Answer for: Share your health-care horror stories
#5 Ignorant masses concerned with Insurance
by teej 6 months ago
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My health care horrors consist of the treatment in the socialized medical system of the military and the ones I witnessed working in the socialized county hospitals in New York. The continuing horror is that everyone is looking the other way at "insurance" and "digital" records.
If you get hurt or sick, lead by example and call for an insurance adjuster and an IT. I will still think you're stupid but can at least respect that you will only cause yourself to suffer and not everyone else.
Points to consider. Health is not a human right. The ultimate in unhealthiness is death and that cannot be prevented. If it was a right then no matter how we lived would affect it. Selling people on the idea that they deserve free health care no matter how stupid, selfish, reckless and irresponsbile in order to buy votes should be criminal.
A national health insurance plan is merely a guise to separate the bill payer, in this case the taxpayers, from the bill so nobody can prove how much is being skimmed off the top.
We do not have an insurance crisis. We have an artificially created supply side economic crisis regarding health care delivery while the demand side is exponentially growing.
There are five factors that adversely affect our health care system:
1. Shortage of health care providers. We need to increase the production of providers at all levels and in all specialties and protect their right to work. To do this we need to absolve the monopoly of educating, training, licensing and accrediting health care providers. This will cause the lowering of tuitions and minimize the subjective and discriminatory manner in which applicants are accepted or denied admittance to medical and nursing schools, etc.
2. We need to rein in a bureaucratic and corrupt FDA that has long since abandoned the original intent of protecting consumers from modern "snake oil" salesmen through quality control. The excessive fees and trial periods result in immeasurable costs in human suffering and lives. Most people do not understand how medications are priced. It is simple if you can understand basic math. Take the cost of development through marketing of a new pharmaceutical or medical device and divide it by 7, the number of years of patent protection before a generic brand can be marketed that merely has to prove equal bioavailability of the active ingredient. Next you divide the this number by the amount of distribution. For example, a life enhancing product that will be used frequently by many people will cost less while a product that will be used sparingly by a relatively small percentage of the population will cost more. This is why a medication like viagra or any of the generic knockoffs are relatively inexpensive while a lifesaving drug or treatment for a rare fform of cancer in children costs so much. So you see, it is the FDA and the Legislative branch of our government that holds hostage terminally ill children and not the "big' pharmaceutical companies. We have "big" pharmaceutical companies because "small" or "medium" sized companies cannot afford to navigate the legal and time consuming labrynith of the FDA. Imagine a blood replacement product that requires no refridgeration, has a two year shelf life, carres oxygen better than our own blood because it transports it a plasma level instead of a cellular level and carries no bloodborne pathogens. Wouldn't that be great if we had no more transmissions of hepatitis and the AIDs virus due to blood transfusions? Wouldn't it be nice if we eliminated the cause of the highest percentage of the most serious noscomial infections that result from blood transfusions.? Wouldn't this be nice for little inner city kids suffering from asthma because their mother did not participate in prenatal care due to an unexpected pregnancy? Well, it won't be nice to know that this product, hemopure, has been ready for 20 years but cannot be used in the United States where it was invented. Maybe the FDA is worried about the ultimate in blood doping since all our congress worried about over the last couple of years was steroids in baseball.
3. We need immediate Tort Reform. It is pure insanity to have the most severe punishment for unintentional harm than we do for intentional harm based solely on the perceived social status of the accused. Most medical malpractice suits are frivilous and excessive because settlements are awarded based on the emotional response of ignorant and class enviousjurors instead of science. John Edwards is a perfect example of this. He won millions convincing jurors that he was "channeling" an unborn child who suffers from cerebral palsy because her mother's OB/GYN doctors waited too long to perform a ceserean. As a result of these types of cases, the incidence of C-sections have gone up 60% while the incidence of Cerebral Palsy has remained constant. What has gone up though is the number of deaths as a result of this disfiguring operation. Approximately 600 unnecessary deaths just last year. Ladies, look at your stomaches in the mirror and gaze upon what should be the true legacy of the former Senator John Edwards. Providers now have to practice defensive medicine or work in systems that do not allow them to fully develop their craft. The cost of unnecessary tests and delays in decision making that result in additional pain and suffering are passed on to the consumer.
4. We need to rein in the authority of all licensing and accrediting agencies that operate in a "Mafioso" like manner. They receive kickbacks at every step along the path of health care delivery, resulting in costs that are passed on to the consumer in physical, mental and monetary ways. They provide very little in tangible benefits for all the time they waste in manhours preparing for their inspections and taking their tests. Record keeping has taken prescendence over patient care because it is the records that provided as proof of treatment or lack thereof. Association should be based solely on economic reasons. If it is good for the provider's business they can voluntarily join. If accrediation is crap then it will just go by the wayside.
5. We need to remove the incentive to behave in unproducitve, irresponsible and sometimes illegal manners by not passing the cost of health care for poor habits and bad decision making onto the taxpayers. Why not reward productivitiy and responsibility for awhile. I'm not suggesting we stop treating people, I'm just suggesting that they bear the burden of their decisions. Place some consequences with actions to finally eliminate this "they mean everybody but me" attitude. Don't smoke crack it's not good for you. "Oh, they don't mean me". Don't drink on a trampoline. "Hey, watch this". Are you startaing to get my drift here anybody. Why aren't we discussing the fact that only 10% of all Emergency Room visits are patients who are not responsible in some manner for their visit. For all you liberal art degree holders that means 90% are in the ER because of something they did either chronically or acutely. Now why should these people get away with free health care while the rest of us have to pay $500.00 ambulance bills to pay for the other nine people who came in and won't pay. I bet if they had to clean the hospital restrooms and empty bedpans and colostomy bags that after awhile they'd come to the conclusion that "maybe I should not be a dick". I saw an answer while navigating to this site where one person listed his "horror" answer as that he has been to the ER twice and was bleeding and the triage nurse did not immediately kickout all the cardiac patients, motor vehicle accident victims and respiratory emergencies for him. Oh, yeah, you were not the only one there those two times. I'd like to see how many times it takes before some heroin or crack addict decides he wants to clean up his life because everytime the ambulance brings him in after an overdose, he has to work off his bill.
These are the problems that need to be simultaneously addressed if we are to have real health care reform, instead of creating the Kaiser/Hillary care monopoly and another possible microsoft. Why don't the supporters of these remaining politicians ever question them on their proposals that will raise our taxes, destroy the best medical system in the world and forever create a dependent and therefore reliable voting block? "How will your plan produce even one more doctor, nurse practitioner, PA, RN, ect, arm them with the latest and greatest in American medical technology and allow them to conern themselves with the welfare of their patients in a treatment environment free from the fear of lawyers bearing monday morning armchair quarterbacks?
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