The False Promise of 'Consumer-Driven' Health Care

[dave502d]

http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=138321

[whistle]

1. Uhmm lets me see now, shall I request three bids for my colonoscopy...

...how about the Hepatitis K infection or the brain tumor removal? I should be able to take the lowest bidder for those. My HMO is so good they always find the best deals on medical care.

[Warpy]

2. Health care can be consumer driven as soon as

illness becomes a consumer decision. When we live in a world where the weatlthy will all develop congestive heart failure and require transplants and the poor will be content with the occasional common cold, then we can have consumer driven health care. When wealthy parents can sign their children up for a lifetime of chronic disease that befits their economic status, then we can have a fine consumer driven health care system.

Keeping healthcare in the for-profit sector is not only unconscionably cruel, it's utterly insane.

It's time to end the madness, folks, get the scammers in the insurance industry and the fast buck boys in the pharmaceutical companies the hell out of healthcare. End those fat advertising budgets by banning the advertising of prescription drugs to patients who can't write their own prescriptions, and force a return to common sense pricing of hospital treatment.

Nothing else will do, and the private sector has proven itself incapable of delivering reasonable health care to us. Take it away from them.