The American medical system is by far the world's most expensive,but
is nowhere near the top in the coverage extended or the health
actualized. There are several reasons for this.
First of all, America has a private health system. According to
economics, that should result in competition driving down costs and
enhancing the quality; but neither have been happening. This would
indicate either that there are things that mess with the competition,
or that health care is better done differently. In case of American
medical system, both are the case.
As has been said, a private health system becomes a market for selling
of life and death. There are many people who are afraid, sometimes
legitimately, of single-payer system or socialized medicine. But these
do not have to be the only two options. Australia has an arrangement
that works. There is a public health system and a private health
system, and they coexist side by side. The first makes sure that
everyone gets the care they need; the second allows people who want to
choose their doctors and their treatment to be able to do so. Thus,
the two main health needs - for universal coverage, and for individual
choice - are addressed. A person who wants high quality coverage can
choose to pay for it. Everyone else gets treated with minimal charge.
This, offers promise. But there are other issues that are endemic to
America that need to be dealt with first at the market level. And the
main one is this: That medicine in America has been cartelized. AMA is
limiting artificially the number of doctor licenses. Which means that
there are not enough doctors to go around, and those who do are both
overworked and charge through the roof.
Becoming a doctor in America is an ordeal. The length and expense of
medical education makes it possible for very few people, as do the
requirements necessary to get accepted into medical school. A person
intending to become a doctor must spend 10 years training for up to 16
hours a day, take on loan burden sometimes reaching up to $500,000,
somehow pay living expenses while carrying an enormous course burden,
and then have to pay it
all off as a doctor while not only doing medicine but also shouldering
bureaucratic and logistical burden that doctors face in America.
Needlessly, many doctors decide that it is rightful for them to charge
through the roof. Or if they don't, they can't even repay their
educational loans.
Because there are not enough doctors to go around, the demand can only
meet the supply at an obscenely high price. Not only that, but the
doctors are overworked, which hurts both their health and the quality
of the treatment. This results in mistakes, which result in injury to
the patient and lawsuit to the doctors. The first hurts the patient;
the second increases the medical costs still more.
The way Medicare and Medicaid are administered only add to the
problem. Now facing the government which many see as an endless
resource, the doctors can charge it as much as they want. This money
only adds to the abuses of the system. Because these programs will pay
any price, taxpayer money is used to fuel medical costs rising, so
that a doubling in the cost of the treatment is accommodated at
taxpayer expense. And that is bad for everyone.
Another huge source of costs is the way death is approached. The
people are hooked up to expensive machines that sup****t not so much
life as a living corpse. With all quality gone from life, with no hope
of recovery, and in horrible pain and sickness, the people are forced
to spend the remainder of their lives in a state of torture. And that
is cruelty against them; it is also a huge burden in costs for the
system.
Because the system is the way that it is, there are now people in
America who go for operations to places like India, in the same way as
there had been people from Canada going to operations in USA in the
past. The latter had been used to show supposed inferiority of single-
payer system; but what's happening now is showing the extent of
American medical system's disarray. That American people would go for
operations in a third-world country, should be a national
embarrassment. And, lest anyone doubt, this also creates an external
source of competition against a system that refuses to fix its
mistakes from within.
To fix the system, two things need to happen. One is that medical
education should be more accessible and affordable, making possible
for more people to become doctors. The other is that people who do not
have resources for private system should be covered. Increasing supply
of doctors by making medical education attainable for more people will
go a long way not only toward making health care more affordable but
also toward improving the doctors' quality of life and minimizing
mistakes spawned of exhaustion. And those who cannot afford to
participate in the private health system, should be given a choice to
do so in a public one.
Ilya Shambat
http://www.myspace.com/ibshambat
http://ibshambat7.blogspot.com
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