Healthcare Heartache Healing

Fixing our health care system is a hot topic that has the potential to make massive positive changes in the lives of perhaps hundreds of millions of Americans, and make the health care system run more efficiently and effectively for all. For the Record: All the bitching about government bureaucrats running health care from Washington is bogus argument, when private bureaucrats in for-profit insurance companies are deciding whether you can get even the most simple treatments for a cold sore.

Many solutions are being put forth by many well-meaning, and some not-so-well meaning people (*cough* big pharma *cough*).

The buzz if out there that we will not be able to snag a single-payer type of health care system. While, I am not inclined enough to cleanly give an opinion that I would feel firm about (yes, I realize this fact hasn’t stopped me in the past, nor will it in future), I am posting here to attack one idea that has been floated out there, something that Obama and his administration seems to embrace. I believe I recall him touting this idea during the campaign, so I would bet this will be in any health care legislation passed.

This idea is reflective of a pattern seen in my field of choice: education. The prevalence of using test scores of students to “reward good teachers” is unfortunately become a reality in some districts, or is on track to become as such.

Now we have the following idea in health care from the USA Today: “Reward doctors and hospitals not just for how many procedures they perform but how well their patients fare.” This idea sounds fantastic! I admit I liked it initially at first, but upon further reflection and analysis, there are significant drawbacks in my opinion that do not necessarily address some problems within health care.

Two other quick hits from the article:

“One of every four heart failure patients and slightly less than one in five heart attack and pneumonia patients land back in the hospital within 30 days, data show.” – A clear hazard of running a health care system for profit & having literally no focus on prevention. As people who have these problems aren't sufficiently supervised post-op and are often sent home too early.

“…patients have higher death rates at hospitals in the nation's poorest and smallest counties, compared with those in larger, more affluent areas.” – Similar to the problem w/ testing in education. (Yes, there are those examples of poor, inner city schools who are shining and getting a great %age of their students to pass their standardized tests, but they are far from the norm. Moreover, those who say the teachers at the other school in the inner city who aren’t able to get good testing schools are “failing” really don’t get the pathology of the inner city student and inner city life (I don’t either, given I am a white boy from middle America)) But, the bigger, better hospitals that have more money to pay the best doctors are, of course, more likely to have better a lower death rate.

Not only are the doctors more likely better and more experienced, those areas with more affluent socioeconomic status are also more likely to have healthier patients to begin with. Even more so, they are more likely to follow doctor’s orders via prevention (eating/exercise habits), and they are more likely to be able to follow doctor’s orders.

By instituting this policy, it would cause these already struggling hospitals to struggle even more when they don’t get MORE government funding. The system in America continues to be ass backwards. Two examples:

1. The credit industry charges lower interest rates to the rich who can easily make their payments, while they screw low-income people with ridiculous rates and make it incredibly hard for them to gain equity and capital.

2. Some proposals in education "reform" include hitting those failing schools whose students don't pass those stupid standardized tests with lower government funding.

Finally, there was also a report out yesterday noting the rate of mistakes made every year in hospitals by doctors and other staff that cause injury or even death. We MUST insist on further funds to encourage young people to encourage them to go into doctoring and nursing (just like Obama has discussed doing for education). There is an incredible shortage of doctors and nurses, and we haven’t hit the big boom from those damn Baby Boomers yet. These people are often overworked because there is such a shortage, and any legislation should give allowances for these grants and also some mandatory working hour limitations. I would argue most hospital mistakes are made because the people are ridiculously tired and have too many patients to keep track of. They need relief and we should demand they get it.