The Key To Our Healthcare Need is “Quality”
by Jim Bell
When President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the Social Security Acton August 14, 1935, the national focus on taking care of its citizens began with a simple idea to create a mandatory annuity with payroll deductions which, had they gone to an insurance policy, would have paid a much greater dividend in the end than what citizens can now actually expect to see. While it is true that what FDR envisioned is not exactly what came to pass, it is perhaps the single most important piece of legislation ever enacted with our life long security in mind.
Since then there have been many attempts by the Democrats and several Presidents to initiate some form of national health care. All of the programs that would have been beneficial for the American public were defeated. Instead what became law were different variations of business ideas for either the medical professions or the Insurance companies. Over the last few weeks I have seen several postings in the blogosphere and videos on You Tube from conservative Senators and Representatives who first of all assure us that they want to make sure we are all taken care of by seeing to it that everyone gets good quality, available health care.
These speakers go on to state that they don’t want the healthcare to wind up a government program because our government will only botch it by creating a bureaucratic night mare that will result in longer waits for doctor visits,the loss of the ability to see the doctor of our choice and stagnated advancements in scientific progress caused by a lack of competition. They believe that it is through competition that new ideas flourish and it is through competition that the public will see the best possible health care available. These ideas seem on the surface to have merit, but it is possible that private enterprise doesn’t belong in every aspect of our lives.
In the area of medical care, the U.S. doesn’t even rank in the top ten countries in the world in health care quality. This is not because we don’t have the best quality health care here, but because it is not as readily available to the average individual as it is in other countries. Our health care system is in the hands of the private sector now and is dominated by the insurance companies, not the medical profession. And the insurance companies don’t make money by providing coverage; they make money by denying it. Every Insurance company in the health care industry makes their decisions about covering the costs of treatment for individuals based upon costs.
Any time your doctor feels you need something-from a drug treatment to an MRI to a hospital stay, the decision to go ahead with the treatment is made by the insurance companies. The deciding factor is always about money, never about the quality of care. Insurance is a business; and as such all decisions are made to provide a favorable report to a board of directors.
This means that all decisions are made to further increase profits and to provide increasing stock value. And health insurance companies all have full time employees whose only job is to find a way to deny coverage (and therefore payment) for an individual’s care, which has been deemed necessary by their physician. The Insurance companies are, of course, protecting their profitability. The quality of care simply gets in the way of this mission.
So here we are at another major junction in the political arena where once again we have a big push toward national health care, only this time there is much more support than there has been in the past. The argument that only free enterprise can provide the necessary competition that will insure that the U.S. will stay on the cutting edge with their quality of healthcare doesn’t wash.
As for any progress made in the medical fields-most progress is made at our universities through their research programs, many of which are government funded. Many of these discoveries made in university studies wind up being patented by pharmaceutical companies which had little or nothing to do with the research. But it is legal for them to patent the concept, idea or new drug so it becomes that company’s intellectual property and therefore does not remain in the public domain.
The FDA has compounded the problem by championing a law stating that only a drug can cure a disease. So if any doctor or a group of doctors discover a cure for any disease that involves, say, a high protein diet with purified water accompanied by a period of rest followed by an aggressive exercise program in fresh air-the FDA might just shut them down or sue them. The quality of your care is really a major concern here, don’t you think?
Conservatives love to tout the fact that free enterprise and its intrinsic competition provide the fastest and the most reliable pathway to progress in any field. Truthfully, our healthcare has been in the hands of free enterprise for decades now and it’s an abysmal failure. The private sector has blown it. Their mission is profitability, and the quality of our health care has suffered greatly because of it.
Jim Bell was born in Missouri in 1950 and is a graduate of the University of Missouri with a degree in Creative writing/Journalism. Hespent over 20 years in the newspaper business and worked in production. He now lives in the Denver area with my wife and I run a blog called The Sensible Approach. He says: “I view myself as slightly to the right of center politically. My views are slightly conservative on the economy and foreign policy and liberal on human rights. It is my opinion that life for the average American goes smoother when there is a balance between the Democrats and Republicans in both houses of congress. Our comfort lies in the fact that a balance of power means that both parties must compromise to get anything done.”