We've Run Out Of Duct Tape

From an email I recently received:

I had an interesting and unusual experience today. I was at the yearly CME meeting of the San Diego Academy of Family Practice. The keynote speaker was the Executive Director of the San Diego County Medical Society (as conservative a group as there is in organized medicine). The title of his talk was "We've run out of duct tape!" His presentation was well thought out, explicit and dismal. I think anyone of us would have been comfortable using his slides and giving the same talk (except for some of the final recommendations)! The gist of it was to say that no matter how the Supreme Court rules, the medical system will be unstable and costs will be out of control:The system has patches on top of patches and is jury rigged and held together with duct tape. There will not be enough resources to take care of everyone and re-embursements will be going down, while in a few years the average family will be spending 30 % of its income on medical care. He cited the Massachusetts experience as how universal coverage was accomplished while pushing a consolidation of doctors and hospitals into defensive near monopolies pushing costs into unmanageable territory. He essentially said that organized medicine was politically impotent to shape the future. He had no hope that politicians would be able to solve the problem and predicted that the 2016 or 2020 election will revolve around the health care system DEBACLE and that popular demand would support a ROOSEVELTIAN DRASTIC PARADIGM SHIFT AS OCCURRED IN 1932 OR A MASS MOVEMENT AS WAS SEEN IN FRANCE IN 1789 prompted by a government (King) that spent more than it took in (massive government debt) and tried to raise more taxes.

My comment:

The Utah Healthcare Initiative proposes a mass movement to change our health system, but without the guillotine.

Dr. Joe Jarvis