Healthcare Schmealthcare

Here ya go Linda!


What a great weekend!! I spent Friday and Saturday night in a campground on the Guadalupe River. For those not familiar with Texas, this is located in the central area of Texas, just north of San Antonio. It was a good weekend of great family and fun. We floated the river on Saturday, and just hung out Friday night and played dominoes.

It seems that most of the conversation was geared toward politics, as I am sure that all conversations in predominately republican families are. The most talked about was the “Obama Care” plan. Of course, we can all fix all of the world’s problems, and have no trouble telling each other what the politicians are doing wrong. In talking too, not only my family, but also everyone else I know, i have discovered that no one seems to want health care reform. It seems to me that the people on Medicare don’t want healthcare reform because they will lose a lot of their benefits, the people who pay for their own insurance don’t want healthcare reform because they will lose a lot of their benefits, and the poor (not monetarily) people who don’t have health benefits don’t want healthcare reform because the will lose the ability to complain about not having health insurance!!!

I work in close contact with people whose income is considered to be below the poverty level. We have excellent insurance at work, and most people pay for it, and most people complain about the cost. I am one of those people. But I also work with a few people that would not pay for the insurance if it were $50 a month. One person who worked for me had a special needs child, and was paying more per month on doctor’s visits than he would have paid for the healthcare benefits, but by goodness he was gonna get what the government owed him, so used Medicare/Medicaid to pay for his child’s treatment. When you are dealing with stupidity like that there is no fix for it.

I do not like paying $400 a month for health insurance, but I know that it is a necessity, and that I am doing my part to better healthcare. I saw a report on one of the weekly news shows about healthcare in Canada. This report stated that it was easier to get a CT or an MRI for the family dog than for a child. Does this not speak volumes about socialistic healthcare? I have not heard anyone, excepting the president’s advisors say that drastic healthcare reform is a good idea. Every expert that I have heard speak said that limiting the income to hospitals will limit the leaps that our healthcare technology takes. MRI, Nuke Med, Organ Transplants, and all the other things we have here in the U.S. were invented due to the money that we are willing to pay.

My wife had surgery a few months ago, and the surgeon billed my insurance company more than $1000. When the EOB came back for the procedure, I think they paid in the neighborhood of $150. How is that healthcare running amuck??? It sounds to me like our healthcare system is doing its job. I have heard of an insurance company paying the doctor more than he billed, have you?? Is there some argument about $150 being too much to pay someone who is the protector of your life for the duration of the procedure? I think not.

The problem with over billing in health care stems from the hospital having to cover the costs for everyone involved in your healthcare. This is not just the doctors, LVNs, RNs, and CNAs that have direct patient contact, but also the billing people, hospital administrator, CFO and all of these people's assistants as well. I think that we need an a la carte health care system. Charge me 50 cents for my Tylenol, and then charge me 5 min at $40 and hour for the RN to give it to me. If I need my sheets changed, charge me the 15 minutes that the CNA spends in my room to change them, I am ok with that. I understand that there will have to be a base charge to cover the administrative staff, but do not charge me for the direct contact medical staff. I can get up and pee on my own, so why should I pay the hospital to have some one do it for me???

Now I realize that this is an overly simple example, but it holds true for everything. Most people are misers, and if they have a choice between $5 and $10, most will take the $5. In time the healthcare system would fix itself. Some people will say that this could never work, how would you keep up with the time and who is in the room??? RFID!! Radio Frequency Identification tags tracked by computer and automatically logged in the billing system. Done!

I think that, over time, the insurance companies would begin offering discounts for people who are willing to forgo some of the unnecessary duplications in the hospitals. And everyone will be happy except for the people who just need to complain about healthcare.


Before next time, hug someone and tell them that you love them!