ABC News' Medical Editor Dr. Tim Johnson says the U.S. health-care system is in Critical Condition
Johnson: That’s true for commodities like a car, where you can go in and make choices and you can even walk out of the showroom if you want. You can’t do that when you’re sick. You can’t do that with health care. So, for health care, you’re talking about a service and here I think the private sector has some real shortcomings. They have to spend a lot of overhead on sales and marketing and choosing the patients they’re going to serve. They shuffle a lot of paperwork. Their administrative paperwork is 15 percent versus the accepted figure of 3 percent for Medicare which is a single payer system where the government handles the money. The delivery system is free. You can pick whatever doctor or hospital you want.
Jennings: Why couldn’t you regard health care as a commodity the way you regard cars?
Johnson: Because in order for it to be a commodity you have to have a consumer who’s informed and can make choices. The consumer can go in and say I want this color, they have the information to make choices; they can walk away from the offered product. Think about getting a colonoscopy, a very common procedure today. Where can you find the Web site that tells you who is the best at it, where it might be the cheapest, who has the most training? The consumer doesn’t have the information to make the choices necessary for a commodity in the free marketplace.
Jennings: Some will say that Americans need to take more personal responsibility for their health care and be better informed.
Johnson: I would not disagree with that. And I think that if we could get better information that will certainly be part of our responsibilities as consumers but right now, that information is very hard to come by. The marketplace doesn’t really exist in terms of consumer information for health care.