LINTHICUM – At the BWI Business Partnership breakfast, guest speaker Dr. Stephen Schimpff gave what amounted to an open letter to Congress saying that the current bills do not address the real problems with health care.  With credentials numerous enough to crash a server, including the recently published The Future of Medicine: Megatrends That Will Improve Your Quality of Life, he described how the health care hubbub is more about care financings and access, but not improving delivery.  Specialists comprise 70% percent of all doctors, while primary care physicians are 30% and are not paid or incentivized enough for preventive care.  By improving the system for care coordination, where chronic conditions can be better managed so that patients can’t get multiple (and possibly counteractive) prescriptions from different doctors, for example, then overall costs will decrease.

The real culprits that challenge better health care are the aging population, the rise of chronic diseases, and risky behaviors (smoking, obesity, stress, and poor nutrition and exercise).  More coverage for the uninsured needs to be coupled with preventive care, reasonable income for practitioners and greater responsibility for healthy behaviors.