Obama's Preventativa Care

[hagendaz]

I would not argue that preventative care doesn't make sense on a personal level for an increased quality of life, but as a means of reducing healthcare costs ala Obamacare, it makes no sense....unless.... the plan is to postpone serious illness in people until they are old enough to be only deemed worthly of recieving Obama's Pain Killer Therapy... Otherwise, from a financial point of view, preventative care is only postponing the inevitable. We can't prevent what ever terminal sickness or disease we will each eventually contract, assuming you don't get hit by a bus first, we can only postpone it and we can only postpone the cost of dealing with it. In fact, if his preventative care did work as advertised, isn't is safe to then assume that people will be living longer and drawing social security and using Medicare and other benefits for years beyond what they would have been, thus increasing the cost to government in these and other areas. With all this preventative healthcare going on, aren't we each going to be healthier when we finally do get a terminal sickness, and won't that increased health make the final end of life battle in fact last longer and cost more...

[wastoute]

Preventive Care has never been shown to cost less. That was the argument of the HMOs, that they would ultimately save money by "preventive care". Where are they now? Gone. History. Toast.

The VA did a study twenty years ago comparing costs of preventive care and the "standard medical model" (see a Doc when you are sick, get treated for that illness). Preventive care cost much more.

One CAN make an argument for better quality of life or even prolonged life and probably both but not cost. We are not having the discussion we should be. I suppose at a time when gummint is spending astronomical figures on ACORN and every other libtard wet dream we should be trying to contain costs of some things but if we are true to our Founder's principles and belief in the free market we should be talking about creating more pies, not trying to bicker over who gets ever smaller pieces of pies no one is producing.

No one in Medicine is even trying to make the argument that we provide a service that works. People want it. We can make folks' lives better, last longer, and be freer from suffering. If Cadillac could put that in a car GM wouldn't be bankrupt. If our technology is expensive and modern medicine costs more I would think at this level it would be expected. My first Texas Instruments calculater cost 100 bucks in 1970 and all it would do was square roots. I can buy a phone for that now that will also take pictures and do calculus.

If modern medicine has grown in cost and consumes 16% of GDP is something wrong with medicine or the rest of the economy? I would sumbit that Medicine is one of the few things we have done RIGHT in the last 30 years. At least in terms of producing a product that works, that folks want, are willing to pay for. It is the REST of the economy that has failed IMHO. Like Reynauldus Magnus said, "If it works liberals will tax it until it doesn't, if it keeps working regulate it, and if it stops working subsidize it." (Apologies, paraphrased.) What we need is to get the gummint the hell out of the economy and let the market heal our nation from the damage done by 100 years of "progressives".

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