Cost, Schmost. It's About The Care
This is inspired by the Return of Rotwang (where do you go, you mad man?) and his call for a conversation beyond cost savings in health care. My problem with my private health insurance is that I pay too much and get too little from it. I pay premiums twice monthly and yet I have a high deductible. Even when I'm under the deductible limit and am basically paying out of pocket through an HSA my insurer has the nerve to deny treatments so that they won't apply to the deductible. They want me to stay below the deductible level forever, after all. Then I pay for everything and I pay premiums. Funny how they like that.
In short, my insurance company rations care, even though I'm young and healthy.
We need a system that pays for what my doctor and I agree upon until I'm better or healed. We can do that. But, some will say, more treatment isn't always better. Indeed, Economides said that to me and Economides is smart and, of course, right. Except that we're moving into an age of mroe individualized care. More treatment isn't necessarily better but what works for me might not be what works for Economides and we're rapidly heading towards and age of personalized medicine where we're going to be able to figure that out. Right now, we can only judge "effective treatments" by looking at means and averages. That doesn't do me much good if I'm sick and want to take a chance on something that's beyond average. So I think we should be thinking less about cost savings and more about individualized care.
We are, at this point, incredibly worried about cost. I'm more worried about value. Cost is only meaningful to me in terms of what I get for it. The private system has so far failed to give me the care I think I deserve for what I'm paying, Problem is, the Obama plan does nothing about that. This is why we need a strong and generous public option, so that I can tell my private insurer that it needs to reduce its fees and increase its services or I'll walk.
Everyone always promises "you can keep the plan you have." The way the healthcare debate is heading, most of us are going to be stuck with the plan we have. We need a better, bigger, more ambitious plan very badly.
In short, my insurance company rations care, even though I'm young and healthy.
We need a system that pays for what my doctor and I agree upon until I'm better or healed. We can do that. But, some will say, more treatment isn't always better. Indeed, Economides said that to me and Economides is smart and, of course, right. Except that we're moving into an age of mroe individualized care. More treatment isn't necessarily better but what works for me might not be what works for Economides and we're rapidly heading towards and age of personalized medicine where we're going to be able to figure that out. Right now, we can only judge "effective treatments" by looking at means and averages. That doesn't do me much good if I'm sick and want to take a chance on something that's beyond average. So I think we should be thinking less about cost savings and more about individualized care.
We are, at this point, incredibly worried about cost. I'm more worried about value. Cost is only meaningful to me in terms of what I get for it. The private system has so far failed to give me the care I think I deserve for what I'm paying, Problem is, the Obama plan does nothing about that. This is why we need a strong and generous public option, so that I can tell my private insurer that it needs to reduce its fees and increase its services or I'll walk.
Everyone always promises "you can keep the plan you have." The way the healthcare debate is heading, most of us are going to be stuck with the plan we have. We need a better, bigger, more ambitious plan very badly.
