With Health Care, First Fix Terms of Engagement: "Moreover, we know that by its nature, health care is a highly imperfect market. It suffers from tremendous 'information asymmetries' between sellers (doctors, hospitals and insurers) and buyers (patients).
It is rife with what economists call 'principal-agent problems' -- like the doctor who benefits financially by providing more medical treatment than patients need, or health insurers that are always trying to get them to consume less.
In rural areas, there are often few providers and little or no competition.
And left alone, insurance markets will tend to lower costs for the young and healthy and raise them for the sick and aged -- an outcome that is as socially unacceptable as it is economically efficient."
A good summary of some of the problems we face - let's start fixing them one by one ! A PHR ( patient health record) would be a good way of empowering patients with information, so they can be as well-informed about their medical problems as they want to be !
my mother had 3 surgeries in 6mos she was told she needed bi pass to ensure successfull hips surgeries, never bother to enform her of probabiliy of clostium difficle equally and more so a deadly, they could revive her heart, but no treatment or cure for this fast miserable death, no warning, not even listed on post surgical complications to watch for, surgeries were elective she could have waited, no info, thousands die yearly, no warning, natural cause death! there should be a law protecting from neglegent homicide, elderly irradicaton? medicare fraud.
ReplyDelete