healthcare

Here is a very sensible - and short - blog entry from the Wall Street Journal (actually, here's the full text, still very short). It basically argues that a potential answer to the U.S. healthcare problem would be to give people access to universal primary care.

Stop the snowball before it gets too big. I wonder how much money would be saved if everyone had access to free checkups by primary care physicians?

For example: My dad was not a healthy eater, and heart attacks run in his family. However, he had health insurance and therefore access to primary care physicians. So when he went for his regular checkups, his doctor would monitor his cholesterol and blood pressure and whatever else; and give advice based on what he saw. And my dad would listen to the advice. Today, my dad is 68 and in relatively good health. But what if he didn't have his regular checkups? What does it cost to have a heart attack in America these days? $50,000? $100,000? Dirk cut his hand on a window and it cost him a few thousand dollars. (Dirk, how much did it end up costing you?)

How many hour long check ups can one get for $50,000?

Which leads to the second point they make: because of income disparity, doctors have more incentive to become surgeons or specialists or anything but primary care physicians. You can make more money curing a serious problem than you can preventing it from happening in the first place.

I see this same issue in the legal field. Lawyers have more incentive to fight than they do to settle. I've seen it firsthand, and I've seen it too many times. Doctors and lawyers should be in their professions to help people; not to tax them.