Healthcare: A Presidential Priority?
No matter who wins Tuesday, both candidates have reminded us that one of their first priorities when they take office in January will be the economy, and a close second: healthcare… No! Wait, it will be alternative energy and healthcare―or better yet, I think it was foreign policy and healthcare.
Well any way you look at it, healthcare reform is always one of the Top 5 items politicians would like to tackle after winning the election. But somehow, it always seems to end up taking a backseat to what they perceive as “more immediate” popular needs.
As a practicing physician, I always feel like a bridesmaid, but never a bride. Yet in this election, I truly feel a marriage is in my cards. Now maybe I sound like a hopeless romantic, but if you think that Wall Street has problems, our healthcare system is worse off.
Every time we mention the issues with healthcare in this country, many ill-informed individuals immediately begin to critique our nurses, doctors and researchers, making idiotic claims that Cuba or Venezuela have it better than we do in the U.S. And trust me―I have visited many hospitals and talked to the leading physicians from all around the globe―we are still the envy of the world.
So when healthcare is put on the political agenda, we do not need to reinvent the wheel. We just need our government to give us the same attention that they have been giving to the crisis on Wall Street―and understand that our future is at stake as well.
So just like our economic and political pundits hoping for their perfect gift―I too have made my list―and I hope that the politicians are not stingy, and give me the “wedding” of my dreams.
1. Create affordable healthcare insurance for all families with CHOICE.
2. Make hospitals and physicians accountable for quality and create incentive for success. The incentives should be fiscally responsible, yet REAL.
3. Create the “Pregnant Women’s Security Act.” We need to decrease premature labor in the U.S. and give financial protection to women with high-risk pregnancies that cannot work.
4. Invest in healthcare infrastructure. We need to built more hospitals and give access to these hospitals to secure federal loans with favorable terms.
5. We need more nurses. Help nursing students get educational aid and foster the nursing science.
So all I can hope for on our “big day” is that this election brings a union between two American institutions―politics and healthcare―and a president who is really committed to the best interests of the American people.
Tags: 2008 election, Dr. Manny Alvarez, election day, healthcare, McCain, nurses, obama, physicians, socialized healthcare
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As I see it, MOST of the health care issues in this country center around two things.
1. Lawyers in the Doctors office. Get them out and health care becomes more affordable.
2. General American laziness and our need to “Keep up with the Jonses”. I know a few folks without adequate insurance, but the Lexus, BMW and Jag in the garage are FAR more important to them. Couple that with the house they can’t afford either and you see the REAL problem.
I bust my butt to make sure my family members are taken care of first, that means health insurance comes first. The house, cars and incedentals are ALL worked around that.
As a nurse, I was pleased to see the call for more nurses, as well as the suggestion about better care for pregnant women.
But a place I disagree with the author is in the area of more hospitals.
Hospitals are not where we need to focus our efforts – hospitals are for sick people. Until we start focusing on HEALTH care, not sick care, we will continue to have a health care crisis. We need incentives to have health care accessible in the workplace, our schools, and yes, our homes.
Many countries have after-care services available for people in their homes. Think about that – the old-fashioned house call would prevent emergency room visits for many. And the home-care rule for Medicare services – only people who can’t leave their homes are eligible for home nursing or home physical therapy serices – is obsolete. The standard should be – will a home care visit prevent a hospitalization?
Hospitals – and especially emergency rooms – are the most expensive forms of care, and should be the site of care of last resort.
We need to get health care OUT of the hospital, not build more hospitals.
Barak Obama has no health plan. To misquote Michelle Obama, if her husband gets elected this will be the first time I’m ashamed to be an American.
National health care at this point in time is perfect for me. I have to get both knees replaced. This would cost me a minimum of $20,000 out of my pocket. With national health care my fellow citizens will be footing the bill. The great thing is that I am in my 60’s. At my age I’m sure I will be taking out of the national health care pool a lot more that I am puting in. The people who are being screwed by this are my fellow young and healthy citizens. Wait until they see what’s coming out of their paychecks to pay for the senior citizens’ health costs.
I could not agree more. I am not a physician but I have been working in physician’s offices since I was 18 years old ( now 36) I have so much respect for the work that they do , the hours that they put in and the true care they give to their patients.
I also feel for the patient who possibly is uninsured and puts their own health at risk due to fear of financial hardship with medical costs. There needs to be more attention to creating a healthcare system that is AFFORDABLE for all people and the reimbursement is FAIR for the physicans providing the care. Also, I do not feel that a person should be tied to their employer due to their health insurance. I feel that portability is needed so that people can change jobs without having to worry about losing their insurance that they may be comfortable with.
Amend to that! The last thing we need is for the government to get involved in the health care service! I do not need the government telling me which doctor I can or can’t go to or what treatments I can or can’t have.
It amazes me that so many people buy into this hype. Talk to a 20 year military veteran about the health care for free for life that they were promised by the government. Then came the politicians, they said instead of spending the money on the retirees, we can have more for pork barrel projects. They were sued and Congress said we didn’t authorize the military recruiters to make that promise. It was printed in all the military propaganda by the department of defense. printed by the government printing office at taxpayer expense. But now the veteran retiree is on a fixed income and being required to pay for medicare part B and also pay a copay for thier free medical care for life. What makes anyone think that after thier breech of contract with the military, they are going to give up the money to pay for universal health care? The pork barrels need that money, not the american people.
I am now a citizen of the USA, born in Canada. Don’t believe all you hear about free Healthcare, nothing is free, your taxes will go through the roof and the Healthcare is terrible. Do you want to wait at least wait two years for an operation that you need? Socialistic anything does not work people!
Nothing is free people, for your information, and I have first hand experience (Canada) your taxes will go through the roof and you will wait several years for an operation you need. If you need the operation bad enough, Canadians pay out of their own pockets and get the operation in the USA!
You want to control costs, what about controlling lawyers.
Obama and the Democrats envision a national health system like that in Canada and they will probably get it within the next 4 years, especially if they can get a super majority in Congress. Once enacted it will never be repealed, so I have just come to accept its inevitablility.
What is a wonder to me is why haven’t the Republicans come up with, and implemented some healthcare plan that would have saved choice and reformed the present system. Why have we waited so long to come up with a viable healthcare system that meets most Americans needs and budgets. The insurance companies have done nothing, the politicans have done nothing, the doctors and other health professionals have done nothing. Since we have all done nothing, the Democrats are going to come along and do something. Which is inititate a single payer national health care system.
I don’t know about you but my doctor lives in a huge house in an exclusive neighborhood, drives a Mercedes, has a big boat, owns a house on the beach in Nicaragua and a cabin in the Smoky Mountains and is always complaining about how he is barely making it because of malpractice insurance. Remember when the doctor actually lived a lot like the rest of us. Maybe had a little better lifestyle but didn’t live like the royalty of today.
I see nothing about the crisis in primary care where the majority of day to day healthcare occurs and is delivered most cost effectively. Primary Care doctors are being driven out of business by low reimbursements from insurers and Medicare discoruaging US grads from medical schools going into the field just when we need more PCPs than ever. Without making primary care attractive and economically viable whatever healthcare reform that is planned will fail. In Massachussetts the State delivered universal care and then found there were no space PCPs to see the newly insured 200,000 patients, try that on a national scale with 50 million new patients.
The biased media has helped support a loss of the government proposed by the constitution. American people were herded like sheep to their slaughter. Now they will have to pay the heavy price of their naivety.
The increased cost proposed via tax burden and other suggestions will result in my making a decision like many others will be forced to deal with. As a physician, increased bureaucracy, red tape, hungry lawyers, etc. have forced me to practice a type of medicine which is not of the same quality which I was taught.
Obama discussed in his plan the need to computerize all medical records. My practice can’t afford to do this without consequences. I would actually have to hire more staff to accomplish this. As I see it, I have two choices. Cash only service vs. closing the practice. I am leaning toward the later. This would mean a loss of 5-6 additional jobs. 20,000 people without care forced to try to get follow up in a system that has a 3 month waiting time for new patients.
Physicians are small businesses that Obama’s plans will effect directly. They are a group of independent thinkers and strongly entrepreneurial. Unless tort reform would be undertaken reducing malpractice insurance, the writing is on the wall. Over the last several decades, Canadian physicians have been moving to the US. Now the US is moving towards providing care similarly to other socialized countries. The exodus of physicians from the USA will now begin. Mark my words, rationed health care is not far behind.
Similar actions will occur across other business sectors. God bless those who voted for radical change as that is what they will receive.
I appreciate your take on the healthcare issue. During the Presidential Debates the focus was on the bad and evil insurance companies. While they are part of the problem, so are doctor’s salaries, hospital cost, medication costs, lawsuits, and general greed.
BTW…I would also add that the nursing profession could use help with patient ratio’s and being allowed to do what they do best. Patient Care.
The majority of doctors leave medical school and residency burdened with large student loans and credit card debt. Naturally they want a specialty that will allow them to pay off their debts and earn enough to save for a retirement and family. Is it any surprise that they don’t want to do primary care? Its not even that primary care doctors train just as long as many specialists to earn as much as some nurses, but then as a final reward, insurance companies refuse to pay them, and that practice is led by medicare. On the other side are the lawyers, desperate to make money however they can and eager to manipulate the system however possilble. Finally we have the patient, who has evolved into the most demanding, uncompassionate and unappreciative individual imaginable. I think of my profession very differently now. I want to protect myself from lawyers, I need to document everything to the last letter to avoid lawsuits and keep medical records for years to make it easier for them to sue me. I need to be cautious with patients, many of them are drug seeking or worse yet drug dealers and are looking for ways to get opiates to then resell them. I need to be cautious with nurses, any mistake they make, I will be sued for. (nurses after all don’t have enough to satify a lawyers hungry appetite). I need to fight to get paid since the goverment and other private insurance companies do everything possible to try to keep from paying me what I am owed. And the ironic part is that I don’t make a lot. Primary care doctors have not gotten a pay increase in over ten years. Just last year, medicare was proposing a 10% paycut, yes 10%. Now, its not like anything has gotten cheaper in the meantime. Some physicians got lucky, the ones who are retiring! As for the rest of us, we are totally screwed.