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If you are reading my new op-ed, Mark Medicine will have to diagnose you as being pre-dead, and you can find your 10,000 reward points for your next purchase on your four-foot long receipt, but you'll still owe me a copay. Here are the side effects of continued reading after four shots a year plus two starter doses: You will not die; you may wake your derriere up; you will save on copays and scripts; and you won't be spending hours each day on the hamster wheel that the hospital wants to keep you on.
It's a shame that the next presidential inauguration will occur after the Dec. 15 insurance enrollment deadline, but we can only hope that there will be a radical change in health care before then. We've been living under the tyranny of capitalistic practices of health care (free markets) for several decades, and it hasn't worked. It's time to try the single-payer system.
Most of us remember when the medical and penal systems were singular institutions where the goal is to not have customers. For generations, it has been the ideal for doctors to have empty waiting rooms. However, that philosophy has changed: The doctors and wardens seek to keep you imprisoned (either with pills, constant testing and endless check ups or in a cell longer than your sentence). It's all about big profits now.
How in tarnation are some of the regional, rural and local town/city hospitals allowed to close? We're familiar with the several closings here in the Ohio Valley. They trot out some spokesperson who tries to convince us that they have "financial problems."
Health care is something like one-seventh of the U.S. economy, and hospitals can't stay solvent? With that much money available, you mean to tell me that they can't make enough to stay in operation? We are presented with statements that the hospital censuses reveal that the beds are empty. (Again, that is a good thing: We should congratulate those local doctors for keeping the community healthy).
Are we really to believe that doctors can only feed themselves and their families with only a pack of ramen noodles?
Let's look at some of the insidious ways hospitals can make money. Hospitals can make mistakes, then keep you as a medical hostage for 16 months to keep bleeding the insurance companies while they attempt to fix what went wrong. If a hospital made a mistake, the same hospital should not be able to profit from it.
But the insurance keeps paying, and you pay more for the next enrollment year. How about that scheme documented in the 2/21/20 "Intelligencer." It recounts that "Guardian Elder Care was accused of pressuring its rehabilitation therapists to provide therapy services to meet financial targets and maximize revenue without regard to the clinical need of patients..." It noted that this happened at nearly 30 facilities and there will be $6,261,070 in restitution.
Then there are all of the outrageous mark-ups for pills, supplies and everything else they can try to bill to your card. The wrong type of pacemaker can be installed, and the patient can be life-flighted the next day to big city hospital where a competent doc could figure out the right one to install, but the first medical entity still gets paid. Insurance paid twice for the same procedure, yet next year everyone's premium will go up because the insurance company will say they aren't making enough.
How about when you are sent to a nursing home after heart surgery and your foods are to be heart-healthy. You are served the same processed and high sodium foods that caused you to have the surgery in the first place. They are just keeping you as a slave, and insurance keeps paying.
A concerned family member can call a doc who is over-prescribing opioids, and his arrogance that he can't be wrong created more expenses for the insurance company. So we all pay higher premiums the next year.
Then you can call your GP for a prescription for a transport chair, and when he never calls, the in-home nurse can use your mom's credit card to order it from Amazon.
What is the point of having insurance? There is the often utilized philosophy of "maintain symptoms." This term means there is not going to be an effort made to improve your situation, but the meds will not let you get worse. The patient is just going to be kept status quo and keep coming back for a monthly script and making those copays.
Even with insurance, many people can't pay their bills because of the mark-ups and other accounting gimmicks that are more related to greed than a cure. Or, even though one has insurance, one can have an out of town accident and have to pay out of network expenses.
So with all of these unscrupulous ways hospitals and doctors blatantly and covertly have rivers of money flowing in, they still belly ache that they have financial problems and are going to take their ball and go home.
Some of these people involved in the health care industry need to wake up from their fairy-tale dreams that they are omniscient wizards and realize that capitalism doesn't mean you'll get the money you think you are entitled to.
It's propaganda just like the insurance companies trying to convince you that eyes, dental, psychological and maternity are independent of the rest of the body.
Since most everyone is connected to social media, patients can video call a doc (telehealth). The system is already largely in place. There is no need to invest large sums of money into the infrastructure. The copays should be taken out of your already overinflated cable bill.
Many diagnoses can be done with a visual exam. If implemented, we should see prices start coming down. I
If there is a cure, begin using it instead of running up costs with the ineffective "maintain symptoms" philosophy. If the science that the doctor advocates fails, then the doctor ought to be required to return your copay with interest.
Should we give a single-payer system a chance, every citizen would be covered. We have that system already in place for people up to 27 and those over 65. All those between 28 and 64 won't have to do the annual rush from Thanksgiving to December 15 shopping for a new insurance provider. This is taking time away from being productive workers. More people can move to where it benefits them. It would eliminate having to get divorced if the cancer returns just as your COBRA is about to expire and you have a couple more years before you turn 65, an insurance provider won't take you with a preexisting condition and you need taxpayer funded health care to possibly beat cancer this time.
It is an evil system if it separates people at a time when there needs to be support. Those managing the medical and insurance industrial complex have proven that the money is more important than the patients.
Advocacy for a single- payer system isn't supporting socialism. Perhaps the capitalists, who try to demonize single-payer advocates as being socialists, are in denial like many Christian conservatives -- and have not had a family member in the hospital.
We are just using "market forces" by voicing that we do not like what we see, and that the present system has become crooked and needs an enema. We fought a civil war to end slavery, and WWII was to end the delusion of an Aryan ruling elite, but some prefer to ignore the historical lessons.
Eddy is a resident of Ohio County. He is co-host with Barbara DeLong on her "Night-Light" radio show and I'm a contributing author to "Ancient American" magazine.