Regulation = The Cure

After watching these videos, specifically the Japanese and Taiwanese ones, I believe the problems of the U.S. health care system can be summarized in one word: abuse. Every moment of every day, there are people around the country who are not only trying to game the system but are also succeeding. We’ve all heard of the patients who are looking for their next fix of morphine or a warm bed and meal and the hospitals and physicians who consistently overbill their patients. Unfortunately, we haven’t heard about any means to fix these problems, which result in high health care costs for everyone.

Japan has managed or at least limit the problem of overbilling by establishing a set price for all tests and treatments in a price guide. They limit further overcharging with the threat of lowering the price even farther on overused tests or treatments. In contrast, Taiwan limits hospital visits with the threat of a government official visiting and talking to offenders.

These techniques do limit the rising healthcare costs but I believe the final aspect of abuse that was not covered in the film is the greatest problem, malpractice insurance. To me, this seemed like the slippery slope of the problem for health care cost. Physicians are forced to pay anywhere from $10,000 to $200,000 annually for insurance depending on the amount of invasiveness of their treatment. In addition, they run an abundance of tests even for the most routine procedures. The end result is the cost is passed down to the patient thus raising costs.

In the end, the message from the videos is pretty clear. Americans are paying more and getting much less in return. It seems the means to fix the health care problem is to do what the Taiwanese did, examine other systems and what they did correctly while cutting out the poorly functioning aspects. In other words, the proper system for the U.S. might be a combination of socialist and totalitarian (i.e. government owned and overly controlled and regulated). The question becomes would America follow her democratic ideals or her checkbook?