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Compassion walked out the door altogether from the healthcare field and unless you, or I, have one of those Cadillac health insurance plans that our taxes buy for politicians, don't count on any compassion coming your way.
Care providers, be they doctors or hospitals, (and even insurance companies) have forgotten that their best names are built by word of mouth, from person to person, by people willing to give their providers' of services, (even their insurers) a thumbs up. An "A", for the
honest-to-goodness, greedless care, they provide.
Somewhere along the way, greed took over. Someone forgot that we are human beings, one and all. Someone forgot that unlike robotic machines, made to last to an almost forever without breaking down, our systems tend to need rest and healing repairs from time to time. Someone also forgot that when our systems break down and need healing, most of us do not earn the salaries that our taxes pay the politicians who can then afford their "Cadillac of Insurance Plans, paid for by our taxes", nor do we earn the salaries that our consumerism pays the political pundits on television, who can, also afford those Cadillac types of insurance plans.
Yet, at one point or another in our lives, our organisms suffer breakdowns and need repairs, also known as healing. Hopefully from the hands of good care providers.
Case in point: Isn't Senator Chris Dodd lucky, first of all, that, a) his prostate cancer was diagnosed early, and secondly, that a)he has, paid for by our taxes, one of those Cadillac health insurance plan that will afford him the best of care that b) we the people, through his insurance plan, can give him.
Lucky are those of us who go through life without needing cancer care, heart stents, blood pressure medications, diabetic monitoring, surgeries, knee and/or hip replacements, screws inserted into our bones, all to name just a few of the ailing possibilities for any of us, and when any of this happens to any of us, we, the castaways of the 21st century, need to know, as a much needed part of our healing, that we are in the hands of providers who are not looking out for the dollars they can put into their own pockets, but rather that they are truly looking out after our health. We also need to know we are not going to be handed a bill for thousands of dollar at the beginning or the end of our care, and that our insurance is going to afford us the care that we need.
What a comforting thought to think that our politicians cared enough to give us insurance paid for by our taxes the same as our taxes pay for insurance for them.
Hippocrates, the man most reputed as The Father of Medicine knew that healing was the real profit of medicine.
The doctors of not so long ago, those doctors who came to our houses with their black bags, their stethoscopes and prescription pads, knew that.
The pharmacists who filled out our needed prescriptions for a price that was affordable to most, knew that. Those pharmacists who owned their own pharmacies, who were not part of a chain of pharmacies, who got up in the middle of the night to go to their pharmacies to fill a prescription for some medical emergency for a familiar, and even not so familiar, customer, knew that.
But somehow, it all became big business and I don't think, as some do, that Medicare and/or Medicaid bear the blame for it.
Everyone, and I was shocked to hear that Obama does too, wants to blame Medicare and Medicaid for our healthcare woes. I blame the private insurance companies and the politicians who receive money from them. I blame those who think profits trump people, no matter what.
Bureaucracy, bureaucrats, forms, and reimbursements. Impersonal judgments on whether to treat or not to treat a patient are made by insurance case managers, who look out for the insurance company's wealth, rather than for the health of the insured patient, make up a great deal of our care today.
We see doctors who are assigned to us by some provider list in the Health Maintenance Organizations provider panels (profitable HMOs, which ironically were created for the purpose of, we thought, reducing health care costs to our pockets, while providing us with good health care. Though, to them, reducing healthcare costs means reducing doctors" visits and limiting, or even denying required procedures, even if the person needing, "x", or "y", procedure is in dire need of it.)
We go to hospitals assigned to us by our same HMOs provider panel lists, or by our Preferred Provider Organizations (PPOs) which are slightly a step above the HMOs, but which still get to control who, how, and where we receive health care, depending on what plan of coverage we choose to buy from them. PPOs give us the impression that we are free to choose our providers, which we are, as long as the healthcare provider we choose is within their PPO provider panel. Otherwise, we are free to have to pay through the nose for seeing an out-of-panel provider.
Somewhere, too, in those hospitals there are rows of offices filled with bureaucrats, untouchable administrators, automatons akin to the wizard in the Wizard of Oz, the persons who run it all behind a set of desks. Those people who left their hearts out the door and turned them into cash registers as soon as they crossed the threshold to the hospitals, People no one gets to see, but who get to set the rules for the hospitals and their staff. The people only other VIPS, who grow in their own importance each time they open an administrator"s door, can get to see and talk to.
So, when did it all get turned up all side down?
Why did, in 1976, Drs. Morri, Bean and Brooks, become, Drs. Morri, Bean and Bacon to a telephone information operator who shared with the caller requesting their number, the same frustration as the caller, due to a similarly exorbitant radiology bill and inflated charges by these doctors for respective procedures performed by them at a treating hospital?
