by James Hall
Hospitals are now government subsidized monopolies. They have little to do with improving the health of patients but have everything to do with dispensing pharmaceutical industry drugs and treatments. The net result is that small and rural hospitals must merge into mega facilities in order to achieve economy of scale or close altogether because fewer Americans can afford health insurance coverage. Federal and State subsidizes are mounting in a futile attempt to pay for the deficits that arise in providing medical costs for an aging population. This formula has only one outcome, BANKRUPTCY.
At the core of the failed medical culture is the reliance on chemical compounds plagued by dire side effect prescriptions and marketed as miracle drugs. Often the only marvel is that a patient does not die quicker. In order to achieve a healthy lifestyle, the food diet and digested requires a fundamental revamping of what is eaten, how it is processed and most important, what to avoid.
This approach conflicts with the incessant drive to create even bigger bureaucracies and more complex regulations and requirements for access to medical services.
Basing this system on an insurance model guarantees insolvency of a private sector delivery system. Government is all too eager to assume (using their flawed general welfare claim) that schemes like Medicare, Medicaid and Obamacare are necessary to pay for and provide medical coverage. The fact that this argument simply does not work should be self-evident.
Hospitals project that their form of treatments are proven. The problem is that their notion of tested practices usually ends up in a body bag. Government funding for Ayurvedic, Homeopath, Massage therapist, Hypnotherapist, Naturopath and Osteopath physicians/practitioner are usually outside the protective cocoon of the administrative boards and foundations connected with medical citadels.
Therapy using alternative methods demand that a sick person or one seeking treatment for some illness mostly pay out of pocket. Around 40 percent of Americans lacked dental insurance at the end of 2012, according to the National Association of Dental Plans. That’s compared to 12.9 percent without health insurance, according to the latest figures from Gallup – May 20, 2015.
If the consumer was actually paying with their own funds for the services and fees administered, the marketplace of costs would be much more responsive to a real or perceived benefit. Hospitals for outpatient care add substantial expense and ridiculous administrative overhead for procedures that have been drive up by the excessive rate amounts approved by government programs.
Medical treatment demands a negotiated agreement between the patient and those who practice the art/science of healing. In this age of the breakdown in rational medical delivery, the unsustainable fiasco of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has destroyed the last refuge of even the appearance of cost-effective medicine.
Only a repudiation of the bloated and unaccountable government oversight administration has even a slight chance to establishing a market based relationship between patient invoicing and effective and reduced costs for services.
Hospitals could rent out physical space, labs, examination rooms and treatment facilities to independent physicians or practitioners who would apply their expertise in consultation with the patient. Charges for such services would be the responsibility of those suffering from an illness. In this manner a balance in the relationship that reflects an agreed to value would have the effect to keep invoicing realistic.
Government subsidies only drive up costs. Mega hospitals by consolidating and closing down their rivals add layers of bureaucratic inefficiency and unaccountability, while diminishing choice for treatment with every closing or liquidation.
If patients added up the cumulative billing for hospital, doctor and prescription drugs, and paid such bills with their own funds; they surely would become educated consumers. Saving from opting out of medical insurance would accumulate over the years and grow for the time when such funds might be needed to satisfy whatever treatment option is sought.
The myth that society has a responsibility to make available whatever treatment procedure to cure, prolong or experiment using government funds has guaranteed that national bankruptcy is the inevitable prognosis. Fostering the conditions that close hospital competition is simply developing the “too big to fail” theory applied to medical treatment.
And where is the doctor outrage in this formula? Lawsuit fights “existential threat” to medical staff independence illustrates the trend to squeeze out the last blood dollar from the artificial and government sponsored hospital model.
“The suits stems from actions taken Jan. 26, 2016, when the Tulare Regional Medical Center (TRMC) board of directors voted to terminate the hospital’s medical staff organization and effectively remove the hospital’s elected medical staff officers, install a slate of appointed officers, and approve new medical staff bylaws and rules drafted without staff input.
Except for the newly appointed officers, the rest of the staff was then terminated, stripped of their rights as active members and then granted “provisional” status as part of the new medical staff which they had not applied or consented to membership with, according to a post-trial brief filed by the TRMC Medical Staff.
The replacement bylaws also contained a provision, since amended, that physicians could achieve and maintain “active” status by proving their economic value to the hospital, according to the brief—which described that provision as “basically, an illegal kickback scheme.”
“If you could imagine hospital medical staff bylaws written by hospital lawyers, this is what they would look like,” Do said. “Doctors shouldn’t be making decisions on patient care based on hospital profitability.”
The net result is to force out the regional, rural or independent facilities and structure the supra corporate hospital into a partnership with government, where other clinics need not apply. This Is not exactly a M*A*S*H, medical emergency unit, but more closely resembles a sanatorium of demented technocrats. Save health services by converting them into alternative medicine facilities. Cancel your health insurance and start saving to pay for a future illness. Get government out of the health care business and return sanity so the sick can decide just what treatment they want.
James Hall – March 28, 2018