HEALTHCARE: THE BIG FIX

We can fix the rising costs of healthcare, but why won’t our Representatives in Congress and our President listen to reason? Why are pundits from both the LEFT and RIGHT offering broad solutions without detail? THE LEFT tells you that a public option is necessary to provide competition against private insurers, while THE RIGHT’s main points are that they would like the states to open up competition across state lines and place a cap on legal settlements.

Well, we know you simply cannot just throw money at a problem and HOPE for the best. It has not worked with the public school system because National test scores have not increased proportionately with the world, so don’t expect it to work with healthcare.

So what can we do? Well, let’s go back to Economics 101 and review Supply and Demand. Simply, the greater the Supply, the lower the end price for the consumer (patient). We know that an aging population of “Baby Boomers” will put a greater strain (HIGHER DEMAND) on our current medical system. The increased number of patients will widen the gap between needed medical professionals to walk-in patients, thus keeping prices high (or increasing). There is no quick fix to solving growing healthcare costs, but if we act now we could implement programs to help manage costs by providing incentives for more qualified doctors, nurses, EMTs, medical staff, and monitoring equipment. If you add more manpower, the extra competition will drive prices downward, so if the Government is to get involved they should provide incentives to expand medical schools, nursing programs, emergency response units, and medical staff training. Another way to lower healthcare costs is for companies, i.e. General Electric (a large Liberal company) that manufactures expensive medical equipment to make their equipment more readily available to lesser profitable and/or poorer medical facilities. Right now, they keep their equipment fairly exclusive for only wealthy practices. And as a company that is advocating Universal Healthcare (lower health insurance premiums), their approach is a bit hypocritical because they seem more concerned with their bottom line than keeping medical costs in-check.

These two factors will greatly lower medical expenses and enable more people to be treated cost-effectively.