You are currently browsing the daily archive for July 12th, 2007.
People are asking if I have seen “Sicko”. I have not, and I probably won’t see it. I like movies for “escape”, so anything that sounds like work isn’t my idea of fun. I hear Mr. Moore has his facts “mostly right”, although he doesn’t always put them into good context, say the critics.
But the movie gets people thinking and asking questions about their health care, which is a good thing.
Despite what we pay for, we rank low in overall health care. I recall a ranking of 37th or so of satisfied nations. I recall a study that shows we are less healthy for our care compared to the British.
Can you imagine, in a country as rich as ours?
Americans want the highest quality care, they want it right away - and they don’t want to pay for it. While we envy countries with socialized medicine with low (if any) medicine costs, we cringe at the notion of paying for such a system. Countries with socialized medicine and national health services have rationed care, and long waiting times for some things. Apparently this is the price for such systems. My Canadian and British colleagues don’t paint idyllic, happy pictures of their systems. Canadians regularly come to Michigan to have procedures they could not wait for back home. A British comedy group has a song with the lyrics “We think the National service is great, our doctor is really super, but you know never know when you may break a hip, so we’re insured up super.”
Ironically, here in Arizona, people often go to Mexico for cheaper prescriptions and dental care. In Michigan people go to Canada for their refills.
If there is some way to fix American health care, I don’t know it. I fear it will merely implode while politicians bitch and patients don’t assert changes.
And the ‘powers that be’ i.e. the insurance companies and HMOs etc. have powerful lobbies to thwart real change.
I don’t have easy answers. I have to work for a living, and I prefer not to give away my livelihood for free, as some people have demanded me to do. Yet I want to be part of the solution.
My biggest gripe right now is insurance companies and their flunkies who determine what I can or can’t do for my patients – based on economics of course. But as long as I take insurance - and patients use insurance, insurance will have power.
What is your biggest issue right now with American health care?
Or don’t you have one, being content with how it is?
