How Health Care Works in America, and Why It’s So Bad

Keith Jackson, MD – We all know in our hearts that a well functioning society should reward intelligence and hard work.  This runs counter to the thinking of those who consider this concept aggressively hurtful to the stupid and lazy, but it is something we know should be true. Merit should matter.  Similarly, we know that well functioning medical care should reward good care of the sick and the intelligent pursuit of seeking even better outcomes.  Many things are working against merit-based reward in health care, however.

Capitalistic principles should help reward the best medical practitioners.  After all, in the archetypical example, if you make the best basket, I’m more likely to part with my best pelt in trade.  Merit is rewarded most reasonably with the capitalistic model.  If the doctor is known to provide the best care, he will be the most financially successful. Continue reading

Federal Complexity: The Bane of Health Care

Deane Waldman, MD –  U.S. healthcare has become a never-ending nightmare. Our politicians blame each other for unaffordable costs and excessive spending without ever admitting that Washington itself is the culprit.

Health care as two words is the patient-doctor interaction. It encompasses the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of illness or injury. Health care is inherently and necessarily complex, which is why patients need doctors.

Healthcare as one word is the system. It too is incomprehensibly complex, but its complexity is intentional, artificial, unnecessary, and a massive waste of money. If the patient (buyer) and doctor (seller) were connected directly without a third-party (payer) in between, healthcare complexity would virtually disappear. Continue reading

California Emergency Rooms Overwhelmed With Wait Times Averaging Five And A Half Hours

health careJonathan Turley – Remember when national health care was going to finally clear our emergency rooms? It has not exactly worked out that way, particularly in California. While there are clearly other benefits from national health care, the hope that people would turn to regular medical visits rather than ER visits has not materialized in California where the average wait time is five and a half hours.

An astonishing 57% of patients left before seeing a doctor due to the delay — that constitutes roughly 352,000 persons leaving without fully addressing their medical conditions.

Emergency room visits grew 20 percent from 2012 to 2017. That translates to an additional 2.4 million patients on top of the already over-taxed hospitals.

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The United Kingdom’s Cautionary Socialized Medicine Tale

Great BritainSarah Lee and Charlie Katebi – As Vermont senator Bernie Sanders (I) continues to tout the so-called benefits of “Medicare for All” — despite its exorbitant costs and the fact that the next generation of progressive socialists have no idea how they’re going to pay for it — the United States would do well to look across the pond to see exactly what socialized medicine will bring: rationed care, scarce resources, and doctor visits that could include you and 14 strangers.

According to reports, the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS), championed by progressives as the paragon of socialized medicine, is intending to include in its upcoming 10-year plan a scheme that will effectively mandate group primary care visits, which could include as many as 15 patients meeting with one general practitioner (GP) at a time. Continue reading

Non-urgent health care services being put on hold across the UK as state-run health care nightmare edges toward collapse

health careLance D Johnson – The National Health Service in New England has put a hold on non-urgent health care services, as the state-run healthcare system edges toward collapse. State officials have instructed hospitals across the country to delay non-emergency procedures and only deal with emergency patients first. About 55,000 operations are to be put on hold in January as England’s health system goes into full rationing mode.  There aren’t enough hospital beds or staff to accommodate the mounting pressure of a sick and dying population.

Historically, socialized health care systems that initially promise to care for all people, end up turning people away by the thousands. There is no guarantee that someone will be there to care for you when you need it. This kind of system doesn’t prioritize health self-reliance and therefore become overburdened by dependent patients looking for help that is merely just false hope. The demand for hospital care is also driven by the great deception of flu vaccines, which have spawned a weakened, malnourished populace, prone to mutating pathogens. Continue reading