President-Elect Obama is encouraging health care reform discussions across the country this holiday season. He then would like the discussed ideas and suggestions forwarded to him in order to help sort out and reform the system.
When my family gathers, rarely do we avoid the rule of not discussing politics or religion. This makes for lively and spirited conversations that end in more than a few heated occasions around the dinner table. Only recently have we patched up wounds from opposing conservatives, liberals, and Clintonites in our family. Which only leaves me wondering, why on earth would Obama want to ruin my holiday dinners?
So no, I won’t be encouraging the family in this topic, but I do think the internet and blogs is a great place for this discourse and so I sat down this morning to pen my articulations on this great topic. I supposed that somewhere deep down inside of me were the musings of all that was wrong with our current system, and after calm reflection, I could divine the solutions.
Jotting down notes however only ended up ensnaring me in a thorny tangle of ideas and their counters. For here you must understand, I suffer a malady of always looking at both sides of a coin, and thus unable to make up my mind. One side of the coin may say “Yes.”, but I always know there is a back side saying “No.”; and so I tend to live in the “Maybe.”.
Therefore my ideas on health care reform are not intended to sway a person to one side or another, but mainly just a list of observations from being employed in health care delivery, namely Intensive Care and Travel Nursing. This list is by no means intended to be inclusive, but rather a starting point to initiate discussion, and thought.
1. The topic of Health Care Reform is too big. Using the topic “Health Care Reform” reminds me of the old story of blind men discussing an elephant. One man says the health care snout is too long, another says the tail is too small, while another states that the legs are too thick. A simple and old analogy, but how many people really see the whole elephantine picture of health care?
2. We need agreed upon definitions. What is health care? Try asking a few different people and see how many answers you receive. For many people, it is sickness prevention. For others it is a return to wellness. Yet for others it is the avoidance of death at all costs, regardless of quality of life.
3. We need consequences. The old adage; “people get what they deserve, and deserve what they get” seems dead these days. Government seems hell bent on bailing out everybody. Now not all sickness is deserved, but a lot of behaviors end up with consequential sickness. Is it right that the group must pay the burden for the individual’s right to exercise his liberty even though those actions end in predetermined consequences?
4. Health Care litigation must be reined in. Does the right to sue really keep health care delivery competent and honest? The management of liability risk has infested health care delivery with staggering amounts of unnecessary dollars spent. An answer to this must be found.
5. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. There must be a way found to fund prevention from sickness and disease. There is currently a big push for national infra-structure rebuilding as an investment for our country. The same should apply for our health care.
6. A paradigm shift regarding health care must occur. I think anything less than a complete shift in how we approach health care will result in merely a reshuffling of the deck of cards; a rearranging of the dominoes. Same game, different mess.
0 comments:
Post a Comment