First off anyone that knows me knows I am an economic conservative. I am actually far more Libertarian then Republican or Democrat and I think socialized medicine has the potential to be one of the biggest messes to ever happen to the U.S. when the morons actually do it. Yet we must ask ourselves why there is such a push for this disaster we seem to be getting closer to. There must be a reason, I believe the picture below sums it up.
Look at that picture ain't the little gal cute. That is a baby Gorilla lying in a HUMAN INTENSIVE CARE facility! Where at you ask? In Germany! The very bastion of socialism and they have a baby Gorilla on life support to save her little life. I'm sorry but this makes no sense to me! It is a monkey, not a man and regardless of your religious beliefs on evolution or the lack there of a monkey does not equate to a human, yet here we have a monkey taking up a infant life support facility for a human.
So just how does this relate to U.S. Health Care? Let me ask you don't you think the morons in this nation would do the same thing? Rush a baby Gorilla to the hospital while a child suffers? Of course they would and do you honestly think there is not a child in Germany that needs that facility more then the monkey does! We have to ask ourselves as a society where are our priorities? What is really important to us and why does our system suck in the first place?
Let me say I am against full government take over of insurance and I am even questioning "Insurance" for health purposes in the first place at this point in my life. You see not long ago there was no health insurance and what did that cause? Wide spread death? A total lack of health care? Or perhaps tons of people suffering because of a shortage of Doctors? The answer is no, no and no.
What is actually caused was affordable health care and a competitive system where hospitals, doctors and drug makers had to COMPETE for business. What the health insurance business has done is grow their own parasites that feed off insurance money and keep finding new ways to bill the system for more and more money. All the drug makers, medical equipment manufactures and treatment facilities are guilty of this.
Here is one first hand example. When for a period of time my family had no insurance my son had a nasty foot injury with swelling of the tendon of the top of the foot, we took him to a doctor to see what could be done. The guy gave him a shot and a prescription which we paid cash for along with the visit, all it all it was under a hundred bucks including the prescription. Why we offered to pay cash and said we had no insurance. The final recommendation was, stay off it for two weeks, use some crutches and give the body time to heal itself. So where was the problem? This all happened AFTER we told the Doc we had no insurance. Looking at the way we dressed and all the guy just figured we had a nice fat policy to lute.
So the first recommendation was to take my boy down to the "labs" and have two different scans done of the foot. One was your typical "cat scan" and the other I can't remember. Want to bet the cost of those was well over a grand? Yet the second we told the guy we had no insurance his decent human nature took over. We were clear we would pay for these scans if they were needed, our son was more important then money. However, Mr. Doctor stated, "No, I just figured it was a good idea to be sure I wasn't missing anything with the X-ray and my exam. Just go home, use the crutches a few weeks and give it time to heal, it will be fine. If you don't see some improvement after a week, let me know but I seriously doubt that will be the case".
Now I invite you to again look this monkey above on a life support system! Really let all of this sink in! In the U.S. people are extorted for one drug after another, the doctors, hospitals and drug companies suck money from the insurance companies like leaches and in Germany a baby Gorilla is on life support in a human hospital in the intensive care ward!
So how would I fix the problem? The problem is huge and I have no easy answers but here are some starting points.
1. The drug companies are the biggest villains there are! If any cost control is to be done, start there. Specifically with maintenance drugs! The actual cost to produce medication is quite low and margins on many are in the thousands of percent. I don't again suggest pushing them into "not for profit" status but some control must be enacted.
2. The government is the next villain! Part of why the drug companies charge so much for their products is the 9 Plus Billion dollars it takes to get a new drug approved. Now we need good testing, good safety, etc. Yet does it make sense to anyone that it would cost 9 Billion to get the next great aspirin approved? This process must be streamlined and cut down, hell a billion buys a lot of testing! The other side is the costs cut MUST be returned to the consumer.
3. The Doctors that give in to the drug sales reps that hound them day and night and do things like send them to conferences in Hawaii and Sweden (expenses paid of course) get a lot of the blame too. They way they order tons of tests in the name of "defensive medicine" when what it really does is increase the profit margin of their practices. The way many prescribe antibiotics for virus like the cold and the flu when they know 100% that antibiotics kill bacteria not viruses. Doctors are yet another parasite feeding at the pig trough of the insurance slush fund! Oh yea and the way the prescribe over the counter medicine so Medicaid sucking leaches can get things like tylenol and robitussin at tax payer expense! Yep, I have first hand knowledge of things like a lady who smoked two packs a day getting tylenol on Medicaid because she "could not afford it out of pocket" and wanted to "get it covered on Medicaid" oh but she could afford the 8 dollar a day habit of smoking. What did the doc do? Wrote the script and of course you guessed it Medicaid paid for the office visit which was also not necessary she only came to get the 4 dollars worth of tylenol for FREE! Nice huh, that cost you and I over 100 dollars, by the way!
4. You and I get a lot of blame too! How many people eat a handful of pills a day and half are to counter the effects of the other pills? Somewhere along the way you need to ask about the real need for everything a doctor tells you to take. Specifically long term medications! I dare you to go to a doctor anywhere in the U.S. with a problem and not leave with prescription. You don't always need a drug, realize that and well, "just say no", some times.
5. The insurance business gets some blame but less then everyone else. Why? They are the ones being bilked here! Bilked by hospitals charging 4 times for one thing, bilked by Doctors ordering useless tests and bilked by big pharm that keeps making new drugs just so people don't go to generic meds once that patent wears off the older stuff. The insurance companies need to PUT PRESSURE where it belongs! On the Doctors, Drug Companies and Hospitals not on Joe who is told his blood pressure is not high enough yet for his plan to cover his meds!
So what solutions can you offer to this issue? Clearly the Health Care system here is screwed up but do you really want the government that can't seem to do anything right to get directly involved? Do you really want something like Hillary Care or Michale Moore's Solution of being like the "utopia" of Cuba? I sure don't but we need to do something apparently one thing Moore is right about is that prisoners in Gitmo get better health care then many Americans, so apparently does a baby monkey in Germany which seems to of abandoned the concept of Darwinism.
~ Jack
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