Since the beginning of time we have always had some type of health care. Someone gets sick or hurt a doctor of sorts would help the individual. Everyone got paid for their services. Helping someone in need was a service rendered, you got a chicken, some firewood, a goat or milk or eggs, whatever the individual had and the doctor needed. Everyone was happy.
So what happened? Time happened. Greed happened. Doctors were uplifted to a higher level of class, they would no longer be satisfied with just a chicken or a load of firewood. Things changed, people treated doctors differently, not like just another professional in the town, a plumber, carpenter, electrician, storekeeper, no the doctor was put upon a pedestal. What made the doctor different? The people made the doctor different.
Health care had begun to take on a big change, we the people changed it, we were grateful for their services and in our feelings of gratefulness we made the mistake of moving the doctor from an ordinary citizen to an extraordinary person. This was the beginning of our escalation of health care prices. The ego of the doctors quickly spread and so did the prices, after all were they not worth such a price for what they were doing? People did not argue with it, they did not question the good doctor, they just found the money and paid the price. The more the price was paid the more the price was justified.
Hospitals ran the same course as the doctors, they deserved to get well paid, they too were giving patients care they could not get elsewhere, and did they not deserve such a price? People did not have to agree, they only had to not disagree, not argue, just pay the price, that in turn justified the costs.
Insurance came into the picture and there was no questioning the prices being charged, the price of the insurance reflected the costs being paid to the doctors and hospitals. As the hospitals and doctors soon realized anything goes, charge it and you get it. Prices for insurance went up accordingly.
As prices began to escalate out of control, insurance companies would deny coverage, people could not get the care or they lost their homes, their savings to pay for the care they could not get through insurance. The term - your money or life - became a common term. No one really did anything about the situation, except to complain to each other. Then the complaining got into the government, after all the government will fix things, right?
The problem is the government can not fix things, they can only meddle with things, make things worse. Government fixes things with money, throw money at a situation and that will fix it. Problem is that the money the government fixes things with is always the tax payers money, our money. Why do we want the government to use our money to fix something? Why would we give up our money, if we want to give our money to someone for something we can easily do it on our own, not demand it from us. The problem with health care is not throwing money at it, the problem has always been too much money is being made for services rendered that are ordinary, not extraordinary.
The answer is to bring health care back to being an ordinary profession, one that gives care to humans in the name of science and humanity, not in the name of ego for the justification of high prices. We need to do a little surgery of our own on prices of health care. No more 10, 20 or 30 dollar asprins or bandaids, no more doctor visits that last 6 minutes that cost the patient 250 plus dollars which the doctor sees the patient less than one minute or two to give a prescription, no more ordering tests and getting paid to order them - that costs near nothing to write a prescription, no more tests unless they are truly needed, no more 1,000 plus dollars for an xray or MRI (the machines cost a lot we know but there is a thing called cost averaging),cancer care does not have to cost thousands a visit, no one shot costs 4,000 dollars or more, the list goes on ...... in the end costs will go down. A visit to the doctor will finally cost what it really is valued. Hospital charges will go down accordingly. Insurance companies will finally charge premiums that equal the true cost of health care. Competition will take over and people should be able to find a company where ever they please keeping every company competitive in price and quality.
Free enterprise will take over, doctors will return to a respected position in the town, people will no longer fear the doctor rather they will appreciate them once again as an ordinary citizen doing an ordinary profession helping humanity in our quest to be a better America in the land of the free where Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness reins.
