One of the few newscasters I see on TV who really seems to talk some sense is ABC's John Stossel. He had an interesting piece on 20/20 last night about the health care debate that is summarized in this column from his website:
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=3580676&page=1I have followed this issue for years and have agreed that the system is flawed and something must be done, especially to control the rapidly rising costs, but I sure haven't seen many proposals (especially the latest ones!!) that seem to be the answer.
But I sure so think Stossel is on the right track here, to control costs, we must find a way to make patients shop for best values in their health care. He compared our present system to a food shopping system where your groceries were all paid for by someone else. We'd all go to the store and buy steaks and other items without regard to the cost. The cost of our nations food needs would skyrocket because there would be no incentive to shop for value.
To get some sense of order to our system, perhaps the best way to do things would be to make our insurance more of a "catastrophic" type coverage, in other words, something with a high deductible like $5000. Then people could have health savings accounts to use for routine type medical care. Perhaps at the end of the year money left in health savings accounts could be refunded, or put in your retirement IRA, something beneficial to people to encourage them to shop around for health care and try to manage the costs?
