Book Recommendation: "Why Health Care Costs So Much: The Solution- Consumers"

by Evan Madianos, MD

"Why Health Care Costs So Much: The Solution- Consumers" by Dave Racer & Greg
Dattilo

http://www.alethospress.com/howmuch.htm

is easy-to-read, common sense consumer guide that brings order to the chaos of
the US health care system and what is wrong with the way we purchase health care
goods and services in the US.

This short booklet brings into perspective the issue of why health care costs so
much - and is rising rapidly. It is chock full of simple, common-sense,
easy-to-understand analogies and examples. The analogies are somewhat comedic at
times and make the complicated and arcane details of the US health care delivery
system accessible to a normal patient of average intelligence.

It is written at a level and in such a way that any intellectually honest and
curious person armed only with common sense and a high school education- could
easily understand the application of the concepts to their life and how they
_personally_ need to change the way they think about health care services and
behavior in the medical marketplace in order to fix the problems that government
has created.

I highly recommend it as "required reading" for any doctor or patient who is
seriously interested in looking past the partisan rhetoric of ideologues looking
to push "pie-in-the-sky" solutions and are looking for a first- hand
understanding of the actual cost-drivers behind sky-rocketing health care
utilization and expenditures in the US.

I have found that even those who are mildly supportive or "on-the-fence" about
government solutions to the crisis of health care costs have agreed that the
book accurately depicts the prevailing financially unsound and economically
unsustainable attitudes and economic behavior of health care consumers and
providers alike which are at the root of rising health care costs.

The booklet gives great practical advice on what every individual patient can do
to change the health care purchasing attitudes and behavior- before government
takes their health care choices and money right out of their hands and pocket."

A couple excerpts are online here:

Chapter 5: PREPAID HEALTH CARE:
"How today's health care is like a dinner buffet"

http://www.alethospress.com/images/CHAP5%20EX.pdf

and here:

Chapter 6 HOW TO BE A HEALTH CARE CONSUMER
"How much for that Stress Test? "

http://www.alethospress.com/images/CHAP6%20EX.pdf

The booklet's bottom-line: Consumers and providers alike change their attitudes,
perceptions and purchasing / consuming behavior in predictable and unhealthy
ways when they are buying a good or service- any good or service- whether a
vital need or a luxury item- with other people's money (OPM).

Furthermore, it doesn't actually matter whether it is OPM obtained through the
government directly, or OPM collected and re-distributed by a private or
quasi-governmental 3rd party payer corporate entity guaranteeing "unlimited
expensive high-tech services for all, for the same initially-
fixed-and-ever-rising price".

The unrestricted demand for expensive services which are misperceived as "free"
or "cheap" by the health care consumer paying only a small fractional "co-pay"
for the service causes health care providers to ramp up their production of the
expensive high tech services the consumers demand, since the consumer demands it
and the providers gets paid for it regardless of the actual total price.

The unavoidable end-result, if the irrational attitudes and behavior are left
unchallenged and unchanged, is continually sky-rocketing, wasteful health care
expenditures, and matching increases in health care premiums which threaten to
break employer, family and state budgets, and restricted choices of lower cost
and quality services, until government finally steps in to regulate price,
quality, availability, access, for all – to the detriment of health care
quality, availability, and choice - and doctors and patients alike.

I'd like to add that this same exact economic phenomenon is described in great
detail utilizing a "right to hair cuts/ hair care" as a government- guaranteed
service- with the same predictable outcome. This analogy is included in a
lecture entitled "Health Care is Not a Right" written in 1994, at the time of
the failed Clinton health care grab.

The whole article is available online in written form here:
http://www.westandfirm.org/Peikoff-01.html

and in online streaming video form here:
http://www.afcm.org