It used to be, or so it seemed, there were only two or three
problems with healthcare. Those being
lawyers, doctors and HMO’s. This seems
to be me both narrow minded and incorrect.
I never quite understood all the hate directed at lawyers. The main reason being that my father is one
and he is an honest and good man so naturally my impression of lawyers is
colored by this. I also know quite a few
scum of the earth lawyers who represent every aspect of the bad stereotypes
labeled to a proud profession which has been around since antiquity. But lawyers aren’t the problem with health
care. You might argue, fairly, that
lawsuits drive up insurance costs. I am
not arguing that point as I don’t have enough knowledge on the matter. What I do argue is that lawyers are the
cause. No the cause is stupid people
throwing lawsuits around. Can you blame
a lawyer for taking a case he knows isn’t good?
Well, yes to an extent, but with the amount of lawyers on the market now
(we are oversaturated with people who went through many years of costly
education) it is little wonder lawyers don’t refuse. Why should they suffer when someone willingly
pays? The cause of the fruitless lawsuit
does not lie with the lawyer but rather with the person suing. But there are plenty of medical malpractice
cases out there that are very legitimate.
You would be surprised at the incompetence of ‘some’ doctors. And if we expect about two percent of all
doctors to be idiots that is a lot of a possibility for something to go wrong. And remember you could be being operated on
by someone with a c average. The amount
of egregious mistakes befallen patients due to overwhelming incompetence is
rather scary. I’m taking about a person
having the wrong limb amputated kind of bad.
But you might say well if I make a mistake at work I’m not sued. Well
you’re right but you making a mistake doesn’t kill someone or ruin their life. These people did choose to be doctors. And they aren’t paying for their mistakes the
insurance company and the hospital is.
That’s why doctors pay those enormous malpractice fees and insurances
that eat of a big chunk of their paycheck.
The paycheck that goes towards the many, many years of education they
have to pay for.
But honestly the thing that causes bad mistakes isn’t really
the doctors it’s the shitty conditions they work. Who the fuck works a forty hours shift. Yeah, you get a nap here and there but that’s whole damn work week in one shift.
I pulled hundred hours weeks when I managed a restaurant and lost about
ten pounds in a week. I also think I
permanently lost a bit of my sanity but that’s
another issue altogether. It is not a healthy
way to live and it isn’t conducive to making rational well thought decisions. I want the guy who operates on me when I come
into the ER to be fresh and able to react with lightning reflexes not so pumped
full of coffee they are jittery and agitated.
But this isn’t by the doctor’s choice - it’s the hospital, the
administration and the general culture of industry at fault. The argument regarding the HMO being at fault
is only partly true. A business has an
obligation to be profitable. Some
businesses have higher moral standards when it comes to the means when leveraging
profit. HMO’s tend to suffer no such
moral quagmires. They are rarely
punished for it so why should they change their behavior just because people
complain and point fingers does nothing to stop their actions. It is an industry wide problem and quite
frankly they don’t give a shit. I could
be jaded and say they pay off politicians who turn a blind eye to their
nonsense. I could say the whole thing is
a game of numbers and statistics and they simple don’t see a human life as
nothing more than a margin. Well, I just
did say that but anyway… My issue with
healthcare lies more with the culture, the administration and as per usual our political
system.
Healthcare is expensive.
And there is good right to this.
It involves a whole team of highly skilled people to run
facilities. Also we have a lot of old
people for some reason we don’t really want to die. Old people shouldn’t be neglected but they
eat up a huge chunk of the healthcare budget.
The cost to hospitals to provide free care or cheap care in emergency
rooms, because regardless of insurance they aren’t turning people away, or care
based on Medicare and Medicaid must be made up somewhere else. Other countries have free healthcare but
higher taxes. Other countries also have
free higher education (which would fix an enormous amount of financial crisis
for countless young people, can you imagine being able to go to college for
free, at this point A’s would be earned and people who don’t apply themselves
wouldn’t be socially passed but enough on that for now). So healthcare is expensive because of this
whole treating everyone thing. Makes
sense. We won’t have free health care
any time soon because people don’t like paying higher taxes or, you know, the
whole being charitable thing. I don’t
blame people for disliking higher taxes.
I don’t blame people for being against cheap healthcare. Being without insurance can be a ticking time
bomb. Getting injured can ruin your life
with debt.
One of my problems is the backwards notion of the industry. There will always be sick people and a need
for health and yet this industry is constantly behind in terms of tech adoption
and other normal practices. Why? There is an enormous mound of red tape and
bullshit surrounding healthcare. I won’t
blast things like HIPAA because honestly I like the whole patient privacy
policies. I like my private medical data
being kept private. I like quite a few
of the tenets of the health care professions as well with ‘do no harm’ and the rest
of the Hippocratic oath being up there as of significant examples of proper
ethics and behavior. But there are
certain policies and best practices that simply anger me to a point of gnawing
on my shield of righteousness.
One such thing is mecial supply companies squashing
innovation for profit. The problem with
this besides its ugly business practice (but sadly common in the cutthroat
business world) is that squashing such competition negatively affects people’s
health. The problem in this part of the industry
is there are a few really big medical suppliers and they have the ability to
dictate price. Or they did. Hospitals realizing they could combat these
inflated prices or demands – you want these MRI machine at this price you have
to buy all your needles from us – grouped
together to purchase larger bulk quantities at better prices. The formed GPOs or Group Purchasing Organizations. They originally had the well being of the
hospitals in mind and helped keep cost down from the big bad suppliers. They were also non-profit. Notice that use of the word were. It changed quite drastically and the GPO’s starting doing
things like charging entry fees to hospitals (they guys who helped create the
formally non-profit entities) and forcing them to buy only from certain
suppliers. Instead of helping they were
now locking in hospitals to only certain suppliers they were also making profit
on this. Hooray capitalism! So a great idea turned t shit by some greedy
pricks essentially to put it in base terms.
These GPO’s now work against small unique companies with innovations and
keep them out of the market. Like
retractable syringes that can cut down on infections that kill countless lives.*
I could blame politicians here but there has been quite a
few pieces of legislation to try and adjust the practices. But people tend to bend the truth and later
facts enough so that decisions that lok questionable (and are) and made to seem
just plausible enough to avoid real scrutiny.
Oh well, it’s not like these fuckers are getting rich off of
hurting people…
Ben
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thanks for posting. You are awesome!