By Farid Khavari
Healthcare costs are skyrocketing out of control, outpacing inflation at an ever-accelerating rate. Unless this trend is reversed, our obsolete healthcare system will destroy our economy and make healthcare less available in the bargain.
In other words, no healthcare system of any kind can survive unless we can control the rising cost. To bring cost under control, we must take a series of precision and effective, cost-cutting steps to reduce waste, increase productivity, and accessibility.
We must first understand an important fact. All the current healthcare systems and the way they are being administered in this country are influenced by self-serving interest groups. Their main interest is profit above good and affordable healthcare. These highly influential corporations generate huge profits, by paid incentives to healthcare providers to use one product over another, one service over another, or one company over another, etc. with no regard to its merit, your health or your pockets.
Another strong-arm method they use is to influence regulations in government that force change in less than effective ways. And these changes are made hardly in interest of patients gaining better health or affordable healthcare. It is always 100% profit based. The books are full of laws, regulations, codes and procedures that encourage, force and demand inefficiencies in healthcare systems, energy supplies, banking systems, education systems, trade agreements, environmental issues, etc.
It is high time that merit of a product, service, people’s wellbeing and interests become the winning elements again. If a corporation’s product or service can yield better results at a better price, then it should be used. On the other hand, use of convoluted and ridicules regulations to eliminate the competition over a superior product or bribery should be rejected. Forcing them to go back to the drawing board, and develop a better way.
Healthcare systems are filled with bureaucracy that breeds inefficiencies, leading to reduced service, increased costs and unsustainable programs, leaving the tax payer to foot the bill.
The Super-Clinic concept would be built around effective service and efficiency, delivering healthcare in homogeneous multi-specialty facilities, which would be staffed with all types of needed specialists and facilities to complement each other at a drastically reduced cost. The current homogeneous multi-specialty facilities are the most inefficient, ineffective and costly healthcare delivery system, therefore, inaccessible and unaffordable for growing numbers of Americans.
Our existing healthcare system also creates huge uncalculated costs including hundreds of billions of dollars per year in lost production and income, due to people taking times off from work so they can spends hours sitting in a doctor’s waiting room just to see a doctor, or to repeat the same when they are referred to another doctor. SUPER-CLINICS will eliminate these needless costs.
Super-clinics would cut recurring cost such as energy use, communications, billing, payment, record keeping, etc. and optimizing inventory costs by switching or implementing related cost-saving technologies or improving the current methods, leading to drastic cost reduction in quality healthcare delivery. In turn, the cost of health insurance premiums would drop accordingly.
Bottom line, the best practices would be used to yield the best service at the lowest possible cost.
And this will be done without cuts, furloughs and layoffs. Instead we would accomplish a lot more with the current workforce by providing quality healthcare at drastically lower cost; labor cost is not what’s crumbling our healthcare system. Cutting labor cost by having doctors and nurses laid off will not make deficits disappear. It will continue to exist, and will compound the problems, making them even worse.
Because SUPER-CLINICS dramatically reduce costs that do not directly relate to actual healthcare, they can afford more doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals while still lowering the total healthcare bill.
Beyond affordable, quality healthcare, SUPER-CLINICS will immediately create thousands of jobs in Miami-Dade County. These jobs will include thousands of construction jobs including in building SUPER-CLINICS or remodeling existing building, as well as thousands of healthcare professional and workers. These new jobs in turn will create thousands of additional jobs in Miami-Dade County.
SUPER-CLINICS are just one part of THE KHAVARI ECONOMIC PLAN for Miami-Dade County.
Quality, affordable healthcare system based on SUPER-CLINICS, a strong economy, massive employment opportunities, a reduced cost of living, lower cost of alternative energy, an efficient local government, a stable housing market and financial stability are a few of the benefits of hiring a self-thinking economist as your Mayor.
Dr. Farid Khavari is an economist, author of ten groundbreaking books and many articles dealing with economics, environment, healthcare, energy, costs, social costs and many other economical topics. He is a candidate for Miami-Dade County mayor 2012. He has written this article in his capacity as an economist.
