care system for the long term? So we can improve all 3 aspects over time?

It's a tough question, no easy answers. Can focusing on quality and access to care lead to reduced costs in the long term? Will focusing on cost and quality lead to improved access in the end? How will technology play a factor in this triangle? Right now most assume that technology is increasing costs, but what if our innovations in the future lead to reduced costs? We have MRIs now, like the mega-computers of the 80s. Who is to say we won't have improved imaging technology in 15 years at much lower costs? This I believe, we are destined for. So, with this belief in mind, that technology will lead to lower costs of care in the future, I saw we don't worry about increased costs for now. I say that all these projections of the Health Care Sector taking up 40% of the GDP are wrong. Yes we do have some startling problems with an aging population and a fattening population, but I am seeing technology being the key to this, reducing physician visits, ER visits, making care accessible and affordable.

With this in mind, the government should own up, and take more of the costs off American's back. But we shouldn't worry about cost in the big scheme of things. Right now we need to focus on improving quality of care and access to quality of care first and foremost. This means we need a larger physician and health care provider pool and we need to really tackle quality. I don't have the time to go into quality of care right now. But lets just say that continuity of care would make for so much less duplicate and extra care that I think that would be a good place to start.

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