Thursday, June 25, 2009

Healthcare and Vaporware

I watched the ABC News “Prescription for American Health Care” yesterday and was reminded of a term we used in the computer software business; “vaporware” was software that was promised or advertised but which never actually existed.

The President was far more oblique, slippery and just plain dishonest in selling his “health care reform” than he ever was on the campaign trail. In the latter case he was selling a really good product, himself, but now he is trying to sell vaporware. He is trying to sell a package that consists of nothing more than tinkering with and expanding the existing system as if it was “fundamental reform.” In the process he is having to dodge questions, claim that things will happen that won’t happen, and just plain lie.

He used the Mayo Clinic to illustrate cost containment, for God’s sake. Now, the Mayo found my health problems when other medical systems could not four years or so ago, and I am grateful to them for that. They are an incredibly fine medical center and I admire not only their medical service but the manner in which they provide it. Every procedure they billed me for, however, was tagged by my insurance for me to pay about 40% of the billed amount as being “above reasonable and customary,” so I have trouble seeing them as a model for cost containment.

The President of the AMA asked him how he could assure that a person’s treatment was going to be dictated by the person's doctor and not by some government bureaucracy, and the President went into his five-minute speech about “If you like the plan you have you will be able to keep it...” Obama not only wasn't in the ballpark of answering the question, he didn’t even enter the city in which the ballpark is located.

Asked about the $1 trillion+ cost, he referred to “up front costs” and talked about offsetting it with savings that “may be realized” from various things. When a former Medicare Director asked what he could offer “that the CBO would count” he put on his short skirt, picked up his pom poms and went into a cheerleading routine about how "America always meets challenges."

Indeed we do, but getting a grip on vapor transcends mere “challenge.”

2 comments:

  1. bruce3:35 PM

    for dog & pony show, he didn't even have that... shoulda had Bo in there (to go with the horsesh**t)

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  2. Anonymous11:40 PM

    I'm not sure I understand. You compare the cost of the one organization that was actually able to fix your problem with however many that weren't and declare that the one that was able to do the job was too expensive? Sounds like a variation on the old joke about the keys and the light - "If Mayo can make you well and all the others can't, why don't you go to Mayo?" "They cost more."

    Cost containment is about minimizing the cost for doing the job right - not about minimizing the cost of failure!

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