The need for health care reform.
200 people "kick the bucket" every year in the USA due to medical mistakes and incompetent professionals. You are more apt to die (two times more) by going to the Doctor's office than by driving on the Katy freeway
I thought that would make your day.
And this is why we need health care reform.
We have the most expensive health care in the world and not necessarily the best. Live expectancy is below in many of the industrialized countries. Infant mortality rates are just one point above Costa Rica (Number 17th)
Physicians are responsible for 35% of the origin of health care expenditures. The indiscriminate use of expensive tests and treatment methods has reached ridiculous levels.
Our health care expenditures are 17% of the GNP and are projected to reach 20% in another 5 years.
The waste in health care amounts to 1.2 trillion dollars a year.
At this rate of speed we will need all IRS receipts to pay the doctors and the hospitals in this country.
We must enact a protocol by the National Institute of Health that would establish the initial steps in the diagnosis and treatment of patients.
The expenses incurred by any violation of these guidelines not supported by an indication in a thorough history and physical examination would be paid by the physician or the hospital and not by the patient or the insurance company.
This step would put a stop to the special interests that continue to rely in expensive test that result in higher earnings for the institution.
With respect to the health care provider levels of competency if he Airline pilots have to pass a simulator tests to fly a type of aircraft why are not health care professionals subject to these tests every year?
But the right-wingers and legislators among them some in the republican party are mainly interested in supporting the special interests that derive their earning from the unfortunate citizens that get sick and end up loosing all their savings. Special interests get wealthier with increasing profits every year at the expense of the suffering patients.
Their republican motto for the special interests is apparently "lets charge what the traffic will bear". “Let’s just rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic”. "We are just going to get out of this with as much cash as possible in the first life boat". “Let us disperse as much misleading information that will scare the public”. “As long as we get reelected who cares”.
"Socialized Medicine anyone"?
We already have a socialized Army, a socialized Air Force and Navy and how about a socialized Police Department and socialize Fire Department. They all seem to work quite well.
Medicare and Medicaid do work well for all people and have been the subject of extensive fraud by those that are determined to make money out of the poor and the sick. A lack of ethos in the country and a mindset that money is the only factor that is important in our lives.
We can have a single payer system that will work better. In the first place the way it is today it is wasteful. You mean every little doctor with his or her little offices. No good and effective management of cost without the economies of scale? Is that what we want?
We nee to have all docs on a salary like in the Cleveland and Mayo Clinic or Kaiser Permanente and have the economies of scale apply. We need all the Insurance companies out of the way. They are in the business of making as much money as possible at the expense of the sick. Is that what you want?
We are under the influence of the right-wingers propaganda.
The fact is that for the majority of people the health care system is to complex to understand.
Believe it we will be VERY VERY VERY SORRY if we do not change this corrupt situation where money is the principal object of our behavior rather the pursuit of excellence and altruism. The world is moving towards the minorities, whether we like it or not. The have become politically the core of the global population.
The weight of the evidence is in their court. Health and Education are human wrights. No country can maintain a global supremacy and strive without taking care of its citizens.
The ideal solution for our health care crisis is a single payer system. A salary for all health care providers and an establish price for all the diagnostic procedures and treatments of all conditions regardless of the time that it takes and the complications.
Some of the best institutions in the country (Cleveland Clinic. Kaiser Permanente. The Mayo Clinic) have already adopted similar systems.
If you have a problem with your car and take it to the mechanic and he does not fix it well you take it back and there is no more changes. Not in medicine you get charged even for the problems caused by the doctors incompetence and mistakes. But if we put up with this system we deserve it.
We must put a stop to escalating spiral of health care costs, the abuses, the graft, the special interests and the myopic view of some of our citizens about the impact that health care will have in our economy and our competitive position in the world.
Lets inform the American public the advantages of health care reform and a single payer system. We need it.
J.A. Ribelles, MD
