The Battle in Health Care – Part II: What is the Primary Goal?

So in my last blog I talked a bit about what’s going on around the healthcare industry. There are certainly quite a number of discussions with an equal number of proposed solutions.

But really what is the problem?

So let’s take a step back and understand what the goals should be for any initiatives around the healthcare industry.

From a macro view, the number one goal has to be to make sure everyone has access to good medical care. Personally I think that given the resources we have in the United States, this is an achievable goal.

Now being a pure capitalist, I believe there will be a difference in healthcare among different socio-economic groups and I don’t think that is unjust. Now I know that certain groups of people would debate my last statement and believe that everyone should have equal healthcare. I do believe that there needs a baseline level of quality that is provided to everyone and that baseline quality should be high.

One of the most significant areas that must improvement is preventative medicine. Prevention begins with individuals and their commitment to a healthy lifestyle; however that is certainly an evolutionary process that is difficult to achieve.

The type or preventative medicine that can be much easier to solve are procedures such as bi-annual teeth cleaning, annual checkups and vaccines. I read a study recently that calculated the cost of illnesses that could be prevented by vaccination is over $10 billion per year. Another study showed people who did not have regular teeth cleaning were twice as susceptible to certain diseases.

Another area that needs improvement is ubiquitous accessibility to healthcare. I will discuss this in my next blog entry.

Please feel free to leave comments.