Health financing = f (financial markets)

Post revised 09/22

Quote of the day:
Where humor is concerned there are no standards - no one can say what is good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will. - John Kenneth Galbraith

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While health care issues are still important, this week's pop quiz has switched to fundamental finance market dysfunction and chaos.  Sound familar?  We in medicine do not have a monopoly on that.  The diagram above relates the increasing mortgage foreclosure rate and the lower red line the decrease in the mortgage financial index.....We could equate this graphic display  to increasing health care utilization vs decreasing reimbursement.  Perhaps some of these financial wizards and tycoons will be applying to medical school as a second career, and we can take over their positions.

The new links over there on the left side will take you to a number of podcasts. 

Universal Payor continues to be promoted by the Obama camp.

My previous post was relatively benign in regard to "nationalizing" our health care financing. However, as the crisis in the 'financial markets' continues to deepen, and our "financial experts"  juggle to make sense of and correct for man's greed, this is a lesson in what not to do. 

Perhaps on the one hand the size of the federal government, and it's ability to print money a la carte gives reassurance to some.

The "Federal government is....large, burdensome, and once set in motion has great inertia and is difficult to steer, or stop. In fact Treasure Secretary Paulson stated that the "Fed" had failed  to adapt to the new global economy and the regulatory mechanism was obsolete.

There are eighty boxes in the organizational chart of the Treasury Department.

Universal payor also embellishes the same risks. A great deal of power in one place, unable to adjust to changing markets, or technology. One of the reasons the United States still fundamentally has the best health science is because of it's entrepenurial bent. The best science and translational science is not the same as the best healthcare.......to be continued