Health Care Reform - Will Dr Obama Be Able To Cure The Us Health System?

Health Care Reform - Will Dr Obama Be Able To Cure The Us Health System?

Let ' s pretend that President Obama is actually Dr Obama, and that his job is to pick out and treat the US Health System. What will he find, how will he go about it, and what will be the outcome?
The process of diagnosis is relatively straight forward. Everyone acknowledges that the system is pained and that there are a number of agreed on symptoms of this disorder. Firstly the system is far too worthwhile, consuming halfway twice as many dollars per capita as health systems in other Western countries. And this rate is also sick focused. Over thirty per cent of our health dollars are spent on administrative non - patient care costs ( selfsame as insurance companies costs and profits, and excessive administrative costs for providers ). We also spend twice as much on medications as other Western countries, and our reimbursement practices inappropriately reward piece ratio medicine, particularly doctors who perform interventions, ( near as surgeons and radiologists ) instead of undertaking prevention and the treatment of chronic disorder ( resembling as primary care physicians ). Of course the existence of 47 million uninsured is a disgrace and a huge pickle, as is the relatively moneyless quality of overall care provided nationally for the money spent. And in consummation the whole system is very patchy, with excellence provided relatively cheaply in some areas, and the opposite in many others. All this occurs in the setting of relatively little investment in electronic medical records and modern information technology, which could certainly improve the system.
So what should Dr Obama do? What is his treatment plan? If he addresses some of the problems uppermost, then the task becomes clearer. It is positively essential to introduce some formation of national public insurance program, both to warrant the currently uninsured, and to stock up competition for the excessive number of health insurance companies to make them reduce their rates, increase their cover, and implement better appraisal services. It is likely that this process will lead to many of the insurance companies motion out of business, and that is fine, seeing there are way to many at ad hoc, and it would be more cerebral for us to have fewer fitter health insurance operations. At the same time the cost of pharmaceuticals has to be addressed - there needs to be a nationally negotiated formulary for focal point essential drugs that are paid out of the public wallet.
At the corresponding time the payment structure for providers needs to be changed, and more weight paid for services for chronic illness and prevention, and less for interventional medicine, while also encouraging, as is spirit, the use of electronic medical inscribe systems and other health information technology initiatives. A single sensational decoration would come if he insisted on the introduction of a national health identifier number as this would intensely heighten the ability of providers to exchange health information when requisite, and would hugely open doors billing and administrative processes.
Many other things have to happen, of course, but will Dr Obama and his team be up to this task? We currently have a wealthy and inefficient health system, and in any homologous system there are winners and losers. The winners in today ' s health system are insurance companies, the pharmaceutical industry, and great numbers of providers who are used to getting exceptionally high incomes for interventional services. The losers are patients, and the country. When looked at broadly, the diagnosis and treatment of our health system is actually relatively straightforward, but it has to be accepted that today ' s " winners " will not necessarily remain in that position long term, and that there will be a number of losers as we quarters the system. Let ' s just promise that Dr Obama, and his multidisciplinary health planning team in Congress, are able to push through the reforms the US health system needs so that the patient is no longer the short-sighted.