Monday, September 30, 2013

Healthcare?

It would be a gross understatement to say that Nationalized Healthcare has gotten a lot of press recently. I have written previously on things pertaining to healthcare but the following  letter nails it as far as what the status of healthcare in the U.S. is today. As a nurse for 20+ years, I can say that this writer's observations are correct.

Again, people must take control of their health and well being---believe me--you don't want to end up in a hospital unless it's absolutely unavoidable. This means we must stop treating our bodies like they're garbage cans, putting whatever we feel like into them. We must also be informed consumers(patients). Far too many people give more consideration to buying a car than to what kind of effects and interactions the pills their Doc prescribes will have on them or what the long term consequences their diet and lifestyle will have.


"A letter from a nurse
As the heated debate about Obamacare continues our politicians and media are failing to talk about the real problem. Obamacare is only adding to the problem that already exist, so what's the real problem? The problem is that we DO NOT provide healthcare in this country, we provide a health industry that practices medical care.

What that means is healthcare's goal is to maintain a healthy person as compared to medical care which treats sick people for profit. Medical facilities hire the bare minimum staff that is mandated to maximize profits. Nurses and aids are over-worked and barely have enough time to finish their work. They are told to clock out even if they are not done to save money on overtime. The days of a nurse sitting at the bedside of their patients and talking to them are gone.

As a nurse of 20 years I have seen the profession that I love become hijacked by the pharmaceutical and insurance industries. When I started nursing, we would apply ice and heat for pain and sore muscles; today we hand out opiates and muscle relaxants for the same thing. After realizing that I had become nothing more than a Pez dispenser for the pharmaceutical industry I left the field.

Thirty years ago my mother could take me to our family doctor and reach in her purse to pay him when we were done. Today you might get charged well over $100 the minute you sign in and have your temperature taken. We have turned the human body into nothing more than a bunch of billing codes for the insurance industry.

If we were practicing true healthcare we would reward doctors for maintaining their patients healthy and preventing them from having to constantly seek care. The current system of medical care that we have rewards doctors financially for the amount of care they render. In essence the more you go to the doctor the better for business and the biggest winners are Big Pharma. This type of care leads to unnecessary test, unnecessary treatments, and unnecessary medications which often cause other conditions that need to be treated as well. This revolving door of care for profit only increases the cost for everyone and it's in the best interest of the health industry to create and maintain as many CUSTOMERS as possible.

The debate shouldn't be about Obamacare or the uninsured, it should be about the cost of care, but all you hear on TV and from our politicians is about the cost of HEALTH INSURANCE. Obamacare will not fix our current problem of high costs, it only provides the Health Industrial Complex with more customers under the current failing system."


In closing--ask yourself this question---am I living a life that promotes health and well being?

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