If the ability to have a true utopia where everyone did the right thing was real and viable this entire health care debate would not even be taking place. The unfortunate part is that the problems with the mess we have now are far and distant to most Americans. The man with common diabetes who is now uninsurable under the present system, he knows what the problem is. The fifteen year old kid who is successfully treated for Hodgkins Disease is now uninsurable once he is off of his parents medical plan. The man or woman fighting for reasonable care for the aging parent and then watches maneuvering on a level beyond belief to deny care to that individual is aware of the problems, they are aware because they have had to fight for the care for which they are paying or for which they have already paid.
Yes, those benevolent insurance companies want to blame litigation and it is because of their profit margins and denial of care that we have this litigation. Hey, we get rid of the litigation and it increases their profit margin by a great deal.
The main thing that is at stake here people in case you really do not realize it is first your rights as a person to recover any kind of damages when you are victimized and secondly and more important is that your right to simple survival has become contingent on a profit and loss statement.
How many realize how much you have already lost?
Did you know that if you file litigation in most medical cases be they against an MD or against an insurance carrier that your victory and settlement of the case includes a little thing called a "gag order". What this does is to prevent you by contract from telling anyone else about your experience. It protects the individual or organization from any more loss in profits from victimizing you, and it creates an intolerable situation where in essence your loss or the damage done to you by the MD or insurance company and their loss for their actions, is not at all a punishment for those actions my friends, it simply has now been reduced to a "business cost" where the profits and loss statement reflects litigation not as a horrible thing, but as a simple business expense.
Have you ever been involved in a case where a defective medical product caused the death of someone?
There was a company who shall remain nameless who made replacement heart valves some years ago. That company knew damn well that these valves were defective, and those that knew were told to ship out the defective valves to use up the stocks on hand. Getting rid of the valves after all removed the evidence of valves that were defective and the idea was to then go with the "fixed" ones. The valves on the shelves were worth a considerable sum of money and the executive staff of that manufacturer wanted to recover that money by using them anyway. After a period of time one of the parts making up the valve after several years of use would simply shatter. When that destruction took place the few pumps the heart had left would pump move fragments around, and the person was dead and even if the person had physically been on an operating table they would not have been able to be saved.
A family friend went through this and her Father was lost at age 56. I want you to imagine sitting in a legal office and having an insurance carrier sitting back and stating that the life of your Father was not worth anything, and that their payment when they in fact knew that what they were implanting was crap should be minimal.
I also think that at times Attorneys go way too far, BUT, compromise your rights for recovery and you have sold yourself down the river. It means nothing until it hits you like a freight train splattering your own life into a million pieces.
Do we have a legitimate solution, certainly, the company is forced to recall all the valves and pay for the surgery and hospitalization to replace them. Will we ever see that kind of solution? No because to do that they would have to admit that there was a problem and that would be bad publicity.
Health care reform has to be on a multi-level approach and it must include making people responsible for their actions on both sides. Those with horrific health habits which are under their own control and prove-able as such should of course pay escalated premiums for their coverage, but to deny coverage to some individuals because of simple age or pre-existing medical conditions is worse than bad by an incredible margin.
Single pay health care is not perfect, but, based on what I have seen and what my personal knowledge is from many others who have it, the superiority over what we have in the United States is blatantly obvious.
I know many in Canada and the U.K. and in France dealing with HIV. The care received by the individuals in all three of those locations is far superior to what those here in the United States are now receiving. This was not always the case, it is the case now.
The treatment of cancer is done much more aggressively in these three systems and their survival rates are higher. Their losses from unrelated infections contracted while hospitalized are lower, and the citizens of those countries are living more productive lives because of it.
There was a time when the U.S. was the medical leader. When it comes to technology in many ways we still are. The problem is the use of the technology we have invented and pioneered is being currently denied to the Americans who developed it.
There is no way unfortunately that we can clean this system simply because the money behind the profit is far too great. It is going to be either what we have no or a government run system and there is nothing in between that will be able to be had. Improvements in the present system will very quickly be overturned if we stick with it. We can't fix it without completely taking it apart and putting it back together again. If we were able to do that it would be great. We can't do it because the special interests would simply give us back a different version of what we have right now and tell us that it has been fixed when it fact it has not been.