Prevention To Save Healthcare Costs

Charles Krauthammer has a post at RealClearPolitics about the healthcare debate and the idea that better preventative medicine will cut costs.  Charles Krauthammer has a stong medical background and is very well informed on healthcare in America.  He points out that the original justification for totally redesigning American healthcare was the fact that healthcare costs were bankrupting our economy.  When the Congressional Budget Office released a report stating that President Obama's healthcare plans would add $ 1.6 trillion dollars to the federal budget--not reduce costs, that claim became obsolete.  So they changed the rationale to the fact the better preventative care provided for in the bill would save us money.  Mr. Krauthammer points out:

"Reform proponents repeat this like a mantra. Because it seems so intuitive, it has become conventional wisdom. But like most conventional wisdom, it is wrong. Overall, preventive care increases medical costs.

"This inconvenient truth comes, once again, from the CBO. In an Aug. 7 letter to Rep. Nathan Deal, CBO Director Doug Elmendorf writes: "Researchers who have examined the effects of preventive care generally find that the added costs of widespread use of preventive services tend to exceed the savings from averted illness.""

Again, the justification for this bill turns out to be false, as are most of the claims put out by supporters of  the bill.  Yahoo News is reporting that the end-of-life counseling program has been dropped from the bill by the Senate Finance Committee.  At the same time, the President is claiming that provision was never there.  This is not a bill to rush through Congress--this is a bill that needs to be carefully examined and changed drastically.

Just for the record, the three main causes of the increases in American medical expenses are:

1.  Medicare has negotiated agreements with hospitals to obtain services at a fraction of the hospital cost.  The hospital then charges private insurance more to make up the difference.  The healthcare bill will not change this--it will only make it worse, eventually causing hospitals to close or limit their services.

2.  Preventative medicine is practiced to the extreme as a defense against lawsuits.  One lawsuit can bankrupt a practice.

3.  The cost of medical malpractice insurance has gone totally out of control.  This could be addressed by tort reform, which is not in the current healthcare bill.

It's time to scrap the current bill and deal with the actual problems!