Monday, June 29, 2015

Health Care Issues, WHAT A PAIN!

“Obama Care”: a bad thing for some, a good thing for others, and obviously divisive for all.  Why is our nation’s approach to health care so controversial?

I’m no doctor, nor am I a nurse or medical practitioner of any kind.  However, I do make scheduled visits to my family doctor for regular check-ups.  And yes, I’ve actually undergone surgery and have spent a night or two at the hospital.  Thus, like you, I am a user and an observer of this complicated health care system we have created here in the United States.  And I don’t like what I see or have experienced.

Despite Obama Care’s best efforts, I still think that our health care system is broken and needs fixing.  Does that mean Obama Care should be trashed?  Not necessarily.  But it does mean more changes are needed; there is more fixing to be done, much more.  Yet, given our political climate, we all know that that’s not going to happen anytime soon.

I find it interesting that those who have been vehemently against Obama Care are all for ripping it apart and tearing it down, but have no alternative, offering nothing in return.  Even so, before Obama Care, most Americans agreed and were unified about one thing with respect to our health care system—it is broken and needs fixing!  Obama Care is intended to be a step in that direction, to fix the system.  And yet, those who reject Obama Care, to date, offer no good workable alternative?

Our national health care system continues to be imbalanced and unfair.  It is opaque and confusing as to real cost distribution and profit gain, and continues to be grossly expensive.  It is daunting to personally negotiate one’s way through the system when personal health conditions require entry into its procedures and processes.  One is faced with multiple consent forms and waiver forms, and agree-to-pay forms (just in case your nice insurance company declines to do so); there are waiting periods, specialists and referrals, insurance approvals, costly medicinal subscriptions, and so-on and so-forth.

Here’s the thing: Obama Care addresses only one aspect of our health care system.  It addresses the question of health care coverage: who can and should have health care insurance.  What it fails to address is the deeper medical matrix of the overall health care industry.  Follow the money.  Where is the money going?  Who is profiting the most, how, and why?  Doctors claim that they are not seeing mega profits in their offices.  Nurses and other supporting medical staff, technicians etc. claim that they’re certainly not getting rich off their paychecks.  Hospitals complain that they are on a shoe-string budget, partly because they are often required to service uninsured people who regularly use their emergency rooms for common medical care.

So, what I’d like to know is, given the billions of dollars that Americans spend on health care each year, where exactly is the money going?  Why is it so expensive?  Just who exactly IS getting rich from our health care system, and therefore loving the system just the way it is?

In terms of cost, have you noticed how the actual breakdown of a given medical procedure in a hospital, for example, is well hidden and embedded in multilayers of red tape, paper work, and administrative legalize?  It’s next to impossible to find out exactly what and how much one is precisely paying for—other than a general statement that says: “Your insurance company pays this much and declines to pay that much and you are to pay the remainder.  Here, sign on the bottom line.”  End of story.

The medical business is one of the few businesses where one is unable to become a wise and informed shopper before buying into its products and services.  Medical procedural costs vary greatly from hospital to hospital.  Specialists, labs, medical technicians and the use of their equipment can be hundreds, if not thousands of dollars apart—for the very same medical procedure or service.  Likewise, insurance companies can greatly vary as to their acceptance and approval of equivalent procedures.  Some patients get lucky and pay less for more while others have the bad luck of having to pay life-and-limb, so to speak, for so very little in return.

And is our health care system a for-profit or non-profit system?  For example, hospitals have been required to supply emergency care to people regardless of insurance coverage (look up the “Emergency Treatment and Labor Act of 1986).  That means that someone else must pay the bill.  This is one of the motivations for Obama Care requiring more people to be covered with health insurance.  By the way, should the medical industry only be motivated by profitable gain—at the expense of sick, injured, and/or dying people?  What then constitutes a truly just, fair, and equitable health care system for a people, a community, or a nation?

And finally (and this is a whole new topic in itself), we don’t seem to know when to appropriately “pull the plug.”  We are spending more money at the beginning and ending stages of life than ever before—preemie babies that only a few years ago had no chance of surviving, and the very elderly who but a few years ago would have said, “This is good-bye; I’m ready to see my Maker.”   Our medical technology continues to blur the thin line between life and death.  We think we can command life more easily now.  New mothers demand: “My preemie shall live: whatever the cost, however chronically ill, ill-formed, or physically and/or mentally challenged he/she may be in life!”  Or, refusing to let go: “You’re not going to pull the plug on my granny!  She still has a few good more years ahead of her, even if she will be bed-ridden during that time!”  When do we say, “Enough is enough; it’s time to say good-bye,” placing our faith and hope in God and the promise of Eternal Life?

Well, Obama Care is not going away.  So, let’s stop fighting it and continue to address the health care issues that prompted the implementation of Obama Care in the first place.

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