Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple and a flaming liberal (one can assume evidenced by his fawning over Obama via his web site after the election) elected to have his liver transplant performed by a super-specialist surgeon in Tennessee. Job lives near Apple headquarters in Silicon Valley California.
“It’s not gaming the system,” [Jobs’ surgeon, Dr. James Eason] said in the Aug. 18 interview in Memphis. “It’s people choosing where they want their health care. Some people would leave Tennessee to go to California or somewhere else to seek treatment. Now we have people coming from California to Tennessee.”
I am not asserting that Obamacare would force someone like Jobs to seek care within the confines of California, or given his resources, even within the US. The fact that average Americans don’t know what choices they would have or would lose is probably what has derailed Obama’s momentum.
President Obama took his health care message to talk radio Thursday, telling listeners of Philadelphia-based host Michael Smerconish that he wants to overhaul the nation’s ailing health care system out of necessity rather than politics.
That’s a hard argument to make, at least to an informed audience, when Obamacare lacks tort reform. Malpractice litigation represents a large portion of the system’s cost structure and weighs heavily on health care provider decision-making when potentially being sued has to be constantly considered.
…but America isn’t buying it from a President and a Congress that will never be subject to the product of this “necessary” reform. They and their families will retain their private-jet health care.
America has witnessed a government that can’t administer an ill-advised yet simple rebate system for a narrow field of automotive sales transactions and yet aspires to manage the vast and varied intricacies of America’s health care complex.
The public trust of the Obama administration is fast eroding in the wake of White House confirmination that taxpayer dollars were spent on a spam campaign to promote reform most Americans are now resisting.
Liberal elites like Steve Jobs might also consider the fact that Jobs’ liver transplant, an unorthodox treatment of a rare cancer, while leaving 70% of patients healthy after one year, would most surely not be covered by Obamacare.
“It would not be considered the standard of care,” he said July 2 in a telephone interview. “It’s not something that would routinely be done nor is it proven to be a beneficial treatment, but it has nevertheless been tried and I’m sure in some cases been successful.”
However, experimental treatments, even if initially funded by the desperate-but-wealthy, tend to trickle down to the little people eventually once they are found to be beneficial – then widespread adoption drives down costs.
Moreover, at least in the case of Dr. Eason, government hasn’t forced him to care for those that can’t pay or represent a minority. He’s already doing it by his own volition.
While patients of Jobs’s stature are welcome, they aren’t regarded differently than anyone else, Eason said.
“Memphis is a very impoverished city in and of itself, with a large minority population,” he said. “I can tell you our floors aren’t full of billionaires.”
Eason said he’s aiming for better access to transplantation for the region’s poor, black and Hispanic populations.
One has to wonder if Jobs own personal experience might also give him cause for pause for Obama and his policies.
It won’t be long til we are going to India for operations.
With organs made in China.
Tort reform is often brought up as the deal breaker in this struggle. I may have missed it, but I have not yet seen anyone put some real numbers to that “large portion” issue.
What percentage of my current health care bills go to pay for lawsuits? What will tort reform actually DO to the cost of health care?
Steve Jobs, like the sheiks who fly into Rochester, don’t need insurance. They can take advantage of our excellent health care on their own. As such, using them to make any sort of argument about our health care “system” is bogus.
I’m not sure what the actual exact numbers are; in terms of actual settlements, it’s a lot of money; in terms of medicine practiced to prevent suits, and in the immense malpractice premiums doctors now have to carry, it’s a lot more.
Tort reform is no panacaea, and I do want to keep litigation open for redress of genuine grievances. But perhaps a “loser pay” system would help.
Steve Jobs, like the sheiks who fly into Rochester, don’t need insurance. They can take advantage of our excellent health care on their own. As such, using them to make any sort of argument about our health care “system” is bogus.
True enough. But Obama’s health care “reform” isn’t about them either.
Maybe my title should have been “Anyone But Steve Jobs…”
Ask any OB-GYN why its so hard to find more doctors that want to continue to deliver babies.
Ask any practicing doctor of any specialty how much they pay in malpractice insurance.
…then ask them why it’s so much.
If Obama really wants to fix what’s actually wrong with health care the discussion would have a much broader scope than solely forming a public “option.”
It would include the unwinding of the third part payor system and tort reform.
“Ask any OB-GYN why its so hard to find more doctors that want to continue to deliver babies.
Ask any practicing doctor of any specialty how much they pay in malpractice insurance.”
What I asked was how the costs of lawsuits are reflected in the cost of my health care, not what a doctor or other practitioner, who seems to be at the bottom of the current healthcare system food chain, thinks about his/her insurance or the state of the industry. I’ll bet they don’t have much of an idea either how such costs actually translate into a medical bill.
Mitch correctly notes that the costs of settlements are a factor as well as the costs of “routine” tests, etc. performed to cover the a**es of the practitioners. I don’t argue that. I just believe that people who make the assertion that these factors are the major (and apparently only) item that needs to be fixed ought to offer some numbers to back up their assertions.
Leslie
if your Malpractice costs you $50k(low – some specialties are closer to $250k) a year thats $24.00 an hour you are paying your doctor to protect him from frivolous lawsuits, then add to that the insurance his clinic or hospital has to pay, the insurance the Labs have to pay and you very rapidly have a Office Visit that costs $340. Next include the lawsuits the insurance companies are constantly deluged with, the majority are without merit but as Mitch pointed out the settlement rate is where all the damage is done. Prep alone for a PI lawsuit will usually run in excess of $50k with trial costs exceeding $100k so its cost effective from the insurance company point of view to pay the plaintiff attorneys $30k to “go away”. This adds up after a while and is directly reflected in the premiums you pay, the premiums the doctors pay, the premiums the clinics pay, and the premiums the hospitals pay.
To the point these aren’t trivial marginal costs ($0.30 here, $0.79 there) they comprise the majority cost of any billable item in the health care delivery stream.
Stephen Hawking thinks you have your head up your ass, LaRoosh.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/aug/12/birthers-stephen-hawking-paul-rowen
“I just believe that people who make the assertion that these factors are the major (and apparently only) item that needs to be fixed ought to offer some numbers to back up their assertions.”
Wingnuts aren’t big on “numbers” and “facts,” Leslie Hitler. It feels truthy to them, so they go with it.