Someone's really stupid!

Is it me?

Recently, at a news conference, President Obama said "We're also discovering that insurance is complicated to buy." The Hartford has been in business since 1810; Prudential since 1875. If insurance could be purchased through a web site, wouldn't one believe that these companies and others, would have figured out how long ago?

If you want to lower the cost of insurance, increase competition. No more of this stopping at state lines. Or, international boundaries, for that matter. If an insurance company in Toronto, or London, or Berlin or Tel Aviv can offer a better product for less, encourage them to do so.

It has been proven time and again that competition reduces costs. If you want to reduce health care costs, increase the number of health care providers. Make the practice of medicine more attractive, more lucrative. Encourage more and more bright, young Americans to enter the field of medicine.

Don't threaten to sue them at every turn. Common sense would surely indicate that most medical malpractice lawsuits are bogus. A doctor's entire career hinges on his/her medical license. Is anyone likely to jeopardize that career by providing sloppy care? Eliminate medical malpractice lawsuits. Surely there is a better way to oversee the profession - if oversight is called for. 

Don't study ways to pay doctors less and less for the service they perform. The more hours a doctor must work to pay his staff, his office expenses, pay off the enormous cost of his education and still make a living, the more we set the stage for hurried care.

And, what about medicines? Today it probably costs as much to shepherd a new medicine through bureaucratic red tape as it does to develop it in the first place. Then, the manufacturer is subject to a lawsuit at every turn.

Look what we have done in the  field of electronic technology: phones, computers, tablets, whatever you call the latest machine. Imagine what we could do in the field of prosthetics and other medical devices if we could cut red tape and make their development profitable.

These steps seem so obvious. Or, am I just stupid?