Health care costs out of control: Solution 3: Don't rush

In the rush to get a health care bill into law, a single amendment to it by Senator Debbie Stabenow was passed by a voice vote. Then later the Only after the amendment passed did the Congressional Budget Office realize it made a mistake in the scoring and under counted the one amendment to the tune of $600 million.

Quoting from the above link "It took Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) to point it out. And now he is offering an amendment of his own to make sure this does not happen again." Basically he suggested congress couldn't vote on something until it had been publicly available for a certain amount of time. His amendment was defeated. Where is the transparency at that the leaders claim this health care reform will have, if no one can look at the proposed law?

Even more telling, is that senators are willing to force Medicaid on those who can't afford it, but are unwilling to accept the same coverage themselves if this bill passes! The New York Times details this unwillingness to be subject to themselves, what they think is good for all us.

Health care costs out of control: Solution 2: Be informed

Read both sides of the issue.

Senator John Cornyn asks some good questions in this commentary on Forbes.com. He mentions everyday Americans are reading the proposed bill H.R. 3200 (text) (PDF), so hey, before I make brash statements about what it will or won't do, I have some light reading to do.

And for a good book on President Obama's health care reform, check out the book Howard Dean's Prescription for Real Healthcare Reform (and glance at my review). I learned a lot about some of the advantages of the proposed reform.

Update: Here's a good starting place to look at the most recent proposals of the Senate version, at a Wall Street Journal blog on health care. 564 amendments to it already! Who could possibly keep up with all this? And what is scary is that this bill will be a long-term change to everything; good or bad; so I think that we need to put more thought into fixing something that took 40 years to go bad, and not try to fix it in 40 days.

The economy is currently far too fragile to risk something this big and costly.

Health care costs out of control: Solution 1

Wash your hands. And ensure your health-care professionals do too.

One of the most dreaded and dangerous staph infection is Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or MRSA. It is difficult to kill this bacteria, and infections can be deadly. And often it is transmitted by health care workers who don't wash their hands between patients.

Treating such infections is extremely costly; often requiring a return hospital visit. A recent study showed a 50% drop in the number of cases of MRSA simply by having what amounts to "hand-washing cops" reminding any staff members of the rules to wash their hands if they were seen leaving a patient room without washing their hands. Compliance rates went up from 50% to 90%.