HEALTHCARE REFORM

IS HEALTHCARE REFORM POSSIBLE? CAN WE MAKE HEALTHCARE BETTER AND MORE AFFORDABLE FOR SELF SUFFICIENT PATIENTS?

WAIVERS AND CONSENT FORMS YOU SIGN AT THE DOCTORS OFFICE THAT ALLOW THEM AND THEIR
NURSES TO DO ANYTHING THEY WANT TO YOU WITH IMPUNITY

There is this argument that we need to sign a thousand waivers at hospitals and doctors offices to ensure they can practice medicine “with  impunity” and not be deterred by risk of ruinous litigation as long as they are doing their job right and following professional procedures mandated by official medical science.

On the surface it seems like a reasonable compromise:  we know that very few patients and their families are understanding enough if despite doctor’s best efforts they don’t get the desired result. In other words but for all these documents waiving doctors’ liability they would be buried in frivolous lawsuits and would not be able to practice medicine.  Its also true, however, that in current legal climate with all the waivers in place and medical malpractice insurance in place and extreme unwillingness of medical malpractice attorneys to take on these contingency based cases (they don’t get paid unless they settle or win trial) – the availability of legal recourse if something goes gravely wrong is very very limited.  This means that as long as doctors and hospitals don’t forget scissors in your stomach or don’t amputate the wrong foot, they are virtually immune from liability. 

To make matters worse, if they overmedicate you to get kickbacks from pharmaceutical companies AND to ensure further legal immunity, there is nothing you can do.  Modern medical science is very sophisticated but its still not precise enough to ensure the desired result from particular method of treatment.  Advanced cancer treatments may be very effective but given the complex nature of cancer cells and body response to treatment there is absolutely no guarantees of success. Seemingly, the doctors can’t be blamed for sad results in cases like these as long as they detected cancer timely and applied the best methods available to treat it. 

The problem is, however, that in most cases where hospitals and doctors fail, it’s not as dramatic as prescribing completely wrong medication, removing the wrong organ from your body or forgetting scissors in your stomach.  Doctors’ malpractice in these cases is bad enough to substantially damage your health, but not bad enough for any medical malpractice attorney to take your case because those attorneys have to work hard for free for many months to see any settlement offers and if the case is not egregious enough, they won’t see them and don’t want to risk wasting all this effort and money for nothing. In addition, because you already signed so many waivers signing your life away to medical professionals, even if something egregious happens, you assumed the risk of its happening and have no right to even seek legal assistance.

This means that under current system in most cases of medical malpractice, patients lose. 

On the other hand, if you remove all the waivers and lower the bar for patients’ eligibility to sue doctors and hospitals, the costs of already extremely expensive healthcare will become unbearable because doctors and hospitals insurance rates will go up tenfold plus many will leave medical profession or not even want to become doctors which will in addition to through the roof costs will cause inevitable and drastic shortages of medical professionals.

We all want our doctors to be deterred from being negligent not only by their own conscience but by expanded liability for their mistakes or lack of care. How can this be done without increasing the costs of healthcare? 

To answer this question, we should look into why is our healthcare system so expensive?

DEVASTATING EFFECTS OF OBAMACARE

Everyone is concerned about it but populist solutions to this problem like Obamacare or Medicaid expansion didn’t work.  Obamacare was an attempt to spread around the costs of healthcare to make lower income people contribute at least something and be covered in response. Rather than making healthcare more affordable, the affordable care act made it a  LOT MORE EXPENSIVE.  

What happened was that while low income people began contributing due to healthcare mandate, they contributed very little and yet became fully covered siphoning the amount of resources disproportionate to their contribution to the system. As a result everyone else had to shoulder the expensive burden of caring for parasites who could not afford to pay their fair share for their own medical insurance and medical services.

In addition, medical professionals didn’t want to take Obamacare based coverage since it was low quality coverage that didn’t pay well enough to doctors.

The additional costs of healthcare came from repeal of pre-existing condition grounds for denying health coverage. 

Obamacare is very populist in nature because it promised freebies to parasites who  want others to pay for their treatment and don’t want to be self -sufficient. 

Populist measures like Obamacare led to tripling and quadrupling of health insurance costs, and ruined our healthcare system as well as middle class finances making us pay for parasites’ healthcare.

In such an environment adding costs by opening up doctors to real liability for their mistakes will cause further devastation. Therefore, to expand patient rights, we need to dismantle Obamacare making healthcare actually more affordable for every self- sufficient individual. 

We also need to address the abuse of the system by nurses and their unions. Doctors and hospitals are expensive in part because nurses became an entitled and spoiled class.  Due to shortages of nurses, they have been able to extort anti-patient regulations, unjustified pay raises and benefits that bring up the costs of your healthcare.  While they reap all the benefits of their privileged position in the industry, they don’t share any liability for their mistakes and bad attitude – doctors and hospitals atone for all the nurses’ sins !   To protect patients’ rights and reduce healthcare costs, nurses must share the liability for mistakes with their supervising doctors and not only for mistakes but for bad attitude to patients, for being rude and inattentive.

When nurses give you a bad attitude in a hospital, don’t come when you are calling them, when they are negligent, rude, short with you , you should have the right to get them reprimanded, demoted or fired IN YOUR PRESENCE and to sue them into bankruptcy if necessary.  This will deter well paid spoiled and privileged nurses from giving bad attitude and being negligent. As far as shortage of nurses is concerned we can expand importing nurses from Philippines like before and provide work permits for local illegal migrant nurses as long as they meet all the criteria and learn English.

Medical equipment costs should also go down significantly and that can be accomplished by introducing competition from all over the world as long as it meets the American quality standards – right now we are shielding medical equipment industry and it is taking unfair advantage of medical providers .

If Obamacare is repealed, if nurses will also share the liability with the doctors, if low income patients are forced to either personally pay for their healthcare or go to Mexico for treatment, if medical equipment costs will go down, we can expand doctors liability for mistakes and negligence without increasing healthcare costs for patients because cost reductions from other above mentioned measures will compensate for increase in medical malpractice insurance costs.

Healthcare reform

Besides expanding patients’ rights, healthcare reform should address the fundamental unfairness of health insurance industry exacerbated by disastrous Obamacare that all the parasites love so much: it’s the fundamental unfairness of having someone else pay for your healthcare, of forcing healthy people to pay for the sick and forcing more successful people to pay for the low income losers.

Being well paid, or well off is not the only indicator of your success – there are many other measurements like how civilized you are, how well liked you are by people that matter to you, how happy you are in your personal life and how healthy you are.  However, if you are not financially secure enough to pay for your own healthcare and you want someone else to pay for your medical treatment, you are a loser and you are a parasite and no matter how nice or charismatic or loving or loved you are in your relationship with others, you can not be considered a success.  Even if you are elderly, you must have been doing something wrong all your life if you can’t afford to pay your fair share for your healthcare coverage. Perhaps the only exception could be disabled people or minor children who never had any opportunity to work and to have decent income to pay for good health coverage.  However, everyone else should strive to be financially secure enough to avoid being a parasite who causes a populist government to force taxpayers or employers pay for parasites’ health coverage!

Self-sufficient patients who pay for themselves will be getting affordable and quality healthcare when parasitism in healthcare industry is over and those who want others pay for their coverage will either go to Mexico for treatment or die out. We need to start denying medical services to those who don’t deserve quality healthcare and they certainly don’t deserve It when they refuse to be self-sufficient and pay for their coverage proportionately to their health coverage needs.

European government run healthcare systems are failing miserably because they are government run. Patients have no say in getting the right treatment at the right time. Patient’s healthcare is managed by bureaucrats motivated only be desire to save government’s money and provide the cheapest treatment available.  Patients in Europe have to wait longer than medically advisable for their procedures, and they get the lowest quality procedures to save costs. In Holland, there were voices advising the elderly to do euthanasia to save government’s money.

Private and capitalist in nature healthcare system works efficiently.   With the right amount of competition between doctors, hospitals, medical equipment providers and the right amount of liability for doctors and nurses qualified self- sufficient patients enjoy the best quality and most affordable care imaginable.  Those who can not afford their own medical care will need to seek help from their families, go to Mexico where good quality healthcare is supposedly much cheaper or die out, because medical providers must be allowed or even required to deny medical services to non payers!

UNSUSTAINABLE PRICE OF HUMANITY and COMPASSION

Our society is paying unsustainable price for being “humane”.  We force normal , healthy , successful people to pay not only for the elderly or disabled healthcare, but to pay for undocumented migrants healthcare and what is worse to pay for drug addicts, criminals and homeless thugs healthcare and those expenses are HUGE.

In addition to making low income people pay for themselves, we must stop providing any medical services to homeless thugs, drug addicts, homeless thugs and undocumented migrants.

As far as undocumented migrants are concerned – they came here to work; they should get work permits and pay for their health coverage out of their own pocket, they are fully capable of doing so and are willing to do so , as long as we, as  a society provide them with a work permit to earn income.

With other categories however, its different: homeless thugs have no redeeming qualities and are more like pest in our cities; many of them are insane, others are hard core drug addicts and crazy too  ; they spread decease, they violently attack innocent civilians and they trash our cities. Right now the entire money laundering industry of “unhoused care” is run by various shady non profit organizations and government agencies that are living off the “homelessness” problem at our expense. Not only we have to tolerate them and be victims of the homeless thugs in the city but we also have to pay for their healthcare !

Same with drug addicts – they made a decision to use drugs, no one was forcing them to do so – they knew that drugs are addictive and harmful, that drugs will ruin their life and lives of their loved ones and they still irresponsibly decided to experiment with drugs. At the end, they are considered to be “victims” of their own self – inflicted addiction but we are the ones who have to pay for their expensive and recurrent drug treatment !

Same with criminals – why in the world would we provide medical treatment in prisons to violent offenders or to all offenders for that matter who are refusing to pay for their treatment out of their family’s pocket or their own pocket? If they victimize us , why should we pay for their healthcare? 

HOW TO CUT COSTS AND IMPROVE SERVICES BY DENYING SERVICES TO THOSE WHO DON’T WANT OR CAN’T PAY FOR THEIR OWN HEALTHCARE AND SIMPLIFYING THE RULES FOR HEALTHCARE PROVIDERS

If there is a starting point for healthcare reform, it should start with cutting off healthcare those categories of patients who do not deserve to get one due to their misconduct. This is the easiest and most efficient first phase of the reform. The homeless must be moved en mass outside of the densely populated areas and far from our cities in isolated remote areas for permanent housing from where there is no escape. Their healthcare has to be very basic and cheap to society which will probably speed up their demise.  Violent criminals, robbers and thieves should be afraid to go to prison because there they won’t be getting any medical treatment unless their family pays for it. 

Law abiding, but low income people should be getting only the type of healthcare they can pay for – no one should be paying for their medical services. 

Undocumented immigrants are fully capable of paying for their medical services and will need to do so as well.

The elderly who earned enough credits working hard in their lifetime will be getting the care they need because they contributed to the system already. 

The disabled will need some participation from their families, but they are probably the only category that will be getting in part financial support from taxpayers, although to qualify for it they will need to prove their disability beyond reasonable doubt and they will need to prove that their life with disability is worth living : if someone turns into a vegetable permanently or is so disabled from early childhood that they don’t even have consciousness should be supported by their own families, not taxpayer families or get euthanasia. 

Cutting off all these unsustainable categories of people from Medical, Medicare and private insurance coverage while denying medical services to those who can’t afford paying for them will dramatically reduce costs of healthcare for self-sustaining self- sufficient patients and improve quality of medical services for them  . In addition, there should be free competition between healthcare providers, health insurance companies, medical equipment manufacturers and drug companies from other states and countries. If all protectionist measures are dropped while quality control is maintained, drug prices will also go down dramatically.

There is also no need for medical professional to go through grueling schooling for 12 years to become a professional doctor :  if general education classes and disciplines not directly related to doctors’ specialty in medicine are removed from curriculum , doctors’ schooling time will be reduced in half and will be a lot more affordable plus society won’t be having any shortage of doctors anymore. The licensing requirements will also need to be changed to include only relevant tests to get medical license and remove all the ones that are irrelevant to practicing medicine. As a result we will be getting more qualified doctors in shorter period of time and they won’t need to charge us exorbitant fees to pay back their student loans.

Without parasites whose healthcare is currently being paid for by taxpayers and healthier individuals, healthcare system will become a lot more affordable for everyone, even for low income individuals.

As to the quality of medical services – when doctors won’t be able to hide behind endless waivers and consent forms and will need to compete with many more other doctors in the market, and at the same time doctors won’t be overmedicating us because this won’t help their insurance to cover potential lawsuit, we will be getting a better quality service and at a lower price.

Healthcare system can be fixed if we change our moral values and liberate ourselves from self- inflicted moral responsibility for those who don’t want to pay for their healthcare and/or don’t deserve to be paid for.