Even
Ponsot, Marie
Even In a sift of ash in Wales, at the bottom of a pit sunk in the crucial chamber of a passage grave, its stones cut & laid up dry 5000 years ago, about, diggers found and anatomists...
...Several studies indicate that U.S...
...And U.S...
...But that still leaves the nonelderly nonpoor population--a huge market pool--unprotected by price controls...
...system cannot be attributed to more frequent use of the system by Americans...
...spending on all health care (not including administrative costs) rose 196 percent between 1980 and 1991, administrative costs rose 350 percent...
...Commonweal | aj April 24, 1998...
...A 1996 issue of the American Journal of Public Health reported that between 1968 and 1993 the number of doctors in the United States rose 77 percent, but that the number of administrators rose 288 percent...
...The appearance of the "HMO backlash" in this country in the last two years suggests that a similar poll taken today would find the United States still in tenth place...
...The HMO bureaucrats who argue with doctors about whether patients can have drug x instead of drug y, or an extra two days in a hospital, cost money...
...Americans are getting kicked out of hospitals sooner, seeing doctors less often, and paying much higher fees and prices...
...policy of letting "competition" between HMOs control health-care inflation would be dubious even if it could be shown that the United States is spending less than other countries...
...The rest of the industrialized world long ago adopted policies based on a very different premise--that health-care inflation is caused primarily by doctors, hospitals, and drug companies that overcharge, and secondarily by excessive volume...
...If I can hear this what may I not hear Sight's the electric hunger, though sensual Blake says hearing's the most intimate appetite...
...I happened to hear of it...
...In short, the savings our HMOdominated system has achieved by reducing the volume of medical services has been offset by ballooning administrative costs...
...focus on restricting volume at the expense of price has been the rapid increase in administrative costs...
...Not surprisingly, the diverging policies of the United States and the rest of the industrialized world have led to vastly different consequences...
...In the United States, Medicare (the nation's program for the elderly) and Medicaid (the nation's program for some of the poor) also utilize price controls...
...A 1990 poll of citizens of ten industrialized nations--conducted jointly by Harvard, Lou Harris, and the Institute for the Future--indicated that Americans were the least satisfied with their health-care system...
...Lost is found...
...administrative costs have soared...
...Kip Sullivan is executive director qf Minnesota COACT (Citizens Or~anized Acting Together), a citizen ~roup working to enact a universal health insurance system and to save the family farmer...
...Yet the high cost of the U.S...
...It is that of a girl 8 to 10 years old, in perfect condition...
...But when evidence indicates that the HMO strategy has failed to control healfla-care spending, has not stemmed the rising tide of the uninsured, and has placed quality in jeopardy, it should be obvious that it is time to change our national policy...
...Despite a slowdown in the growth of physician income, due to pressure by HMOs, American doctors remain far and away the best paid on the planet...
...According to federal government figures, while U.S...
...drug companies charge Americans roughly twice what they charge the rest of the world for some drugs...
...Among the major industrilized G7 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Britain, and the United States), in 1995 the United States had the fewest hospital beds per 1,000 people, the second-lowest proportion of the population admitted to hospitals, and the fastest discharge rate...
...So too do the clerks and nurses hired by doctors and hospitals to haggle with HMOs...
...But the most galling financial consequence of the U.S...
...Bird what do you praise Praise it again among the juniper plumes & silvered-blue juniper berrybeads Your birdpraise rivers the juniper air until I admit the incision of listening, and self rising easily up off the river evaporates altered into its liberty Marie Ponsot by 38 percent in the United States, compared to 32 percent for the other twenty nations that had 1996 expenditures of more than $1,000 per person...
...inflation, in any sector, depends on the behavior of two numbers--voIume of goods or services sold, and price...
...The de facto U.S...
...Even In a sift of ash in Wales, at the bottom of a pit sunk in the crucial chamber of a passage grave, its stones cut & laid up dry 5000 years ago, about, diggers found and anatomists identified a small bone of the inner ear...
...Understandably, Americans are not happy about a system that restricts their choice of doctor, impedes their access to care, and still costs an arm and a leg...
...The rest of the industrialized world long ago adopted policies that impose price controls on providers and, with a few exceptions, on drug companies...
...Salvation...
...Conventional wisdom in America has been that volume, not price, is the primary culprit and that HMOs, which are much better at denying services than traditional indemnity insurers, are the answer to the alleged problem of excessive volume...
Vol. 125 • April 1998 • No. 8
