Consequences of the end of cash-on-the-barrelhead medicine In the past, I've written long and loud about the slow extinction of fee-for-services medicine in this country. Gone are the days when doctors hung out a shingle and competed in the marketplace, just like plumbers, carpenters, and every other trade or service. In this day and age, the natural checks and balances of simple capitalism are gone from the medical arena. That's one reason why prices for medical treatment are so high: There's no competition anymore, just a bunch of big-money insurance companies endlessly driving costs upward. Why? Because insurance is a racket. Armies of pointy-headed actuaries spend careers crunching numbers to make sure that claims payouts are ALWAYS far less than what comes in every month in premiums. It's like a casino that way - only way more profitable. Seriously, did you ever stop to think about what a scam insurance is? I mean, just look at the headquarters of most insurance companies - they're monuments to pure profit. And let's not forget for a second that the Empire State Building was named for an insurance company. Yet it wasn't all that long ago when there was no such thing as health insurance. And in those days, you could get medical care at a reasonable price. Not anymore. Today, if you don't pay into some kind of health insurance plan (and many times even if you do), you're risking financial ruin if you get sick or injured. Doubt me? Consider this: According to a Harvard University study of 2001 data, half of all personal bankruptcies in the U.S. were caused at least in part by medical bills. And in more than three quarters of these cases, the victims HAD HEALTH INSURANCE! That's right: Even WITH some sort of health coverage, thousands of folks are still bankrupted by illness or injury. If this isn't proof of how outrageously inflated the cost of health care is in this country, I don't know what would be. These findings point to a fundamental, systemic breakdown in the American health-care system. And as usual, some of the most outspoken critics of the system are also the most misguided about the right solution. Today, the battle cry of the bleeding-heart left (who arrogantly consider the health care issue their sole property) is "universal health coverage," which is nothing more than socialized medicine. The real solution, however, is a return to the days of honest competition; of cash-on-the-barrelhead, fee-for-service medicine; of doctors having the power to heal using ANY means at their disposal - without having to check with some number-cruncher first. But if that fails, you could always do what one California woman did… **************************************************** Can't pay the tab? Overstay it instead Sarah Nome has been in the hospital for more than a year, but there's nothing wrong with her… She simply refuses to leave! According to an MSNBC.com article, the healthy 82 year-old was given her discharge papers over a year ago, yet continues to rack up expenses totaling more than a million dollars. The reason? She can't afford to pay the bill, so she's staying put. And since Nome can't walk as a result of an accident 3 years ago, the hospital has been reluctant to roll her out into the street. She was hospitalized for a weeklong psychiatric evaluation - wrongfully, she claims - by a nursing home where she was living (that evaluation deemed her in good mental health, by the way). Since she's suing the nursing home for wrongfully hospitalizing her, they won't take her back, leaving her with nowhere to go but the bed she's been in for a year. Apparently, the hospital has tried everything to get rid of Nome short of forcibly removing her. They've cut off her TV and newspaper privileges. They've sued her for the unpaid medical bills. They've gotten a judge to sign off on her eviction. They've even tried to find her a new home… Yet still she remains, costing them 100 grand a month or so. More, when you add up not only Nome's unpaid bills, but the money they're losing by not being able to fleece others using her bed and room. Sounds a little like poetic justice, doesn't it? Remembering good medicine, William Campbell Douglass II, MD
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