Political Reform in Health Care

The basic purpose of any insurance is to provide a safety net incase some unforeseen event occurs in one's life. When insurance works it appropriately, it covers an event that can have a high impact, but has a low probability of occuring. This is where we are going wrong with our thinking of paying for health care.

In today's Washington Post, Steven Pearlstein writes about the democratic strategy for health care reform. He speaks about two of the candidates, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. He contrast Mrs. Clinton's approach of attacking the insurance and pharmaceutical companies for making "unreasonable" profits with Mr. Obama's approach of coming up with a solution that satisfies all constituents. While Mr. Obama's approach sounds nice, he still places much of the blame on the pharmaceutical and insurance companies for profiting from health care.

I think the best approach for any candidate to take is not that there are evil constiuencies out there that are preying on the American people. The American people seem to want to comsume a large amount of health care services, and there is nothing wrong with that. What is wrong is with all the money that we are spending as a nation, up to 15% of GDP, we are one of the least healthy nations in the world. Our inputs are producing very little return on investment.

Return on investment is something that for-profit companies know very well. So instead of placing blame on different parties, maybe we should enlist their expertise and help to find a solution that improves the output of our consumption, better health.

Here is some more coverage of Barack Obama's health care plan.