Iowa Geek: More on healthcare

As a follow up from my earlier healthcare post I have been searching for input from others in the field. Here are some things to think about:

Bob Coli, MD goes thru examples of how the medical lawsuit lottery encourages lawyers to sue.
Lorie Byrd shares her story of having to get another part time job to cover medical expenses. Be sure to read the comments as there is a lot of good information there.
Clayton Cramer talking about the uninsured

Health care reform isn't going to be pretty. There are a lot of people with a vested interest in the status quo and no matter what you do it's going to piss off somebody. I still say that we need to let the free-market work in health care by getting rid of most of the frivolous regulations. We need to make it harder for class action lawsuits with lottery type payoffs, and, to steal from Dr. Coli above, make the losers in a lawsuit pay court costs. I also think that stopping lawyers from taking a portion of the award would be helpful. There isn't a single answer and we may have to use the trial and error method until we get something that works for both the physicians and the patients.

Lastly, I think this needs to be a personal responsibility. Make it a personal exemption, not a corporate one. This will encourage people to care about what goes on instead of going to the first clinic they see with the smallest of problems that should be handled over-the-counter.

UPDATE: The Washington Times has an argument against a single-payor or nationalized system. It compares the Canadian and British model to the US. The US model comes out ahead in patient satisfaction and patient outcomes because of the immediacy of care. "And it's not just patients who are poorly served by Canada's flawed system of care. As the Canadian Institute for Health Information has noted, many Canadian physicians are leaving for the United States, fed up with rationing and inflexible government controls."

KRUGMAN CHIMES IN: And the Liberty Corner takes him out