Part II

We are in Part II.

So far the issues pro/con are being at least asked.

There is a lot of give and take here. No consensus.

That was a very quick hour.  Can’t believe it went so fast.

Very difficult to blog since so much was being said so quickly.  I caught myself listening a lot.

If the health care debate were being handled by these people, I would be a little more comfortable with the outcome.

However, part of the problem with the current debate and legislation is trust or lack of it.

Do you trust the political class to do the right thing?

That’s a wrap

That may have been the fastest hour of my life. Once again, another great discussion, which was hard to blog because we were all paying such close attention. I look forward to the next edition. Hope you enjoyed it as well.

– Charles Kuffner

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Goodnight.
- Michael Reed

The limits of wonkiness

Perhaps befitting the fact that this half of the show is about health care policy, rather than health care itself, one of the panelists has very strong opinions, all of the anti-reform variety. An audience member just asked if any of the other panelists want to respond to some of the things this gentleman has said – there’d been a little bit of polite pushback but not much – and now a caller is taking him to task. I was going to say that this felt like a soft spot in the way this was run, but it would seem that my concern has been addressed.

– Charles Kuffner

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Access to early care is called essential by one panelist. Another says some doctors are paid by the current system to do more, while some hospitals are paid by the system to do less.
- Michael Reed

James on the phone: How can spending be controlled? I was charged $2,000 for my wife being tested for dizziness for two hours.
- Michael Reed

The cost issue

This is a wonky episode of HHYS, even by its own standards. There’s a smaller number of people, mostly doctors, doing all the talking – there are numerous other people in the audience, but it’s not clear to me what if anything they’ll have to say – and it’s a high level of discourse. Right now the discussion is about cost, and it strikes me that the elephant in the room, which has just now been explicitly mentioned, is that one way of reducing costs is reducing the amount that doctors earn. One panelist just spoke of a setup in which the doctors in a practice earned a salary rather than billed for service. That’s a model that would certainly “bend the curve”, but I don’t know if it’s even possible given what we have now, and what we’re likely to get with pending legislation.

– Charles Kuffner

Fraud Prevention in Medicare

Caller just brought up fraud prevention in Medicare.

Why is the Government waiting for this legislation to come through to go after fraud? There are a ton of laws on the books now. Use what we have now and go after those that are stealing from the system.

 

 

-  Ree-C

Dr. Clifton: Ramp up primary care to reward doctors. Make prevention something doctors want to focus on.
- Michael Reed

Caller: Contract employee doesn’t have insurance. Every time she goes it costs $100. She can’t get preventative care.
- Michael Reed