Friday, February 11, 2022

The Evil That Is American Health Care

I corrected the self-serving blame passing bullshit by Robert H. Shmerling, MD. MD means Me Deity. The medical mafia of which this jackass is a part of can no longer deny how absolutely corrupt and deplorable the disease exploiting price gouging patient killing money stealing American medical industry is so he's making excuses. 

The was an episode of the Family Guy where Peter was asked, "You are in a room with Hitler, Stalin and a doctor. You have a gun but only two bullets. Who would you shoot".  Peter replied, "I'd shoot the doctor twice". After you read this, you will know why.

Here’s a question that’s been on my mind and perhaps yours: Is the US healthcare system expensive, complicated, dysfunctional, or broken? The simple answer is yes to all. Below are 10 of the most convincing arguments I’ve heard that our system needs a major overhaul. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Remember, an entire industry has evolved in the US just to help people navigate the maddeningly complex task of choosing a health insurance plan.

The cost is enormous

  • High cost, worse than third world quality. Despite spending far more on healthcare than other high-income nations, the US scores poorly on many key health measures, including life expectancy, preventable hospital admissions, suicide, and maternal mortality. And for all that expense, satisfaction with the current healthcare system is relatively low in the US. The dirty filthy fucking US pays 3 times the world average for health care but in spite of the the US is ranked 37th for quality making it the worst in the industrialized world. The US has the highest infant and maternal mortality rates of any industrialized nation. The US has the most healthcare acquired infections, medical errors, wrong site surgeries and hospital medication errors of any industrialized country. This would even make Trump cringe.
  • Financial burden. High costs combined with high numbers of underinsured or uninsured means many people risk bankruptcy if they develop a serious illness. Prices vary widely, and it’s nearly impossible to compare the quality or cost of your healthcare options — or even to know how big a bill to expect. And even when you ask lots of questions ahead of time and stick with recommended doctors in your health insurance network, you may still wind up getting a surprise bill. My neighbor did after knee surgery: even though the hospital and his surgeon were in his insurance network, the anesthesiologist was not. Anesthesiology is a mostly a scam. The reason so many people refer to American health care as the medical mafia is because it does everything organized crime does. The medical mafia deals drugs, kills and maims Americans and extorts Americans.

Access is uneven

  • Health insurance tied to employment. During World War II, healthcare was offered as a way to attract workers since employers had few other options. Few people had private insurance then, but now a layoff can jeopardize your access to healthcare. But the truth of the matter is, most people then and up until the 1970's most Americans could pay out of pocket for most medical care. 
  • Healthcare disparities. The current US healthcare system has a cruel tendency to delay or deny high-quality care to those who are most in need of it but can least afford its high cost. This contributes to avoidable healthcare disparities for people of color and other disadvantaged groups because the assholes in charge are subhuman.
  • Health insurers may discourage care to hold down costs. Many health insurance companies restrict expensive medications, tests, and other services by declining coverage until forms are filled out to justify the service to the insurer. True, this can prevent unnecessary expense to the healthcare system — and to the insurance company. Yet it also discourages care deemed appropriate by your physician. This is also mostly bullshit. The same members of the corporate criminal elite who are on the boards of directors for insurance companies are the same slime who are on the boards of directors of hospital chains, laboratory chains, and pharmaceutical companies.

    This can make for shortsighted decisions. For example, when medications are prescribed for rheumatoid arthritis, coverage may be denied unless a cheaper medication is prescribed, even if it has little chance of working. A survey (note: automatic download) found that 78% of physicians reported that this led people to abandon recommended treatments; 92% thought it contributed to care delays. And because the expensive medication may prevent future knee or hip replacements, delay may ultimately prove more costly to insurance plans and patients while contributing to more suffering. This is all BS. Join replacement in American is very dangerous and often a piss poor option compare to what is done in countries with ethical healthcare. American doctors know that joint replacement often results in incurable infection and metallosis/metal poisoning. When WWE wrestler knew his bad hips were about to end his career be weighed the options. He could get hip replacements with the Johnson & Johnson barbaric metal on mental ball and socket cobalt shedding Frankenstein devices use by filthy money grubbing kickback taking poorly trained American butchers/surgeons or he could go to Europe and get joint resurfacing. He got the hip resurfacing and was able to return to wrestling for another 10 years and he may come out of retirement and wrestle again. The American Medical Mafia makes far more money on joint replacement than using better and safer methods. 

Investments in healthcare seem misdirected

  • Emphasizing technology and specialty care. Our system focuses on disease, specialty care, and technology rather than preventive care. During my medical training, I received relatively little instruction in nutrition, exercise, mental health, and primary care, (Because exploiting human suffering for maximum profit is what American medicine is all about. Preventing disease decreases revenue.)  but plenty of time was devoted to inpatient care, intensive care units, and subspecialties such as cardiology gastroenterology but mostly how to get the most kickback by prescribing worthless and dangerous drugs. Doctors practicing in specialties where overly hyped  technology that any tradesman can understand better better than most MDs abounds (think anesthesiology, cardiology, or surgery) typically have far higher incomes than those in primary care. A butcher and a plumber with a few days of training can do heart surgery and a monkey can administer anesthesia and probably kill less patients than doctors.
  • Overemphasizing procedures and drugs. Here’s one example: A cortisone injection for tendinitis in the ankle is typically covered by health insurance. A shoe insert that might work just as well may not be. Doctors most often go with the most lucrative procedure and not what is best for the patient.
  • Stifling innovation. Liars want you to believe payment structures for private or government-based health insurance can stifle innovative healthcare delivery. Home-based treatments, such as some geriatric care and cancer care, may be cost-effective and preferred by patients. But, because current payment systems don’t routinely cover this care, these innovative approaches may never become widespread. 
  • A scam called Telehealth, bring substandard medical care to millions with poor access, was common even before the pandemic, because it raked in the dough for the most unscrupulous charlatans. Telehealth has flourished through the shameless promotion by that criminal bastard Dr Phil McGraw demonstrating how lucrative it can be. Patients may not even be talking to an actual medical doctor. 
  • Deliberate Fragmented care. One hallmark of US healthcare is that people tend to get care in a variety of settings that may have little or no connection to each other. That can lead to duplication of care, poor coordination of services, and higher costs. American doctors are too lazy and too negligent to read a patient's medical records A doctor may prescribe a medicine that has dangerous interactions with other medicines the person is taking. Medicine prescribed years earlier by a doctor no longer caring for a person may be continued indefinitely because other doctors do not know why it was started. Often doctors receiving lab kickbacks repeat blood tests already performed elsewhere because results of the previous tests are not purposefully available. Asshole MDs and the fat lazy sluts who work in their offices don't forward medical records and because the American medical industry is unregulated there are not federal laws governing medical record and by the way, HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability Accountability Act) is bullshit. Under HIPAA providers are required to send patient records to and other provider within 30 days but if they don't nothing happens to them. There are no fines, no arrests, no nothing because that law is not enforced. The Medical Mafia is above the law!
  • Defensive medicine is a lie. It's a lie to say, "Medical care offered primarily to minimize the chance of getting sued drives up costs, provides little or no benefit, and may even reduce the quality of care". Malpractice lawsuits are uncommon in the US for doctors and. The truth is less than 1% of medical mafia revenue goes to pay malpractice premiums. It’s hard to measure just how big the impact of defensive medicine is, at least one dishonest study suggests it’s not small. Very few lawyers want to go up against Medical Mafia law firms. Defensive medicine is the bullshit narrative that doctors like to spread to justify their sending patients for testing so that they can get kickbacks. Corporate medical goons force their doctors to order unnecessary tests and pad their bills.

No simple solution

Even insured Americans spend more out of pocket for their healthcare than people in most other wealthy nations. Some resort to purchasing medications from other countries where prices are far lower. The status quo may be acceptable to healthcare insurers, pharmaceutical companies, and some healthcare providers who are rewarded handsomely by it, but our current healthcare system is not sustainable (note: automatic download).

Other countries have approached healthcare quite differently, including single-payer, government-run systems, or a mix of private and public options. Perhaps some of the most successful can serve as a model for us. But, with so much on the line and competing interests’ well-funded lobbying groups ready to do battle, it’s far from clear whether reform of our healthcare system can happen anytime soon.

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