Heathcare and the High Cost of Perfection

Many say that we Americans have the best healthcare in the world. Certainly, hundreds of wealthy non-Americans travel here to get the care they couldn't get in their own countries like Canada and Britain that have socialized medical care systems. At the same time, our healthcare is admittedly the most expensive in the world.

Years ago, I attended a company-sponsored seminar on the concept of quality. The primary thing that I took away from that seminar was that, with every increased level of perfection, costs will go up dramatically. In other words, to build the absolutely perfect anything, the cost would be so high that only the richest in our society could afford to buy it. The other thing that I took from that seminar was that true quality is matching people's expectations of a product's performance and not trying to exceed that expectation.

In large part, our healthcare system is being forced by constant litigation to meet perfection; and, with that perfection, comes a very high cost. For this, I blame the medical malpractice lawyers. A doctor, hospital, medical or drug company may have saved thousands of lives without a hitch. But if they injure or kill a single person, the cost of that one mistake can be extremely significant. Lawyers don't care about how many times you get it right. When they are in the process of suing a doctor or a hospital, they only look for the missteps or the imperfections that occurred in the treatment of a patient. Then, they magnify any imperfection to make a jury believe that the doctor or hospital was totally negligent. The result could be damages that are awarded in the millions of dollars.

As a result, all doctors, hospitals and all medical related corporations have been "conditioned" by our legal system towards perfection. Costs are rising faster than inflation because nobody in the industry wants to be wrong or make a mistake that could injure or kill someone and suffer the high costs of being sued. Also, the rates for malpractice insurance, especially in some specialties like OB/GYN, are rising twice as fast as the overall healthcare costs in America; which might give you a hint as to where the true high cost of healthcare lies . No longer is a simple sore throat a simple sore throat. The doctor, as a result of widespread litigation, must now look at every patient as possibly having the widest ranges of illnesses when he/she walks into their office; even including the rarest of diseases. To insure that the doctor doesn't screw up by missing something, they will, at the very least, order up a wide range of expensive diagnostic tests. Those tests may even include extremely expensive MRI's or CAT scans. Further, he or she will probably refer their patient to a specialist to make sure they aren't missing something else and, in effect, give that patient a second opinion that they never asked for. In essence, the doctor has developed a "CYA" mentality; and, with this, costs are skyrocketing.

The same applies to drug companies. When a lawyer sues a drug company or medical equipment manufacturer, they come after the company as if they expected that company to have tested for every conceivable human variance and/or combinations of human conditions before a drug or piece of medical equipment was put on the market. But, those companies can't do that because it would be just too costly for them to develop a supposedly perfect and totally safe drug or piece of equipment. In reality, the lawyers know this and take full advantage of this limitation. So, whenever a drug company decides to manufacture and sell a product, they do cost/benefit analysis and, as a result, they price in any anticipated law suits. That's why new, lifesaving drugs are so extremely expensive. Sometimes the drugs that could save many lives never come to market because the market is too small and the risk of lawsuits are too high and the product can't be priced low enough to make it marketable. When that happens, the sick and dying with rare diseases are the ultimate losers.

Obama's healthcare program completely ignores the primary driver for high healthcare costs in this country - those lawsuits that are forcing medical perfection. Instead, he appears to be going the route of withholding expensive forms of medical care in order to avoid high costs. All indications are that the Federal Government will ultimately play God and decide what care Americans are able to get; especially for the elderly. Remember, it is the elderly who cost the government the most amount of money because they are the ones receiving social security, prescription drug coverage, and Medicare assistance. That means that some people will unnecessarily die when they didn't have to because the government might view them as a financial liability.

Obama, as a lawyer himself, doesn't want to upset all those lawyers who helped get him into office. Don't forget, we have half of the world's attorneys with only 5 percent of the world's population. Most of those lawyers probably voted for Obama and contributed to his Presidential campaign. Their intention in doing so was to absolutely insure that they could happily litigate over medical malpractice and continue to reap very high settlements and, subsequently, their high and getting higher incomes; settlements that are now doubling in the amount of damages at a rate of every 5 to 7 years.

For years, the Republicans have been trying to effect tort reforms to try and stall the rising costs of healthcare. But, at every turn, the Democrats and their cozy relationship with the lawyers in this country have blocked every attempt. Now, again, with Obama in charge and with complete control over Congress, we will be instituting a government healthcare system in America that protects the lawyers and limits that amount of care that we can get; especially in our later years.