The other day I discovered I have turf toe. It's an old sport injury that sometimes causes my big toe to hurt when I'm walking.
A doctor told me we could fix my toe by cleaning out the joint, cutting a bone in my foot, putting a pin in, and creating more room for the toe to move.
This sounded like painful and expensive surgery -- a more painful solution than turf toe itself.
I thought about turf toe when I talked with the President's budget director today. Peter Orszag is an expert in health care costs. He and the President believe the country can save billions by eliminating unnecessary procedures and tests.
To drive the point home, the President was in Green Bay, Wisconsin today talking about how that city delivers low-cost, high-quality care.
Maybe that means doctors shouldn't advocate surgery for turf toe, though I can't help but wonder if I'll want that expensive procedure if walking becomes more painful.
That's the health care trade off and that's why I asked Peter Orszag to define "Green Bay Health Care" when I spoke to him at the White House today.
(You'll need Flash
Comments
First, a for-profit health care system puts profits first, not patients. Only if a patient's interests coincide with profit's interests might it look like the patient's interests came first. It's time for Republicans to recognize that there *are* some things which the "market" *cannot* manage well. Basic banking and savings is one such thing, with two major catastrophes in the past 30 years. Healthcare is another. It's time for healthcare to be boring and predictable and not a component of the Dow.
Second, every horror story that people trot out like "Plan Administrator" above, has an equally horrifying counterpart in our current US healthcare system or more. Ever hear of complaints about insurance companies rejecting procedures or blocking treatments in the US? Only someone Ahmadinejad-like would claim 'no'.
Third, claiming choice will be removed under a public plan is ludicrous. Already, my plan limits me to a subset of doctors, hospitals and other facilities. In fact, with a single-payer system, I feel like I would have *more* choice, since the entire healthcare system would be available to me.
Lastly, has anyone even run the numbers on a simple government "self-insured" plan contracted through the various insurance groups (like many corporations just contract with an insurance company to handle claims and "self-insure")? If this covered Medicare, Medicaid and the uninsured, how much more would it really be?
Show the fejies...again
Darren,
Under our current private health insurance plans the choice is yours. Under a nationaized health care plan the choice will probably not be yours...turf toe may fall under some not covered/not medically necessary schedule.
But look at something a little more serious than turf toe---prostate cancer. Studies have shown that prostate cancer is a slow grower and has a very low death rate. In fact studies have shown that virtually every male >age 75 has some level of prostate cancer. When a biopsy shows a low level of prostate cancer in a person in their mid-to late 60s, who is in good health, that person now has the option of doing nothing or having surgery. The person may elect to have surgery, deal with the temporary discomforts but will have piece of mind that he's prostate cancer free for the rest of his life. But in nationized health care that person most likely will not have the option. The plan will quote studies that say statistically speaking the probabilty of death from this cancer is low and therefore not covered.
"Affordable" health care will have to take choice of procedure and doctor out of the equation. "Choice" will mean it's no longer affordable.