1 Aug 2018 How Do We Fix Healthcare? Part 1

How Do We Fix Healthcare? Part 1

Healthcare in the US is a topic everyone cares about, knows needs to be fixed, but can’t agree with how to do it.  The first question that needs to be answered: Is healthcare a basic right each citizen should have?  I would say yes.  Next question:  Should healthcare be private sector, government or some combination?  Well, today we a combination and that is not working great.  The government has shown many times over that it can’t run a massive public program without tremendous waste.  You can’t name one government program that is well run from a cost standpoint.  Private industry, especially publicly traded companies have a profit motive which does not always translate well for providing high cost services.  I believe a non-profit structured organization would be best.  The next and critical question is:  Who pays and how much?  

A moral question that needs to be answered is: How much money should be spent to keep an elderly person alive?  I know that sounds bad, but Medicare paid over $50 billion of its budget to keep elderly people alive for a few months longer than if they would allow the natural death process to happen.  I know most everyone would want to keep their loved ones longer if it was a “quality” life.  Should taxpayers fund this aggressive medical treatment?  Doctors and the medical industry today can keep people alive a lot longer.  But should they?  This a tough question. We are talking about a person’s life.  However, we are also talking about a person who has lived a life.  Do they have the right to live longer, even if it is only a short time at great expense to the taxpayer?   That one I am not so sure about. Could I withhold treatment from my mother that would keep her alive for a few months more even it that treatment was very expensive? I could not make that decision unemotionally.  But who does? Our family was faced with this very question for my father.  He became septic from a tear in his intestines.  He had other medical issues that reduced his quality of life. However, he still wanted to live. Three doctors said the surgery was too risky and that he would probably bleed out on the table.  They would not do the surgery.  We were faced with the tough decision.  Do we fight and make them try the surgery to at least give him a chance or do we take their advice?  My mom really trusted one of the doctors.  We took the advice and told my dad he was had to go to hospice.  He died a week later.  We “saved” Medicare tens of thousands of dollars.  

Healthcare costs, structure and funding have to be addressed and fixed. We need to come to some national agreement on how to do it.   We have no choice.  Maintaining the status quo will bankrupt us.