…but it may be able to save us from it:
Over time, I think we’ll see a lot more intelligence moving into medical devices covering a wide range of subjects. (And, in some cases, it may do the job better than a human doctor: When my wife had a heart attack at the age of 37, the EKG machine at the hospital flagged her reading as indicating a possible myocardial infarction, but the doctors dismissed that because she was a young, thin, athletic woman. The machine was right, and they were wrong.)
While we’re a long way from the “autodocs” featured in some science fiction stories, the proliferation of devices that can do extensive blood tests and diagnostic workups doesn’t seem that far away. Neither does the creation of freestanding gadgets that can diagnose things such as strep throat and other staples of doc-in-a-box or nurse-in-a-box practices now.
While such devices will be expensive at first, they’re likely to get steadily cheaper and more capable because, as electronic gadgets, they’ll benefit from Moore’s Law, the steady increase in computing power.
But only if we don’t tax them out of existence, or punish those developing them.
Competition and innovation, plus a healthy dose of tort reform and insurance reform (such as getting rid of employer-provided plans) can indeed fix the underlying problem with US healthcare; the fact that we get less of it per dollar spent than in other countries.
This way to fix it isn’t theory, it’s already happened. There’s one segment of the medical industry where competition and innovation are greater than the rest, and insurance plays little to no role. That’s in the elective surgery field, such as cosmetic surgery and laser eye surgery for eyesight correction (Lasik, for example). Compare the price of Lasik now to a decade ago. It’s gone down. Same with facelifts. The reason is that market forces are at work in this part of the system, because insurance, especially full coverage insurance, plays little to no role, and there’s no government program muddying the water.
So, this one part of the US medical system has seen costs decrease. There’s a reason for that, and that reason is the answer we need to get better healthcare. Getting the government more involved ala the fiasco of Obamacare, will merely make it worse. (as it’s already doing, and it’ll just get worse)
In Canada, dentistry and optometry are not covered under the government health care system. The market forces you speak of are definitely at work. Somehow, glasses and braces aren’t a rarity up here.
However, glasses seem significantly more expensive than they are in the UK (where they’re also generally not covered by the NHS). Over here, most people have some kind of optical insurance that pays a couple of hundred dollars towards a pair of glasses, and, in the UK, they don’t. Oddly enough, that couple of hundred dollars seems a typical price difference between Canadian glasses and UK glasses.
As is so often the case, insurance just makes things more expensive.
Yup.
I don’t think you have to be Libertarian to be a good engineer, but I think you have to be sympathetic to political Conservatism.
Think of it. Scientists can be Lefties because if you are smart enough, science can explain everything, right? If you can explain everything, you can understand everything, and you can control everything, so government is a Good Thing, and it is wrong not to apply government to solving social concerns. It is just like standing there and watching someone die when there is a known, effective medical procedure to effect a cure.
Engineering is about building things where there is only a partial understanding. You study the science of stress and strain, but there remains uncertainty, so you build the bridge anyway, using engineering best practices of “factors of safety” along with not making the design too different from designs that work. Sound familiar? Sound familiar in how such engineering principles are not getting applied?
It is not as if Conservatives cannot goof up — Iraq, Katrina — though there is some question as to whether the folks behind Iraq were true Scotsmen, er, Conservatives. But this goof up is a plausible consequence of not being a Conservative. Or a good engineer of anything. This health plan can work, hence it shall work, hence it must work? Isn’t that what the President just said in his Rose Garden speech?
No one is angrier about the problem than the President. But being angry about something doesn’t solve engineering problems, that is, making something work in the face of a great deal of uncertainty. Especially since it was your policy, your plan, your platform to eschew Conservatism that certain things stand a likelihood of not working just on human nature applied to a plan like that.
But it must work, so if it doesn’t work, it is because “there are those who wish it not to work” and are hence jinxing it?
No one is angrier about the problem than the President
Why do you say that?
There is no evidence that he’s angry at all, other than his statement that he was in his Rose Garden speech. He didn’t indicate it in his tone, or body language. He certainly hasn’t held anyone accountable, or had them relieved of their duty. He knows that people expect him to be angry, so he goes out and says in a speech that he’s angry.
Big deal.
Oh, with this A-team business, I figure Mr. Obama is a smart man and well-read, but I guess he never read “The Mythical Man Month”? Software engineering is engineering where there are insanely high levels of uncertainty and terrible risks for departing from known solutions and accepted practices.
they will fix it.
they will fix it.
Sure, they will eventually, mostly. Same goes for a number of the deep problems with Obamacare. But will they do so before another major change to the system is introduced?
But my view is that if this sort of approach worked, we wouldn’t have a lot of the problems we have in the first place. People like the Obama administration or Congress are far more likely to create problems than to solve them.
“they will fix it.”
I predict it will be fixed in only the most superficial manner. They love the problems it’s having – Sebelius (and I believe the WH) knew that the web site failed testing, but they released anyway.
Why?
So more government can be created to fix the problems government created.
Notice already how they’ve brought in an “A-team”…it’s grown bigger and more money is being thrown at it already.
You will eventually see the administration blame the still-failing system on greedy fat cat companies and will therefore take over all heath “insurance”.
Single payer – that’s the goal.
I have yet to see any evidence that Obama is intelligent. He may be “book smart” but which books are we talking about, “Rules for Radicals”? Intelligence requires the ability to learn from failure, most importantly the failure of others. Socialism has repeatedly failed yet he keeps acting like that boy who keeps digging in the room full of manure, knowing there must be a pony in there somewhere.
“I figure Mr. Obama is a smart man and well-read…”
Why? It certainly doesn’t show in his behavior.
They love the problems it’s having … So more government can be created to fix the problems government created.
This. LIV’s love the idea that government can fix anything. Even contemplating the idea that the problem wouldn’t exist in the first place without government involvement is beyond them.