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BS ‘n’ About…
Healthcare in America
Know how you can tell that the Universal Healthcare Bill passed by Washington was more smoke than substance? …that it was just another piece of legislation passed to enrich the fatcats rather than solve any of the problems for us, the tax-paying citizens of America? Know how you can tell?
You can tell because the hospital conglomerates, drug companies, malpractice lawyers, and insurance companies aren’t tearing their hair out and screaming bloody murder. They have been feeding off of us for so long that, if this bill actually did anything for us, the patients, they would be crying foul from the rooftops.
So we will continue to pay more for our prescriptions than anywhere else in the world. We will continue to undergo procedure after procedure that we don’t really need. We will continue facing bankruptcy if we dare to get sick.
Costs will remain ridiculously inflated. The only difference is that the young and healthy, those who actually voted these folks into Washington, will be forced to write checks to the insurance companies at help pay for the old and sick.
This bill solved nothing. Healthcare is still a mess in America. When we spend 17% of our nation’s wealth on healthcare, a warning buzzer ought to be blaring as loudly as that of a flatlining EKG.
Healthcare should not be driven by the free market forces of capitalism. It is just morally wrong to allow a system whereby one person’s pain and suffering is the path to another person’s riches.
We are justifiably suspicious of the used car salesmen in our lives and that suspicion creates a healthy dynamic by which to come to an agreement: an agreement which, in the end, is hopefully in the best interests of both parties.
But imagine a world in which we held our used car salesmen in the same undeserved, godlike esteem we hold our medical professionals. We would all end up buying the car that was in the salesman’s best interests, not ours.
As the system works now, a doctor is a businessman, just like the used car salesman. The only difference is the half million dollars worth of student loans, the astronomical malpractice insurance premiums, the vastly greater overhead, and the expectations of eventual great wealth.
If we continue to allow our healthcare system to be run like a used-car lot, then we consumers had better start doing a better job of negotiating the healthcare we’re buying. Neither the doctor, not the used car salesman, wants to kill us. But neither do they care whether we’re going to have enough left over to feed the baby. They both end up selling us what is in their best interests. They both want to keep us coming back. Virtually every doctor in America is a salesman. Some might be “better” people than others, but they are all salesmen nonetheless. We might not want to admit this to ourselves but, until we do, we’re going to continue buying Yugos with all the options and an extended warranty that covers nothing.
So, how do we bring altruism back to yet another profession which sees itself as a license to print money? As with most problems, healthcare can’t be remedied with a full-scale frontal assault. We need to work the edges, cutting costs by directing our righteous anger at the parasitic industries feeding at the healthcare trough.
The drug companies are out of control and Congress shows no inclination to get off their dole and do something to regulate them. They never cure anything. Let me repeat: They never cure anything. The last major illness cured was polio. Curing something would be bad for business, now wouldn’t it? Think about it. As conspiracy theories go, it ranks right up there with Detroit’s cars that run on chickenfeed. Can you really believe that, for all the trillions of tax dollars they’ve spent on R & D that they’ve managed to cure nothing? Doesn’t add up.
Yet when a drug company does come up with something new, it is often in some monopoly position. Yet, if they discover something, paid with by our tax dollars, there is no oversight to ensure that it is brought to market: a cure for the common cold, cancer, or diabetes? Not in this lifetime. Not with our tax dollars.
Drugs are bad for us. Not that long ago Congress decided that it was morally reprehensible to allow the tobacco and alcohol industries to run amok without regulation. Yet the drug companies pose a far greater risk to the health and well-being of our nation in many, many ways. We are conditioned to be wary of drug dealers, but trust our doctors who are paying off their student loans by prescribing us a hell of a lot more drugs than we truly need. Facts is facts.
The drug companies are not our friends. If a cancer cure is ever found and it costs two dollars to produce, how much do you think we’ll end up paying for it? Enough to pay for a century’s worth of R & D costs and enough payola to Washington to keep the price grossly inflated and unregulated? Sounds about right.
And how about Viagra? It was basically a failed experiment with a golden goose side effect. Without the side effect, it was just money written-off and down the drain. With it, it is a license to steal. No wonder they won’t let us buy our drugs overseas and are doing everything in their power to make supplements illegal.
Three words that should be stricken from the advertising lexicon upon pain of death: Ask Your Doctor! Magazines these days are filled with hundred-thousand dollar ads playing on our fears and urging us to ‘Ask our Doctor’ to prescribe drugs to keep those fears at bay. Page one is a nice, full-color plea and it is followed by three or four pages of bible-print lawyerese describing how our doctor and the drug company can’t be held responsible for all the horrible things that could happen if we take that drug.
If our doctors are competently trained professionals, shouldn’t they be the ones initiating discussion about anything requiring so many dire warnings, and then only as a last resort? Drug companies are not our friends.
Nor are the lawyers. The fact that our doctors, the great majority of whom are dedicated, competent professionals, have to pony up big money to the insurance companies and cover their asses in triplicate because they live in fear of ambulance-chasing malpractice lawyers looking to get rich is just plain wrong. Especially since that cost is just passed along to us. How can we hope to get medical costs under control when a third of every check we write ends up in the hands of the lawyers and insurance companies? We can’t.
Most malpractice cases ought to be fairly cut and dried. The doctor cut off the wrong leg or he didn’t. …prescribed the poison pill or he didn’t. If he did it to a twenty-five year old in Seattle, it ought to have the same repercussions as if he’d done it in Boston. If he did it to someone who can’t afford a dream team of lawyers, it ought to result in the same penalties as if he did it to the President.
And it ought to be something adjucated, for the most part, by medical professionals, not lawyers, judges, and juries. If a doctor did wrong, he ought to pay. If a lawyer wants to get rich, he shouldn’t be doing it at the expense of all of us.
Every state has licensing boards. If malpractice insurance were a group policy covering the medical professionals that board is there to regulate, they would have every incentive to police themselves from within and weed out the incompetent. By eliminating lawyers from the equation, settlements would actually go to those who were wronged. What a concept. Healthcare costs would plummet overnight and the quality of care would rise.
There is no cure for the common cold yet a visit to the doctor for it can cost upwards of three hundred bucks. A sprained ankle means an ace bandage and being a couch potato for a while. A pap smear is a pap smear. A prostate exam is a prostate exam. There are a myriad of medical procedures whose treatment is so rote that they ought to be handled for a fraction of current costs at some sort of clinic setting. Set a standard pricing structure from the Pacific to the Atlantic then ‘franchise’ them like Jiffy Lubes.
As with most things these days, if we’re going to see change that is truly in our best interests, we are going to have to initiate that change. We need to start questioning things and doing our own research. We need to start “Just Saying No!” to prescription drugs. We need to quit allowing ourselves to be sold Yugos with all the options. We need to quit thinking a pill is going to make it all better.
We need to quit running to the doctors for the sniffles and boo boos. We need to quit running to the lawyers just because we think we can get rich. We need to quit medicating the childhood out of our kids and drowning our parents in a prescription haze. We need to start ‘thinking’ healthy before we can start ‘being’ healthy.
Some of us are supposed to be fat. Others: bald. Skin sags when we get old. A bit of ADD in our kids is probably a good thing. If they weren’t all drugged up on Ritalin, maybe they’d be running off some of that fat instead of turning into a drug company’s couch potato of a dream come true.
If we’re obese, we need to go on a diet. If our cholesterol is dangerously high, we need to change our diet. We’re supposed to be depressed some of the time. Kids are supposed to be hyper. Deal with it. Quit cheating. Quit looking for the easy way out. Quit thinking a pill is going to make it all better.
Our lifespan isn’t all that much greater than that of our grandparents. Just more medicated. Compared to the rest of the industrialized world, our lifespans, infant mortality rates, disease survival rates, and overall fitness are nothing to be proud of. But our doctors, lawyers, and insurance companies sure are living high off the hog. I guess that’s some consolation.
Perhaps the scariest sideshow in America’s healthcare spectacle is the opposition protests in Congress against the public option, the option where the government provided an alternative to keep the insurance companies honest. The Republicans put up a hue and cry that the government can’t do anything cost-effectively, nor efficiently. …Can’t do anything better than the for-profit insurance company behemoths.
Wait a minute. Aren’t these guys ‘the government’? If they can’t efficiently and effectively oversee a healthcare industry, how can we trust them to oversee anything else for us? Diplomacy? Defense? Education? Wall Street?
Congress is, in effect, the Board of Directors for the company that is the United States. If they admit they can’t do things effectively and efficiently, then isn’t it time to get a new Board? Or possibly even rewrite the by-laws and start doing things in a completely different way?
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