Rant: health care

I tweaked my back this morning while putting on socks, getting ready to go to the gym.  Snookums convinced me to go to a chiropractor, something I’ve never done before.  The experience was, shall I say, painless.  The four-page medical history questionnaire was the worst part of it.  I got a couple of x-rays, the chiropractor twisted me a bit, then hooked me to a machine that electrically massaged my back for a few minutes.  He sent me away saying he’d look at my x-rays and I should come back tomorrow.  Pretty ordinary.

But it got me thinking, as I sometimes do, about what is wrong with our health care system.  I think you can sum it up in two words:

Insurance companies.

(Including and especially Medicare).

Insurers are the ones who are driving almost every single patient-unfriendly “advance” in health care.  They’re the ones who dictate which doctors you can see and which ones you can’t.  They’re the ones who determine whether or not treatment is “appropriate.”  They’re the ones who set the treatment prices so low that many general practitioners are barely scraping by.  Meanwhile, companies used to dealing in the free market (Wal-Mart) are lowering prescription prices for lots of drugs to $4.00.  Take a guess why insurance companies didn’t do that first.

Health insurance isn’t the solution.  It’s the problem.  Instead of rushing like lemmings off of the cliff of “universal health insurance,” we need to run as fast as we can away from that cliff.  I wholeheartedly believe that we need to completely scrap the current system of paying for health care.  We need to just blow it up, from its roots to the top of the insurance company skyscrapers.

But, you are no doubt saying, how will everyone afford the health care that they need?  The same way we afford the clothing and the food and the transportation we need.  You need health care, you pay for it.

Heartless.  Scandalous.  How could I possibly be so unfeeling as to suggest that customers actually pay for services?

Easy.  I’ve dealt with insurance companies.  Even the good ones are bad.  The bad ones are positively evil in their callous disregard for patients and caregivers.

I’m OK with the idea of some kind of health safety net to make sure that basic health care needs are always available.  But, we already have that.  If you show up at an emergency room, the hospital is required to treat you regardless of your ability to pay.

What the whole health care argument boils down to in the end is that the “universal health care” advocates want something for nothing.  Or, more accurately, they want to be able to get any  medical procedure they might possibly need AND they want someone else to pay for it.

Blow up the current medical insurance system.  Go back to fee-for-service.  Maybe take another run at mutual insurance societies, but never, ever let those foxes get control of the chicken coop.  And for God’s sake, keep the government out of the business.