The New Yorker prints and excellent article by Atul Gawande on health care costs. He focuses on McAllen, Texas, in Hidalgo County, which happens to be one of the most expensive health care markets in the U.S. The problem?
Local executives for hospitals and clinics and home-health agencies understand their growth rate and their market share; they know whether they are losing money or making money. They know that if their doctors bring in enough business—surgery, imaging, home-nursing referrals—they make money; and if they get the doctors to bring in more, they make more. But they have only the vaguest notion of whether the doctors are making their communities as healthy as they can, or whether they are more or less efficient than their counterparts elsewhere. A doctor sees a patient in clinic, and has her check into a McAllen hospital for a CT scan, an ultrasound, three rounds of blood tests, another ultrasound, and then surgery to have her gallbladder removed. How is Lawrence Gelman or Gilda Romero [both hospital administrators] to know whether all that is essential, let alone the best possible treatment for the patient? It isn’t what they are responsible or accountable for.
Senior citizens are taking the hit that no one talks about during the recession. Senior citizens, as their numbers increase exponentially, are increasingly taking to short term loans to keep afloat. As more people are laid off, there is less tax revenue coming in, and that is how Social Security and Medicare are funded. The Medicare expense out of every paycheck goes to the Medicare fund, and part of the Medicare woe is that not only is the fund running out faster than it can be replenished, but health care costs are going up. Medicare will be bankrupt in 8 years or less, which means we need debt relief to be able to care for our senior citizens.
Posted by: Victor | May 29, 2009 at 12:48 AM