27 September 2010
Real Healthcare Reform
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that is popularly known as “ObamaCare” is the product of liberal Democratic impatience and medical industry determination that only accomplishes some improvements in the equity of healthcare delivery at the risk that the cost of healthcare will rise until that issue is faced head-on. As pointed out by observers like Atul Gawande in his article in the August 2, 2010 New Yorker, “Letting Go,” the real problem of the American health care system is the expectation of patients that they can ultimately evade death and not have to settle for making their short life spans as pleasant as possible. In effect, we value time more than gratification—the ultimate in future preference.
The filibuster-proof majority that passed the bill through Congress could only be assembled by sacrificing any reform of our healthcare system that would reduce its cost while improving its outcomes. This trade-off was needed in order to obtain the consent of the insurance companies and health care providers to suspend their reluctance to change certain discriminatory rules that they believed were necessary to preserve their competitiveness. They further insisted on being able to raise the price of their services to cover the additional expenses caused by more equitable service. In other words, all that was achieved was to force change in the user-friendliness of the health care system at the expense of the patients.
The irony of ObamaCare is that it relies on the market to solve the nation’s potentially disastrous failure to face that fact that people do not live forever. Leadership is needed to draw the public to a realistic notion of what medical science can actually accomplish in the relief of the inevitable emotional and physical pain of death. Any nation that tries to buy its way out of the human condition will only be bankrupted by the effort.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that is popularly known as “ObamaCare” is the product of liberal Democratic impatience and medical industry determination that only accomplishes some improvements in the equity of healthcare delivery at the risk that the cost of healthcare will rise until that issue is faced head-on. As pointed out by observers like Atul Gawande in his article in the August 2, 2010 New Yorker, “Letting Go,” the real problem of the American health care system is the expectation of patients that they can ultimately evade death and not have to settle for making their short life spans as pleasant as possible. In effect, we value time more than gratification—the ultimate in future preference.
The filibuster-proof majority that passed the bill through Congress could only be assembled by sacrificing any reform of our healthcare system that would reduce its cost while improving its outcomes. This trade-off was needed in order to obtain the consent of the insurance companies and health care providers to suspend their reluctance to change certain discriminatory rules that they believed were necessary to preserve their competitiveness. They further insisted on being able to raise the price of their services to cover the additional expenses caused by more equitable service. In other words, all that was achieved was to force change in the user-friendliness of the health care system at the expense of the patients.
The irony of ObamaCare is that it relies on the market to solve the nation’s potentially disastrous failure to face that fact that people do not live forever. Leadership is needed to draw the public to a realistic notion of what medical science can actually accomplish in the relief of the inevitable emotional and physical pain of death. Any nation that tries to buy its way out of the human condition will only be bankrupted by the effort.
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