Our healthcare system is going to see a change – more sooner than later. How that is going to look is going to depend more on what the Legislature looks like.

Let’s make the assumption that we have an Universal Healthcare of sorts. No matter how much money is infused into this system, care must be taken to ensure some form of equity. Which means certain patients are not going to get the care or procedures that a physician deems fit to prolong life. That is just the way things are going to be.  So maybe octagenarians are not going to get the Redo-CABG or double valve or maybe the the patient who came into the ER after a motor vehicle accident with a systolic pressure of 60 and a pH on arterial bloood gas of 6.75 will not be rushed to the operating room. In the above examples, the prognoses do not support the use of the available resources.

My point is, even though people are lamenting the present state of our healthcare system, the alternative may have it’s own impediments to optimal care of the sick. A centralized form of healthcare is going to have a control system. We think the HMOs are bad now. Wait till you have to call Washington DC to approve a procedure!

jnkdg

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 18th, 2007 at 11:23 pm and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.