What do you think about healthcare reform?

Answer 1

I think we are focusing too much on so called "reform", when it is actually just a reform of the payment system. We should be focusing more on preventing disease, education, rewards for positive health decisions and less on how we are going to pay for the people to get sick by their own hand. Aberrant behaviors such as obesity, smoking, drinking in excess, drug addiction, inactivity, all contribute to the burden of the current system. Lets look on reforming behaviors first. Reward the good behaviors, make bad behaviors less attractive.

Physicians, nurses and select medical personnel should be more involved in health care reform - they are the ones on the front line. Having someone who sits in an office or who practiced 20 years ago, making health care decisions for today's market, is folly.

Certainly government personnel are the absolute worst choice for health care policy making. People are being fooled by the false claims that are out there - on both sides.As an RN, I totally agree that we need more medical professionals helping to educate the general public on this subject and to enable and push for corrections of the current poorly designed system. That is why I strive to give some of that education myself.

I also agree that politicians are the wrong people to design the corrective actions and to make the policies that should be put in place. In today's US Congress, we can see clearly that we can not trust them to make decisions for the good of the people, and I'm becoming weary of their inability to make any decisions and angry about their ties to the rewards from lobbyists.

Rewarding good behavior is a good idea, however, first we need to address the problem of children and adults who are dying from medical conditions that are not due to excesses or unhealthy practices. They are dying because the care they need is no longer affordable and often over-priced. This is why reform is needed.

And, I most heartedly agree that we should all learn and practice better wellness behaviors.

But, I do not agree that most of the people who are uninsured and needing health care services in the US are sick "from their own hand", in fact...that would more likely apply to the wealthy who can well afford those behaviors and their resulting healthcare costs.

Rewarding good behavior is a good idea, however, the immediate

need is to address the problem of so many children and adults dying from conditions that are not due to excesses or unhealthy practices. Too many are dying right now every day because the care they need is not affordable. This is really why reform of the health care and insurance systems is critical right now:

A Harvard study found that 45,000 deaths per year

in the US today are a direct result of a lack of appropriate and timely care, because it was not affordable. A link about that study is in the related links section.