The vote is in!

Unanimous!! From the remarks posted by my classmates, it seems we unanimously agree the US health care system is in need of reform.

How, though, do we reform the fragmented system we already have in place? As it stands today, the US health care system has bits and pieces of each one of the health care systems spoken of in the Frontline videos. Much like Switzerland we think we are “the exception” and do not want to be found following anyone else’s lead. Our country was founded much on this principle in our break from the British rule. We have social medicine, for war veterans, as is practiced in Taiwan in that the government pays the medical bill, the wait lines are nil and they are open on the weekends. The US health care fragments again and resembles the Japanese system in that both operate in a capitalist society. We have welfare which pays for poor and pregnant women to birth their babies without paying the medical bill, this resembles the health care system in Germany. The United States also encapsulates the British medical system in its “price regulation” for medical services (in a small way) administered to the elderly receiving Medicare. All in all, the US health care system seems confused on what it wants to be and do.

The three points made near the end of the film I thought were great conclusions and a good platform on which to push toward reform for our own country. The United States would need to decide they want to offer health care to the nations’ citizens as a benefit for to citizenship, namely for the enrichment of society as a whole. Continuing from here, it seems wise to set some limits, perhaps we could call them “standards” for medical pricing. We, as American’s do not like to be limited in what we do, so this will be difficult for many. In imposing limits, the reform would need to revolutionize the way insurance companies operate on a for-profit basis, control the exuberant, sky-high prices of medical care. It is arguable that these high prices are ““justifiable” as one student poignantly stated in their blog. There reason for medical doctors to demanding such high wages is due to costly, time-invested medical training and high malpractice insurance costs.

Our current medical conundrum needs some resolution. The “foreign health care” is not really so foreign, we have all of these ideas on a small scale, it seems to me we need a way to choose a method system and reform in that direction. How long would such a reform really take? Would we see it in our lifetime?