A few days ago former U.S. Comptroller Dave Walker was on CNN talking about the current healthcare system and reform possibilities, specifically medicare. As it stands now medicare costs somewhere around $38 trillion per year, Walker suggests a budget for this service that would require a reform in the way that we pay our medical bills. Currently there is no budget on medicare in the U.S. unlike most other industrialized nations. The reform in payment that Walker suggests is a shift from payment simply for treatment to payment for the effect of treatment. While this economically makes sense and would certainly lower the cost of care I do not believe that it would function well in the medical field for a couple of reasons. First labor is used for all treatments whether they work or not is out of their control, and they should be payed for their labor. Secondly, with the constantly changing and variability in effectiveness of treatment based on all kinds of individual variables presented by each patient this system would not be just to the medical professionals or the patients. Finally this shift would hinder experimental treeatment and the overall progression of healthcare because new treatments inherently have a low level of effectiveness initially and take time to get better.