Health Care Questions For Debate

 I received an email this morning (from WebMD) asking for health care questions to be posed during the October 7 presidential debate. WebMD has been working with the Commission on Presidential Debates to gather questions. They have an area for submissions on their site (in blog format) and many interesting questions have already been put forward.

Here are a couple that I plan to add:

---

First, this great quotation (which I've used before):

“The market functions wonderfully when we want to sell more cereals, cosmetics, cars, computers, or any other consumer product. Unfortunately, it does not work in health care, where the goal should hardly be selling more heart bypass operations. Instead, the goal should be to prevent disease and illness. But the money is in the treatment – not prevention – so the market and good care are at odds.”

- Donald L. Bartlett and James B. Steele

I would extend that by saying drugs that combat symptoms on a recurring basis bring in money on a recurring basis while those that cure a condition outright simply do not. Now, if you, as a businessman, are going to invest your own cash, which drugs do you invest in? The answer is obvious and as such, so is the problem.

I would like to hear both candidates address this issue...

---

Let's talk about health insurance, the lack of which has been a major topic of late. We have a situation where many of us cannot afford insurance. Why? The insurance is too expensive. Why is the insurance so expensive? To pay for the spiraling cost of the care.
Now, if you have a bunch of people who can't afford insurance. Well, how do you go about making it affordable? You will need to lower the price, at least in some segments of the population. If you lower the price, the insurance companies will then have less money to pay for the care, at which point there is not much incentive to be in the insurance business. When this issue is clouded further by doctors who need to protect themselves from lawsuits and the grossly high price of pharmaceuticals, the problem seems almost unmanageable.

My question here is simply how or where do we begin to address this, especially in the wake of this economic meltdown? (for either or both candidates)

---

If you have your own questions you can visit WebMD and add them to their list. (or you can simply leave them here and I'll do it for you :-)

Comments

[Matt Urdan]

Great questions, Jeff, but they won't get asked. No politician, except maybe Hillary Clinton, understands enough about health care to get into specifics and talk about details.

We'll hear a lot about insurance, and single payer systems, and reducing costs; but we won't hear anything about the quality of care and providing care and treatment and prevention. We'll hear a lot about subsidies. We'll hear a lot about free market systems. But no one will address lawsuits and malpractice insurance.

But both will talk in circles about what their plan will do and why it is better than what we have now and why it is better than his opponent's plan. You watch and tell me I didn't tell you so. With Obama it's politics as usual. With McCain, well, I'll be surprised if the "reformer" has any ideas on how to reform the system at all.