The Health Care Blog: Op-Ed: Health Care Re-invention and Personal Responsibility More Critical to Reform than Government Intervention

By DR. STEPHEN KARDOS President Obama should be commended for addressing the challenge that’s facing our nation’s health care system. While Democrats and Republicans agree that the health system is broken (since 1975, per person annual health spending has grown 2.1 percent faster than overall economic growth per person¹), there is no clear agreement on the next steps that need to be taken to fix the problem. President Obama has offered the idea of implementing a national health care plan; however, in its current iteration, his plan doesn’t address what’s broken with the system. Instead of flooding the system with 46 million more insured persons and spending $1.2 trillion over the decade, Obama should look to the hard evidence that indicates a third of all health dollars currently spent each year (more than $750 billion) are wasted. That lump sum should be brought back into the system to care for the uninsured and reduce the national deficit at the same time. Continue Reading: The Health Care Blog: Op-Ed: Health Care Re-invention and Personal Responsibility More Critical to Reform than Government Intervention