More on Health Care

If there's any crisis in health care, it's one caused by a cartel-like health insurance system and a legal liability climate that is driving good physiscians, particularly much-needed specialists, out of the practice of medicine. This article from the East Valley Tribune (AZ) this weekend illustrates what happens when insurance companies fix reimbursement rates below what it actually costs to provide care, hopsitals must treat patients without regard to ability to pay and lawyers are waiting to cash in on by portraying every bad outcome as being due to malpractice.

".....hospitals are at the mercy of specialists, who have been fleeing emergency departments because of burnout, financial pressure, legal liability or all three.

Shortages are most acute among neurosurgery, behavioral health, hand surgery, urology, orthopedics, gastroenterology and otolaryngology (ear, nose and throat).

Though the problem is nationwide, it’s become particularly acute in the fast-growing Valley, where physicians say their colleagues fear managed care and malpractice suits."

This is not something that a single-payer, government run health care bureaucracy is going to fix. No, that would make it even worse.