Healthcare issues

Here are what I see as the biggest healthcare issues:
(1) High healthcare costs - due to everyone supping at the trough.
(2) Lack of universal coverage - creates insecurity.
(3) Lack of transportability - reduces flexibility.
(4) Doctors paid too much - this is hard because they study for so long and those costs are huge, but the reality is that US doctors are way overpaid relative to doctors in other countries; implication is fewer people entering the profession (now that could be a problem).
(5) Drug companies and medical device companies make too much profit - by allowing medical companies to charge a market rate the US is subsidizing the rest of the world's healthcare costs, but to control domestic expenses the US needs to manage medical company profitability kind of like it does with utilities.
(6) Legal framework increases costs - so many issues and problems here; one nasty by-product is the overprescribing of procedures and medical services (also related to the conflict of interest between the doctors fiduciary duty to their patient and their desire to make money).
(7) Multiple payers creates an administrative mess - not to mention duplicative administrative costs.
(8) US consumers won't accept "no" for an answer - resources are limited and there are constraints in any system.
(9) Too many vested interests supping at the trough - makes the development of good policy unlikely.


There are no easy solutions for the country's problems. Solving one problem leads to a compounding of other problems. The problem with instituting a universal healthcare system is you are creating a massive new entitlement program. If you were to go this route, you would need to manage everyones margins in the system and the only way to do that effectively is through a single payer entity.