Why US Healthcare is so messed up. (1 Viewer)

Optimus Prime

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Very interesting article.
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The United States healthcare system is completely broken; it has become a huge money pit, with insurance companies, pharmaceutical corporations and greedy lawyers at the bottom filling their pockets. Mind you, I do not blame the practitioners or their staff, because they do an exceptional job, even when they are sleep deprived from working doubles.

Is our health a commodity?

Healthcare is a strange commodity. If you are starving, you can’t walk into a restaurant and demand a hamburger, and you certainly can’t walk into a steakhouse and demand a ribeye. If your water gets shut off, you can’t walk into a gym’s locker room and demand a shower and use of their shampoo.

If you can’t afford a cell phone, you can’t bust up into a Sprint store and demand to see Dan Hesse the CEO. But in healthcare, if you think you need care, regardless of actual physical acuity (severity), you can go to a hospital and they have to give you the best care they can provide, by law, and for FREE!.

11 reasons why healthcare is broken

Today I’m going to talk about 11 reasons why I think healthcare has been down in the gutter for so many years.

1. Insurance companies - In a short-sighted view, insurance rates are a big problem. They cost so much that people outside of large business plans cannot get coverage unless they’re in perfect shape, under 40, and have no family history of medical problems. Which, given that last qualifier, discounts pretty much everyone. However, simply saying insurance rates are the problem is like saying inflation is the reason things cost so much; you’re actually only describing an effect of a larger system of problems, not the problem itself........


2. Excessive regulation - Not saying all regulation is bad, but, for example, the criteria for becoming a medical practitioner is way too strict. There is no reason why I should need eight years of schooling to say, “Hey, you have an ear infection. Take this for a week.”

Probably half the nurses at most hospitals could handle a lot of the GP work that gets done, but they can’t, because the government doesn’t allow them to. When it takes a couple hundred grand in education costs to become a doctor, doctors are going to demand a $%#! Ton of compensation for their services.

When doctors demand a %@#! Ton, it drives the cost of health care up. If we opened up certain branches of healthcare to people who can do the work even without all the schooling, it would drive costs down for at least some forms of healthcare................


11 Reasons Why Our Healthcare System is So $&@%#! Up - referralMD
 
There are a ton of reasons why it is messed up. Almost every single American has a part in it being messed up. We love to point the finger at the insurance companies but that is only one of the multitude of problems.

Lets start with the poor. Too often they fail to go to the free clinic for a minor ailment and then must rush to an emergency room for treatment.

Doctors. I know of two situations with me personally that shows the games they can play. I once had a cyst on my knee, probably an ingrown hair. I go see this female doctor and she hands me a script for antibiotics and tells me to come back in a few weeks if it is not better. I go back in a few weeks and she thinks it is getting better. I disagree but who am I to argue. Another round of antibiotics and it is not getting better. I find a new doctor, tell him to lance the damn thing open and drain it. He does and I am good to go. Three office visits and two rounds on antibiotics.

Second situation. I had a few moles that i wanted checked out. Go to the doctor and he removes a small sample from each one and sends it off to be checked. I go back in two weeks to get the results and they are all benign but he wants to remove them anyway. Then why in the hell did you not remove them the first time. I was already there and you had already deadened the area, remove the things and be done with it. Of course I had a 20 dollar office co-pay and a 4 dollar prescription card so what did I care. This leads me to the next problem.

Insurance policies with low low copays. People are running to the doctors for everything now days. There is a pill for everything. Feeling a little tired, go see your doctor and he will give a script instead of just trying some vitamins. Eat ghost chilies every weekend then go to the doctor because you have heartburn.

Back to doctors. They like the fancy CT scanning machines and MRI machines in their office. These things are a fortune but they don't care. They have patients lining up in the waiting room and guess what, everyone of them will need a scan.

The list goes on and on but it all centers around selfishness and greed by all parties.
 
One thing that bothers me in particular:
Drug companies can advertise/push their drugs through the media to consumers without any input from a doctor. That's messed up.
 
One thing that bothers me in particular:
Drug companies can advertise/push their drugs through the media to consumers without any input from a doctor. That's messed up.

yep, but corporations are people and, as such, they have the right to free speech unencumbered by any responsibility for the truth.

Still, I agree. It also makes me sick that they're actively inventing ailments and illnesses so they can recycle drugs.

Restless leg syndrome.

wth
 
when i was really sick i had more than one doctor give me scripts for anything and everything. i had a "fill in" dr on one visit..she literally asked me if i needed anything..meaning pills for pain and anxiety. i told her point blank..i smoke marijuana for that..she had no issues. and i cut down my doctors visits for every three months instead of every 60 days for a bloodwork checkout..i don't drive these days and it was talking a toll on my brides hours at work..bloodwork,specialists and my primary..

i do think it's a racket to a certain extent of the program...thankfully, i don't have much in co-pays..i feel sorry for the folks that do..

peace
 
Restless leg syndrome.

wth

and the fact that the medicine for this, one of the side effects is impulse to gamble.
maybe the casino industry has a hand in this disorder..

it seems like everytime I go to a new doctor (moved around a few times and not driving across BR just to see a doctor), he seems perplexed that I'm not on ANY medication.. one wrote me a prescription for high blood pressure medicine because i was almost borderline.. seriously? I asked him if I really needed it and he says well, just in case.. so on the way out, I crumpled it up and dropped it in the waste basket next to the receptionist desk..
another time my daughter had the flu (during the whole swine flu fiasco) and the doctor tested her for it, and it came back negative. but gave me a prescription for it anyway. went to the pharmacy, and insurance didn't cover it and it was $100.. told the pharmacist to put it back.. that was just rediculas...
pharmaceutical companies are one of the reasons healthcare is messed up..

Sent from my Samsung Infuse using Tapatalk 2
 
One thing that bothers me in particular:
Drug companies can advertise/push their drugs through the media to consumers without any input from a doctor. That's messed up.

Isn't it illegal for drug companies in Europe to advertise to the public?
 
Health Care is messed up because they make more money "treating you" instead of "curing you" When is the last time a major disease was cured? For instance, I go to the dermatologist, she looks at my face for 5 minutes, cuts me a script, 75$ total with the script(I got lucky)

Prior to going to this dermatologist, I did a little research, the prices were insane. One place just for a visit wanted 150$(the place on met road by Domino's). Another place another forum member here suggested wanted 120$, this is just to see me. I finally found someone on North Causeway, they charged 55$, it was the cheapest out of 10 dermatologist offices I called. The price discrepancy is ridiculous between each office I called.

So on my visit, she tells me how she wants to schedule me for three visits, she gives me sample cream, a script with two refills, right away I'm not playing that game of being nickled and dimed. I take my pills(Minocycline) which worked, I don't plan on going back.

I guess my point is, instead of trying to cure something straight up, they wanted me to commit to multiple visits before I left which I ultimately said "we'll see". She knew right away what I had, so why not tie this all up in one visit? she wanted to turn a 55$ visit into a lot more despite her already telling me basically what I had.
 
Isn't it illegal for drug companies in Europe to advertise to the public?

I wish that was the case here, but I can't help feeling like the ads are at least informative (sometimes) when one is skeptical but curious.

I'm getting sick of all these 'low testosterone' products. Seems like something you should actually go to the doctor for, instead of self-medicating with mail-order snake oil.
 
yep, but corporations are people and, as such, they have the right to free speech unencumbered by any responsibility for the truth.

Still, I agree. It also makes me sick that they're actively inventing ailments and illnesses so they can recycle drugs.

Restless leg syndrome.

wth

How about pre-hypertension and pre-diabetes?
 
Drug companies can advertise/push their drugs through the media to consumers without any input from a doctor.
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Drug companies can advertise/push their drugs through the media to consumers without any input from a doctor.
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This is true. They are even behind new conditions (listed above), that give them even bigger markets. But people like their drugs. People want their zpack for their cold. They come to the doctor for vomiting once. They want antibiotics for their kid with fever. And it's in the doctor's interest to keep them happy (they get a customer, and the patient will go to a different doctor if they don't comply). Plus, the doctor might as well over treat and overdiagnose, since the doctor doesn't want to get sued.
 
#9 on that list is spot on. Its what I deal with every day. I don't think many of you realize how terrible it all really is. Cost, and otherwise. It firms are having a field day making big $$ of new regs, and requirements for EMR/EHR. Offices sometimes waste entire months sorting out thee EMR systems via tech support just to be able to function normally, and I know of one case that an office had to wait 30 days to file medicare claims.

Whats not on that list is the effect of schooling costs for Doctors. If there's ever a ripple in a pond effect, its that one.
 

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