Do any of the health plans address this problem:

[hedgehog]

Hospitals and I think doctors get paid by diagnosis and treatment rather than by outcome. So for example, a doctor has an incentive to so a fast C-section and get paid more for doing surgery than for monitoring and assisting a 16 hour labor. I won't say any doctor chooses the C-section because he's greedy, but doctors are human. At the same time, the hospital gets paid for 48 hours of care after delivery. I got to tell you, after delivering some of my babies, I could have hopped off the table and walked home with the kid. After others, I really needed a good week of rest to recover. The same thing happens whenever people go in for surgery or treatment of an illness.

A related problem is that the GP who takes the time to spot and treat your chronic illness gets paid at a lower rate than a surgeon. So the fellow that watches your blood pressure and gets you to stop smoking and prescribes the medication to get your cholesterol down so you don't have a hear attack at 50 gets paid less than the surgeon who does the by-pass. As a result, we have too many surgeons and not enough GPs. Does that make sense?

[defendandprotect]

1. Our health care system is upside down since women were shoved out and

medical practice was put into the hands of males ---

I think a national health care system --- single payer --- would not do that directly but hopefully
would eventually have that result.

If we all understood that cancer costs us $ --- then we would have been trying to get tobacco/cigs
banned long ago---

Same way with guns --- they cost us a lot of $$$

Same thing with economic programs which cause poverty --- they create crime --- which costs $$$

Right now we're treating canceer with slash and burn responses ---
There is some opinion that we have no better a record at saving cancer victims now than we did in
the 1930's . . . and we're creating new cancer victims at an astonishing rate!!!

Child birth is also upside down ---
healthier and more intelligent children result from breast feeding ---
Many women can do it so well that they can provide milk for mother's who can't ---

We should return to midwives and home births ---

Too much surgery --- and a lot of brainwashing of young females re convenience and scheduling
deliveries -- !!!

Much of childbirth/labor is fear based ---

[hedgehog]

2. It's tough to breast feed for 6 months when the typical mother is

back to work full time in 6 weeks!



Hmmm.... I wonder if the epidemic in childhood obesity has anything to do with small infants being fed formula by caretakers?

If that speculation doesn't light off a flame fest, nothing will!

[Cleita]

3. This is what free market medicine gets you.

The procedure that makes the most money wins at the expense of the right treatment. I remember back when every middle class kid, whose parents could afford it, got a tonsillectomy and every woman after having a few babies who got a hysterectomy, if her husband could afford it, if they developed a female problem. Most of the time neither of these procedures were necessary. Yet the poor mothers kept having kids and those kids got practically no medical care, because who cared about them who couldn't pay?