<p>As the wife of a physician, who is a benefits manager and an MBA who used to work in a hospital, I’ve seen a lot.</p>
<p>1.) Tort reform. My husband is a radiologist. He will tell you that easily 20% of the tests ordered are for things that the doctor doesn’t really think you need, but if he doesn’t order them, and something happens, the doctor is toast.</p>
<p>2.) Before we expand coverage to everyone, we need to have the people in place to handle it. We don’t have enough doctors, nurses, technologists, etc. to handle the load we have, let along 45 million more. Worse, since there is a shortage of people, academia has suffered the most because they pay the least. Take a look at professional journals. The teaching hospitals are dying for staff.</p>
<p>3.) For heavens sakes…don’t legalize drugs. Don’t we have enough health problems with cigarettes? Alcohol? We tax them. If that was the answer, wouldn’t the problem already be solved? Believe it or not, many people do not use drugs because they are illegal. If they are legalized, more people will use them and we will have more health problems to deal with. And if you have ever worked with substance abuse patients, you know it is a very very tough problem to beat.</p>
<p>4.) We need to stop the proliferation of duplicate high tech equipment. Not every hospital needs every piece of equipment.</p>
<p>5.) We need to stop interfering in the free market. Example. Hilary Clinton believed that we had too many specialists back in the 90s and that it was increasing the cost. So the big liberal idea was to cut the number of specialists. Now we have a shortage of specialists. Now the specialists run the show. Have you noticed all the free-standing cardiology centers? Orthopedic hospitals? Imaging centers? To keep the services of the specialists now, hospitals have to allow the specialists to build (and bill for) their own facilities. This has caused the cost of healthcare to spiral out of control.</p>
<p>6.) Stop Nancy Pelosi. She hasn’t got a clue about what she is doing.</p>