Can we reset this entire healthcare argument to focus on the
real issue here? The issue is healthcare not health insurance! This is driving
me nuts. We don’t go to the insurance company to diagnose our runny nose do we?
We don’t ask some insurance bureaucrat to reset our lower back due to a tweak
we have after lifting a box the wrong way, do we? We don’t go to the insurance
office to get a prenatal exam during pregnancy, do we? NO we go to the doctor’s
office.
We have been so programmed to deal with insurance companies
for healthcare issues that we can’t see the forest through the trees. We should
be dealing directly with our doctor to set up our appointments and make
payments according to the services provided. Instead we are calling insurance
companies to discuss co-pays and coverage of basic services that actually are
already affordable.
Now we are on the cusp of adding government bureaucrats into
the mix of insurance bureaucrats to get in the way of the relationship between
us and our doctor. What are we nuts! The answer is not to empower more useless
paper pushing or key banging office people to manage such a simple transaction.
Just as you go to the mechanic to fix your car and then you pay the bill, you
should be going to the doctor, receive your care, and pay your bill.
The biggest issue that drives the “need” for insurance is the
fear of taking ill and needing critical or chronic long term care. The fear of
bankruptcy is the biggest driver of insurance. Just like we fear fire and flood
destroying our housing investment, in healthcare we fear a heart attack, a cancer
diagnosis, or some other illness because if we don’t have insurance it can bankrupt
us! What if the issue of going bankrupt from a healthcare issue could be
solved? How would that change the complexion of healthcare?
From the service provider side, doctors, nurses, and
hospitals fear being sued for mal-practice. They have to carry mal-practice
insurance which increases costs and does little for the betterment of
healthcare. Actually it has created a “lottery” mentality where any “mistake”
is treated as a ticket to Easyville! No doubt there are circumstances where
doctors or hospitals are negligent, but lawyers have made an industry of suing
doctors for every issue just to get in front of an ignorant jury that award
large paydays. Most of the time these frivolous lawsuits are settled to reduce
the time and effort it takes to fight the lawsuits. The way to fix it is to
have jurists that understand medicine instead of the normal jury process. A “jury
of your peers” in healthcare are people that understand healthcare, and I’m not
suggesting this to put the fix in for doctors, but to put people on the jury
that understand the complex arguments that we just are not educated to
understand. It also would reduce the emotional component of “regular” jurists that
end up awarding ridiculous amounts for things that are not malpractice. As
healthcare professionals know, there is inherent risk in certain procedures. If
we don’t address this doctors will stop doing surgeries that have any risk and
who benefits from that? What if mal-practice lawsuits were changed? How would
that change the complexion of healthcare?
Eliminating insurance from preventative care, removing the
fear of bankruptcy due to an illness, and mal-practice reform would be three
steps that would change the face of healthcare for the better. If we did those
three simple things to start we could then look at the market and see what
other issues we could improve through free market principles.
The debate about healthcare should not be dominated by
insurance but rather the improved delivery and management of healthcare. Oh and
the biggest change of all: get politicians out of our doctor’s office!
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