Saturday, May 24, 2014

Cost IS a part of health care decisions….


Some doctors and medical professionals are acknowledging that consideration of cost must be part of our society’s rational steps to reform health care.


More explicitly, some doctors and medical professionals are starting to talk about bringing cost, effectiveness and benefits into play, from a societal perspective, in making decisions about health care and what should be covered by health insurance.

Look, let’s call it as it is: if you’re Bill Gates, you can afford any medical treatment you can ever want, regardless of cost or benefit calculations.

If you’re not, it’s a different story—if you’re a poor, 102-year-old guy with heart problems, leukemia and advanced renal disease, it makes sense for you to get pain medication, but it really doesn’t make sense for your health insurance to pay for triple bypass heart surgery.


Viz., the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association have announced that they would begin to use cost data to assess treatment guidelines and performance standards.

We have to start talking more candidly about effective health care that we can afford—both costs and benefits—and about a health care system that can be sustained by our society.







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