Jun042009
That Dread Thing: Healthcare + Economy
Filed under Current Events by Kim at 12:51 pm on Jun 04 2009
I just pushed my way through this interesting article from the New Yorker on health care economics, and I while there are some nitpicks I have with it, it’s nice to see something at least a little nuanced on the subject. (Nitpick example, use of the word “rationing”; to see why, read Buckeye Surgeon’s post here. I hadn’t heard the “rationing” thing until last week.)
Overall though, this article was helpful for a non-economist and general financial moron. It also dovetailed in with many things I heard in Jerome Groopman’s How Doctors Think. Obviously, as a hopeful future nurse, I might like to think about who’s going to be paying my salary, but since right now I’m more a definite patient, I like to think about what kind of care I might be getting and why. And how much it costs – since while that’s been largely invisible to me, I’m pretty lucky in that regard.
The parts of the article I really liked were the parts discussing the Mayo clinic model (I was not aware! And one day when I am a nurse, would certainly strive to work in a facility like this.) and the sixth section which reviews the Dartmouth/Srirovich study of doctors. When it gets down to it, it’s all very theoretical, but the patient in me as well as the analyst in me finds this a really helpful perspective to be armed with when dealing with my own doctor.
As one of the doctors in the article says, “We took a wrong turn when doctors stopped being doctors and became businessmen”. The funny thing is, I saw the exact same thing happening when I worked in the marketing arm of a Veterinary Medicine business. There was much talk of the gap between the savvy business vets and the care-dedicated vets (not that those two don’t overlap sometimes).
Anyways, I don’t have any solutions, but everyone in this country who intends to get health care (sorry, Christian Scientists!) has a stake in the evolving issues, so I figured I’d point out these links.
1 Zoeon 06 Jun 2009 at 1:48 pm
I’ll have to try to get the issue of the New Yorker.
I am on an Obama committee, albeit, huge, discussing health care issues and attempting to launch community-based programs.
I’d see to the introduction of a new delivery system work and work well.
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Kim Reply:
June 8th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
Interesting! I really hope they are talking about some of the stuff mentioned in the article inside the administration. It feels like it’s really a culture-of-healthcare thing and lots of people are being brought up with rapidly changing modes of operation, leaving many healthcare workers and administrators to their own devices to know what to do.
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2 Meganon 07 Jun 2009 at 9:43 am
The amount that health care is impacting my life right now is ridiculous. It has been a huge factor in our struggle to get Ben out of his old job and into a new job. He has had two job offers from companies that just don’t offer health care. Hello?! Who can work with no health care? Our current health care costs $1600/month for a family of 4. It’s a great plan, but your health care bill should not be the size of a mortgage payment. This system is broken and needs to be fixed.
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Kim Reply:
June 8th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
I truly haven’t heard much of that, the don’t-offer-healthcare thing. I have to wonder is it particular to his industry or what. That’s just irresponsible, because currently I feel like our culture is employer-focused. If we are moving away from that, fine, but as a community or a nation we have to figure out some other way to be collectively responsible.
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