Tuesday, July 18, 2017

There is a malignancy in America that's killing us, but the cure is purposely being ignored.

America has struggled over how to ensure affordable health care for decades, long before President Obama. It's not like this is all Obama's fault. At least he tried to do something. And, it's not like he wasn't obstructed up the ying ying at every turn. The point is, the ACA was only a band-aid on the hemorrhaging state of health care in America. It was incapable of being more because of its poor design elements. Once Obama ripped the scab off of American health care, everyone should have known going forward that anything new would eventually have to be modified as required, if it was to accommodate the growing health care needs of the masses.

The ACA (ObamaCare) has been in an incubator in ICU fighting for it's life since it was signed into law on March 10, 2010 and the only doctor Republicans could find to save the patient (America) was Kavorkian? So much for pro life. What the ACA desperately needed was an expert emergency surgical team to come in and cut out the malignancy that's killing the patient. The for profit health insurance industry is that malignancy. Choosing the Kavorkian approach, the Republicans have chosen to save the life of the for profit insurance industry, allowing it to metastasize instead of letting that surgical team save the lives of the patients, the America people.

There are a plethora of problems with health care in America. Affordability, access, and the ability to find doctors who will take your insurance plan if you can find one you can actually afford are the biggest problems. That's mostly because of the way it was allowed to be set up and run. We chose to allow a profit driven industry to take command over the health, life, and death of people based on their marketing and risk management skills. The government can not continue to subsidize and endorse the for profit health insurance industry whose principle driver is profit over life. Imagine a "health" industry, whose risk mitigation strategy considers the delivery of health care a risk. Then imagine, that is how Americans are delivered health care. One doesn't have to imagine. That's how it's done here in America.

Health care is a right, it is not a risk, and it should not be run by for profit corporations whose bottom line come first and considers the delivery of health care a risk to mitigate. I would also add "physician heal thyself". They shoulder a lot of the blame for the state of health care in America. It started to go down hill when they traded their bedside manner and Hippocratic Oath for a tee off time. I do believe however, the disastrous effects of a profit driven health care industry are not irreversible. There's still time to save the lives of Americans but it has to be done now before more patients expire. The cure is Single Payer/Medicare for All/Universal Health Care (call it what you will). A national health care system for all Americans makes perfect sense and we've seen the other way doesn't work. If America doesn't make the transition to a Universal Health Care type system and doesn't make it soon, the next doctor they see may be named Kavorkian, I'm pretty sure we all know where that goes.
.

No comments:

Post a Comment