Article on MSNBC

Continuing along the lines of my last post

I saw this article on msnbc.com this morning.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30628634/

It's about people who refuse medical care because they can't afford it.

It reads in part

Just last month, Laskey saw a woman with bronchitis and pneumonia with life-threatening oxygen levels who refused hospital admission because she had no insurance. Even when Laskey arranged for her to have an oxygen kit to take home, the woman turned it down because of the cost.

scary thought and I really don't have answers about what to do with America's health care system.

Part of it probably comes down to lawsuits. 23 years ago I had a friend who's son was a doctor. He decided to give up this obstetrics practice because the insurance was just too high. He had never been sued, but was paying 20k a year in insurance just in case he was. That was 2 decades ago. I don't want to imagine what doctors are paying today. Sometimes the fault lies with the medical people and sometimes it doesn't. I think people are too quick to sue if everything isn't ok. Even if the doctors did everything they could. Payouts on lawsuits raise premiums for all doctors and then medical prices go up. That's one part of the vast puzzle.

Hospitals also have a lot of waste built into their system. Like many business structures they are bloated organizations and the costs get passed on to the consumers - in this case patients.

We don't have socialized medicine, but the government's interference has influenced medical costs negatively. Medicare/medicaid have very low pay rates and the this leads to the costs transferring to private care paitients.

Lots of other little pieces to this puzzle and I don't know how we are going to solve it.

One of the most popular buttons I sell says "America's national health care plan....Don't get sick" Sad to say, but I think far too many people have to live with this thought. It's especially sad that we have potentially some of the greatest health care in the world. Even so, many people in this country find medical tourism to be a better alternative the health care at home.