Healthcare, STFUG!

It's a very complex issue.

I would tend to disagree on your assertion that folks are any less or more sick than they once were on the whole. What I think is going on is that people are sick in new and interesting ways that didn't used to exist, and in ways that don't exist in the third world. Just as sanitation takes care of dysentery and other bacteria-related illness, so does it increase the cases of different bacterial problems such as internal flora imbalance, acid reflux (H. Pylori), and all the other fun intestinal disorders of the 1st world such as intestinal arythmia, IBS, Crone's disease, so on and so forth. For even more added fun, as the richest, most grossly consumeritis-plagued country on the planet, we've more or less turned to a food-supply of total artificial shit. This causes a grotesque disproportionate increase in obesity, heart disease and all the other great symptomatic illnesses like ADD and other brain-imbalance diseases that we're now learning are heavily linked to artificial coloring and flavoring in our foods.

On top of all THAT.. if people have all-encompassing health care, they are much more inclined to use it (especially when it's expensive.. what the fuck am I paying for, if I can't use this shit?). So, you get waiting rooms and emergency rooms filled with people who have non-critical viral problems (i.e., the common cold) but they are sucking up doctor-hours and driving up the cost of services. We really need to move (and are, btw) to a system of huge deductibles and self-met minimum outpayment so that people are less inclined to go to the doctor for every little ache and bullshit cold they have so they can get ineffective antibiotics.

Which brings us to what is really driving the price of healthcare up in this country. Two things:

First, the pharmecuticals are in bed with the politicans and are price-gouging the public.. because they can. This is a many-faced problem, not the least of which is the non-visible and indirect way in which we all eat the costs. It isn't like most anyone has to actually pay the cost of the prescription.. we (or our employer) pay a monthly rate that is established in no small part by the total aggregate costs of these outrageously priced prescriptions. But, because we don't directly have to think about the costs (it's built in to our insurance premiums).. "we" don't give a shit.

Second, the legal atmosphere in this country is such that we sue first and ask questions later.. much like the "first" problem.. people can't see the forest through the trees. The cause and effect are so disconnected and obfuscated that when juries make rediculous punitive awards in legal cases, everyone gets all happy and giddy.. not connecting the dots right back to their own healthcare costs and paycheck. The consumer gets the shit end of the stick in all regards, but because "I GOT MINE, SO FUCK OFF!" seems to be the ruling mentality of "the people" these days, no one gives a damn about the greater effects of their actions. People sue their doctors for all kinds of shit that isn't the doctors faults (this is not to say that things don't happen where people DO deserve awards and damages.. because they do).. it's pretty much automatic that if a baby is born with any kind of defect, a malpractice attorney is talking into their ear before they are even out of the hospital. So, you get situations where the malpractice insurance companies are forced to make huge sums of hush-payments and/or actual damage award payments.. which gets passed on to the doctors in the form of premium increases.. which then is attempted to get passed on to the consumer in the form of increased cost of services.. but, oh.. shit. That means that our insurance premiums are going up, and the costs of all these lawsuits are actually going to be paid by the general public? Fuck that! Time to strike! And, of course the union reps are too happy to stoke the fires of employees vs. employers instead of talking about what the real issues are. Divide and conquer.

Anyway. Man. Don't get me started, eh?


On the plus side.. I just had an old client track me down after me not being in the business for 2+ years just to thank me for talking him into making beneficial changes to his policy. He got t-boned by a cabbie running a red light and due to the changes we made, he hasn't been one dollar out of pocket. It was weird to be "talking shop" after all this time, but I was really glad to have been a help to this guy. Weird to get that call, but good-weird.