Unhealthy health care

11-2-09 naive brain
Two Sundays ago, 60 Minutes TV show had an eye-opening report of Medicare fraud. I had no idea it was this prevalent and insidious. The story featured was not about greedy or corrupt doctors or insurance companies filing claims, but fake medical businesses which were created specifically to scam the system.

Last week I also had my eyes open when I listened to the NPR program “This American Life” and their easy to understand programs which covered the history of the insurance and health industries. They took specific stories about people to illustrate how the whole system works, or often the case does not work well.

Part I : (10-9-09) The two things that stick in my mind was how fast the cost of health care has increase over the last few years and at the current rate of growth health care will take up 50% of household income. The first part looks at “who is to blame” and of course the conclusion is everyone is to blame; the patients, the doctors, the drug companies, the insurance company….. The hopeful part was that probably for the first time in history, all the players: doctors, drug companies, insurance companies, and patients realize that this current system can’t continue. It is broken.

Part II: (10-16-09)I found this part to be the most interesting with stories of how drugs companies offer saving to patients, which actually cost the insurance companies more money, thus they have to raise the premiums. Also there was a fascinating comparison with our health care to the growing industry of animal health care. So far our pet dogs and cats fair better than we do.

Listen and be educated as well as entertained! Just click on the highlighted links.