Free, or Not At All

Want to discourage folks from health care?

Charge them a fee.

Seriously.

Seems a lot of folks are more than willing to access the health care system as long as it is free.

Screening rates from 2001 through 2004 were nearly 11 percent lower for women who had to contribute a co-pay as low as $12, compared to women whose mammograms were free,

$12 for a mammogram is too much to pay.

Sure. I can see that.

Why, for $12 you can get two Gigantous Latte's . . . apparently a much better use of funds.

Studies have suggested that mammograms may save lives by detecting breast cancers at an earlier, and more curable, stage. "This is a case where co-payments adversely affected health,"

Copays adversely affect health.

Seems to me that copays must can lead to stupidity.

"It would make clinical sense, and probably economic sense, for a health plan to eliminate a co-payment for a mammogram,"

Why stop there? Just make everything free.

But even though nearly all women know the value of mammograms, many did not get them when they had to pay.

Hold the mammogram and give me a double shot latte.