More pontification than a 15 minute office visit
Okay, I promised to address the 800 pound gorilla , known as the broken medical liability system in this post.
Regardless of what all the parasites who are currently getting fat off the current system will try to tell you, the civil liability system in this country is a disaster.
Anyone with half a brain and a lawnmower can see this.
A lawnmower?
Yep.
Okay, if you read Part 5 of this series outlining what I affectionately call The Dr. Sam Plan, you know that I promised to offer a quick blurb here in Part 6 about what I envision as a meaningful way to deal with the 800 pound gorilla, known as the medical liability crisis.
I’ll have to do that in Part 7 instead.
First however, I need to offer a brief little addendum to Part 5.
Continue reading ‘A Plan For Intelligent Health Care Reform Part 6′
To recap parts 1-4, so far in this little series, I’ve just been laying some groundwork, pontificating sort of non-specifically about where I think the main problems lie with our health care system and where I think the direction of reform should go.
In a nutshell, I think the major problems boil down to a whole lot of interference with the traditional doctor-patient relationship from outside forces such as third party payers (government and insurance), bureaucratic regulating bodies, a civil liability system that seems to have been designed by Jackie Chiles, and other outside industries such as the pharmaceutical industry, compliance industries etc.
I have compared our health care system with our veterinary health care system and made the contention that the veterinary system is vastly superior in many areas primarily due to a relative lack of such interferences. I contend that it is because veterinarians operate in a nearly free market system where the relationship between the veterinarian and the patient/owner is a direct one, without third party payers or as much government, corporate, or civil liability interference and fears, veterinarians are much more responsive to the needs and demands of their clients and clients are much more responsible with the money when it is coming out of their own pocket. They are much less apt to make needless visits to the ER and demand expensive tests and medications when there is not some nebulous third party footing the bill.
I have also mentioned that within this relative laissez-faire environment there are also some problems that become apparent in the form of people’s too frequent inability or unwillingness to pursue appropriate medical intervention due to financial considerations.
With this post I intend to finally start delving in with some ideas for bringing all this stuff together to try to come up with some solutions for creating a plan for intelligent health care reform. Continue reading ‘A Plan for Intelligent Health Care Reform Part 5′
Hi folks.
I still haven’t finished my series on health care reform which starts with A Plan For Intelligent Health Care Reform Part 1, and continues with parts 2-4. There are indeed more parts coming, but those posts tend to run long and are somewhat labor intensive not only for me to write, but I’m sure for you to read.
Also, mine is not a blog dedicated solely to health care system reform, but rather has a mission to touch on many more topics. I don’t want folks who are looking for advice on how to stay healthy, or who are looking for commentary of recent medical news and breakthroughs, etc. to get turned off of this blog by encountering a never ending stream of posts containing my long-winded pontifications about how to fix a health care system so broken that it’s repair has been the dominant topic of every presidential election for the past two decades.
So, this brief post will not be about health care reform. Rather it is a follow up post to my previous stop smoking post. This is probably my shortest post so far I think. It is here really to just provide you with a link to another blogger whose writings I find valuable and enjoy reading. He has written a post titled Smoke Scream.
If you are a smoker and are contemplating quitting, please read this post. I sincerely hope it will help influence you to quit.
That’s it for this post (told you it was short). More health care reform pontification coming up soon!
Cheers,
…Sam
Okay folks, in part 3 of this series on my plan for intelligent health care reform, I promised to try and keep this 4th post a bit shorter. I will endeavour to do that.
Up till now, I’ve been basically pointing out problems with our health care system, and also ranting about all the horrible plans and ideas being floated out there in the mainstream media and political land to “fix” them.
Not to sound like a broken record, but if you haven’t read parts 1-3 in this series, please do so now so this one will make a bit more sense and be read in context.
Anyway, to bring folks up to speed since it’s been almost a week since my last post, this whole series owes it’s life to an editorial I read in the Journal of Family Practice in which the editor, Jeff Susman, outlines his pleasurable experience with taking his dog to the veterinarian.
Continue reading ‘A Plan for Intelligent Health Care Reform Part 4′
If you haven’t read A Plan for Intelligent Health Care Reform Part 1 and Part 2 yet, please read them first, before proceeding with this post.
Sorry for the delay in getting this 3rd post up folks. The blame for that lays partly with a surge in activity in my off-line life concomitant with my fighting a nasty cold. (Also, I’ve recently been helping my friend get her website and blog about bargain wine reviews up and running. Go check it out if you get a minute. She’s got a pretty nice site I think.)
This stupid virus and my busy life only receive part of the blame however, as the bulk of the reason for my delay boils down to simple inertia on my part. When trying to piece together this third post in my mind, I have quite frankly been a bit overwhelmed by the complexity.
Continue reading ‘A Plan For Intelligent Health Care Reform Part 3′
