Local hospitals cut 11 percent of staff in the past few years. The ends still are not meeting. Hospitals want HMOs to raise premiums, but it's a tough sell in a place with a busted economy. Talk about closing an unneeded hospital, and people go ballistic. First you've got to pay the heat bill.
Some people think the system can heal itself.
More money from Washington. Higher HMO premiums. But a system that cares as much about dollars as diseases, a system where some 40 million Americans have to pay their own way, will always strain like a 500-pound man's ticker. Nobody would spend millions of health care dollars on advertising. Lives would come ahead of profits.