re: #515 WindUpBird

if you honestly don’t understand by now why our health care system needs reform, after all the coverage of it, all the stories… I’m not going to waste my time explaining it to you. You don’t want to hear it.

It needs reform. Portability, so people don’t get pushed out of the system when they lose their job and then find themselves unable to get back in because of a preexisting condition. Tort reform, so real resources aren’t wasted running tests and giving prescriptions to no medical purpose. Standardizing medical records and putting them all on computers. Databases to spot correlations and epidemics etc. Better public education efforts to prompt people to watch their diet and get some exercise. Better public education efforts so we don’t have so many people avoiding vaccinations. Better reporting rules for medical mishaps—-this links in with tort reform. In the airline industry, a near-miss or other foulup must be reported to the FAA, but no punishments ensue. That way the FAA at least knows what’s going wrong and can try to get it corrected. Better sanitation in hospitals.

Virtually none of this is in the bills now before Congress. What they call reform is not reform. It’s a power grab, and at best it’ll give us the low-grade mediocrity that is health care in Europe today.