State Medical Insurance Struggles With the BudgetJuly 2008
Though Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's
California health insurance plan failed to pass earlier this year, their medical insurance woes are still in the news, particularly as the health care cost crisis meets the $15 billion dollar deficit facing the state.
In an effort to balance some budget constraints, Schwarzenegger has been forced to suggest painful cuts to Medicare and Medicaid services, cuts that have medical insurance advocates up in arms.
But as Michael Russo, a health care advocate and staff attorney for the California Public Interest Research Group (CalPIRG) asserts in the
California Progress Report, there are other ways to save much needed funds in health care without short-changing state citizens who desperately need good California health insurance coverage.
Russo points to three main areas where health care spending "doesn't always equal better health." These include unnecessary treatments and over-hospitalization, administrative waste, and misleading drug company marketing.
But while minimizing over-hospitalization and administrative waste are issues to be tackled from within a broken
medical insurance system, reigning in drug companies is a whole different matter.
Prescription drug companies now spend more money advertising their latest medications than they do to develop them, and the result has led to an overuse, misuse, and misunderstanding of what prescription drugs should do for the average person.
Facts on:
California Health Insurance
Did you know...
One out of every eight Americans lives in California?
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So while controlling California health insurance costs is clearly possible, as we can see in Russo's article, it's going to take a lot to minimize the costs related to the intense marketing that has made prescription drug companies billions and billions of dollars in recent years.
That's more an issue of legislation, not simple revision for the health care market, and pharmaceutical companies aren't going to take those kinds moves lying down.
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