A new stethoscope... and a sermon

March 2, 2010 -- I have decided to buy a fancy new stethoscope, one of the digital ones with ambient noise rejection and other cool stuff. Now those elusive murmurs will be a little less elusive.

Clive Smith, the CEO of the company (Thinklabs) that manufactures it has a spirited blog. He writes:

...let me make a prediction on healthcare reform. A bill will be passed, one way or another. Due to the special interests that have written this bill and influenced both parties, no "cost cutting measures" will be truly effective. Congress will mandate coverage of pre-existing conditions and many more people will have insurance coverage, which is a good thing. However, with no real cost cutting, insurance companies will skyrocket premiums, arguing that Congress forced them to provide all that new coverage. That the insurance companies wrote the laws will be forgotten.

Opponents of reform will argue that it was an abject failure due to skyrocketing costs. That these opponents of reform prevented cost-cutting measures to pass will be forgotten.

The people will complain that they wanted healthcare reform and cost cutting and instead, they got increased premiums and healthcare costs even more. That they, too, were supposedly opposed to healthcare reform and wanted no government intervention to contain costs will, too, be forgotten.

What will not be forgotten, by those who have tried to promote true healthcare reform, will be that they were painted as the enemy, they were maligned, and they were blamed for the outcome when the mob, influenced by special interests, attacked them for their efforts. What will not be forgotten is that trying to reform healthcare is a losing political position and it's not worth risking one's neck... the politicization of this discussion, the hysteria, the lobbying money, and the abject ignorance of The People... resulted in the destruction of all rational thinking and analysis. We will all be the worse off for that sad outcome.

I like this guy. And I'm buying his product. Health care financing may be a mess but at least I'll be hearing my patients' insides better.

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