Some Really Mythed Off People

The American Medical News recently put out a piece going over the myths of healthcare reform. In it they allow the Association of Bioethics Program Directors to make their case. Here are those myths:

1. Myth No. 1, the group said, is that reform would mean that patients would surrender control of their health care decisions.


2. Myth No. 2 is that reform would control costs by depriving patients of useful but costly interventions.


3. As myth No. 3, the group listed the notion that "health care reform will deny older Americans medical treatments at the end of life."

Now that this is settled, let me tell you what really goes on in the trenches. What I have found is that if patients are responsible for ANY part of the bill then they will change their decision making process. In other words, let's say you had a 78 year-old female (and her family) who demanded an MRI for her back pain. If you told them that the diagnosis is most probably spinal stenosis and that an MRI might not change management of her problem due to her frailty, she and her family would still want that procedure UNLESS she (and maybe they) had to pay part of that bill. This is a reality I see already. So, in a sense, laying some financial responsibility on the patient, to some extent, will:

1. Make them surrender control of their health care decisions.


2. Control cost by depriving patients of interventions.


3. Deny older Americans medical treatments at the end of life.

I am not saying this is right or wrong. It just is what it is. But maybe, just maybe, it would lead to less MRIs which would bring their cost down? And isn't that what we all want?