Healthcare Reform: The basics

The times, they are a’changing.

Whether you’re on the right or left or somewhere in the middle, you’ve probably got an opinion on the coming changes that we can expect to our healthcare system.

This is a great summary from NIH.gov.

The part I like the best is that which emphasizes prevention. Yes, we want to be able to treat illness. However, we don’t want to create a system that looks at “treatment” as a business model.

We currently suffer from what is called “over-utilization” of the system — not by patients, but by doctors. Here’s the incentive: the more you treat, the more you get paid.

Whether you think this is right, wrong, or indifferent, the bottom line is that costs skyrocket when “treatment” becomes a product rather than a process.