The Killing of America: The Healthcare Money Game
Thursday, June 19th, 2008The way it is: I was very distressed when I learned of the plight of a friend of mine. He complained to his doctor about pain in his extremities. The doctor diagnosed gout. My friend changed his diet eliminating saturated fats and red meat. In fact, he adopted a mostly vegetarian diet. The pain didn’t go away.
Now, I don’t know about you but at this point alarm bells would be going off in my head, especially when the doctor continued to attribute the pain to gout. Gout is caused by uric acid. The reduction of meats and fat that my friend had made should have drastically reduced uric acid production.
A new symptom came to light. The swelling and pain my friend was experiencing in his joints got worse. The doctor said it was nothing to worry about. It was just the gout. Because my friend was on Medicare, the doctor did not run a panel of tests on liver function, kidney function and blood chemistry.
A few weeks later my friend stubbed his toe. It turned black. He rushed to the hospital where doctors were forced to amputate his foot due to an aggressive infection. Tests showed that his kidneys were failing. My friend has been in the hospital for three months.
Why it is this way: Medicare, like so many health insurance programs, is heavily controlled by cost accounting. The first health insurance sector hit by the overwhelming cost accounting influence was the Health Maintenance Organization or HMO. The accountants running HMOs began second-guessing doctors, forcing them to prescribe cheaper medications that were ineffective instead of more costly medications that would cure the situation. To make matters worse, the United States Government has made it impossible to sue HMOs for their wrong doings and drastically reduced benefits for Medicare patients. Additionally, the same cost accountants have reduced coverage and raised premiums at a rate that has left an ever increasing portion of America uninsured or underinsured.
This heavy-handed control of healthcare through cost accounting has created a disparity in health coverage in America. The wealthy can afford the premiums of insurance that provides for quality health care. The middle-class and working poor cannot afford the premiums on insurance plans that provide quality coverage. Employers, in a never-ending search for cost savings have adopted weaker and weaker insurance policies or eliminated them completely.
The way it could be: If a properly formulated universal healthcare insurance system were created by the United States Government, all Americans would receive the same quality healthcare and diagnostic procedures. The wealthy could still buy additional insurance to cover voluntary procedures such as cosmetic surgeries or similar treatments.
If Medicare had not been gutted and universal healthcare insurance was a reality, my friend would have been evaluated with a complete battery of diagnostic tests. The kidney function problems and the factors that caused them would have been caught early enough to begin appropriate medical therapies. My friend would still have his foot!
It doesn’t have to be this way: Contact your Congressional Representatives and Senators (Congressional Email Directory) and tell them to support a fair and equitable universal healthcare insurance program. Insist that all Americans deserve quality healthcare. Write the Presidential candidates and demand universal healthcare.