In this country, many people have a tendency to confuse great medical technology with a healthcare system. Doubtless, we lead the world relative to the former. But, it’s quite a different story relative to an overall effective healthcare system.

 

America has the BEST medical technology that money can buy. But, it’s only ONE part of an effective healthcare system. While we’re not dead last among the industrialized countries in delivering effective healthcare, we’re doing our best to get there.

 

And, the “can buy” part is killing us. The best medical expertise in the world is useless when an increasing number of people cannot afford to use it because it’s too expensive.

 

The high expense is NOT inherent to technological innovation. It’s the result of Congressional incompetence. It’s the result of we voters electing and re-electing the same old masters of the incompetents to our legislative branch of government.

 

The United States Congress has caused at least 90% of our problems with respect to our healthcare system’s ability to deliver effective preventative care at an affordable price.

 

We’re at the precipice of national bankruptcy thanks to a continuous chorus of moronic, self-serving, ego driven legislators that we continually send back to the Beltway.

 

We’re not their true constituency; the endless array of influential, money-laden lobbyists bearing gifts galore has taken over THAT role.

 

Healthcare reform has become a putrid load of human dung that’s been floating around in the nation’s healthcare toilet bowl for decades, unable to flush through the nation’s healthcare septic system.

 

When it comes to healthcare reform, I view Congress, and their TRUE constituency, healthcare lobbyists, as a giant turd-clog in the Beltway’s piping array of our national healthcare sewage system.

 

The stench is terrible. Other parts of the world can now smell it. And we’re the plumbers. We need to take out our Roto Rooters and get busy before it’s too late.

 

And, we’re the ones who must do it. We can’t expect the same level mental consciousness that originally created the problem, and has perpetuated it for decades, to “fix” it at all, let alone on Barack Obama’s schedule of about two weeks.

 

I think a bit of bluntness is in order regarding healthcare reform. I’m sick to my eyeballs over hearing Congress telling us how “HARD” it is to fix things.

 

The blame for this mess falls to neither the Executive nor Judicial Branches, no matter the party that’s been in power. IT falls squarely on OUR—the electorate—shoulders for sending the same incompetents back to the U. S. Congress repeatedly.

 

This crowd can move mountains whenever it’s in THEIR best interests to do so. The problem is that WE’VE forgotten how to make things that are in OUR best interests, THEIR best interests. And, we’d better soon get back to that task.

 

These people don’t even live in the same world as the rest of us do. They’ve grown light-years from sharing the same reality that all of us share.

 

They get whatever they want by whichever means they choose. For them, convenience has become the imperative with truth reduced to a mere option.

 

They’ve provided themselves with the BEST working conditions and the MOST disproportionate salaries for the shoddy work they turn out.

 

They divvy up the most generous perks that self-bestowed, unchecked influence can bestow on “friends.” And, they’ve given themselves the MOST lucrative retirement packages and BEST healthcare on the globe, all at our expense every inch of the way.

 

The toughest challenge most of them face is winning their first election. But, once that’s out of the way, we can’t dislodge them with nuclear weapons! Excruciating HARD work? Thankless LONG hours? And, for LESS money than they could make in the “private” sector?

 

Talk about stoic dedication to the honor of serving the public! Excuse me while I throw up.

 

OK, I’m back. But, for the record, I’ve been comfortably retired since age sixty-one. I’ve since enjoyed a secure comfortable pension plus a generous array of great medical benefits.

 

My major medical coverage converted to Medicare when I turned sixty-five, a few years ago, but I have great supplemental and prescription coverage compliments of my retirement plan. I, PERSONALLY, have NO complaints.

 

And, all of this is independent of my full Social Security benefits, which is another item that’s been a perpetual agenda item on Congress’s list of things to bankrupt. I’ll get back to THIS gem in a few minutes.

 

For now, though, why are prescription drugs and medical delivery so expensive in America? For a number of reasons.

 

First, in this country, the drug companies pass ALL of their research and development costs on to all of us. The other nations do not permit this. So, guess who is paying the whole bill?

 

Second, the drug companies spend BILLIONS each year on those “Ask your doctor about” advertisements. They never tell you, UP FRONT, what the stuff is for and they always make it sound like the stuff is the answer to our prayers.

 

In essence, even though we don’t hear it, these advertisements tell us that this stuff can kill us but to ask our doctors to give it to us ANYWAY!

 

And, many people DO ask their doctors, too. An elderly male friend of mine has had recurring urinary issues for two years. He asked HIS doctor about one of those drugs he heard about on TV.

 

You have no idea how stunned his doctor was when he learned that his male patient was having problems with vaginal dryness!

 

And then, there is good old greed and special interests. Multiple insurance companies pay executives MILLIONS in annual salary and millions more in perks and golden parachute provisions.

 

These executives, in turn, pay myriad lobbyists multiple millions annually to keep the cash cow functioning, an impossible task without the ever-ready, unquestioned assistance of every power and money-grubbing politician on the Beltway.

 

They sign bills without even reading them, a matter of the incompetent blind leading the unresisting many. But in other cases, they’re just plain crooks in search of suckers to fleece.

 

Of course, these CEOs surround themselves with cadres of highly paid lawyers and lower-level bureaucrats whose only jobs, respectively, are legal obfuscation and stupid rules enforcement.

 

What the lower-level bureaucrats miss in high pay, they make up for in what sometimes amounts to life and death power. They get to enforce the “May I rules.”

 

Six months ago, a former colleague’s wife had a homebound accident. Her husband called 911 and they rushed her, unconscious, to a hospital emergency room.

 

During the arrival examination, the attending physician felt reasonably certain of the problem but needed a diagnostic test to be certain. She ordered the test. It confirmed the physician’s suspicion.

 

The patient is home now and doing great. But, the legal battle is still raging between patient and insurance company. Here’s the crux of it all.

 

The trip to the emergency room and the initial examination… approved and paid for. The initial medications, emergency room occupation fees… all approved and paid for.

 

Time in an intensive care unit and all associated costs… approved and paid for. Time in a step-down room awaiting discharge from the hospital six days later… approved and paid for.

 

The diagnostic test administered to confirm the initial diagnosis and the ultimate basis upon which all subsequent care was based… NOT approved and not (yet) paid for.

 

Was the test an approved diagnostic procedure? If not, tough nuggies; the patient’s out of luck without a legal leg to stand on. I’d have no problems with it, either.

 

But, it most certainly was an approved test, spelled out clearly right in the policy language. So, what was the PROBLEM?

 

She failed to say “MAY I!” That’s right, folks; she failed to obtain a referral from her primary care physician (PCP).

 

Let’s see. The patient was unconscious. Not only was she unable to think about a PCP referral, she was not even aware that she was alive. Her husband’s ONLY concern and thoughts were of keeping his wife from dying.

 

He didn’t think about a PCP referral, either. And, the emergency room medical personnel simply did their jobs!

 

Even her PCP wrote to the insurance company that had he known, he would have approved the test IMMEDIATELY.

 

Not good enough according to the $500 a week (plus benefits) clerk in charge of her case. She was supposed to say, “MAY I,” and she failed to do it. So, THERE!

 

This is NOT an isolated incident, either. The litany of examples is too exhaustive to include here. However, here’s one more gem.

 

Imagine yourself as a fifty-eight-year-old woman whose hospitalization plan had pre-approved the surgery to remove a cancerous right lung. Further, imagine receiving a bill for $1,896 from the hospital a month later informing you that “your insurance company refused to pay for the anesthesia.”

 

That’s RIGHT! They paid for the surgery but NOT the anesthesia. Undergo the pain of surgery; just make sure you have a leather strap to bite down on, though, cause we “ain’t payin” to put you to sleep! Beyond STUPID. But it gets worse.

 

Now imagine that the reason for the refusal to pay was due to the hospital’s miscoding error.

 

And then image being on the receiving end of threatening collection letters over the fact that you’ve become the chief pawn in a six-month battle of egos between the hospital clerks and the insurance company clerks.

 

It never seems to stop. And, NOW we hear that both the insurance companies AND the drug companies have “volunteered” to find ways of “helping” us out.

 

Don’t believe it! There is nothing benevolent about it. These companies are now terrified that the government’s going to take over the whole shebang.

 

And, it’s not about a likelihood of diminished healthcare QUALITY, either. It’s more about the fear of losing their cash cow altogether.

 

Want genuine, effective, and affordable healthcare in this country? Inundate the U. S. Congress with “OR ELSE” demands that inform them, in no uncertain terms, that whatever they pass for us, they must ALSO use.

 

That’s right, they MUST give up whatever they now have and use the same thing they expect all of us to use. Then sit back and see what happens!

 

I also have a neat way to make both Social Security AND Medicare solvent forever. But I’ll reveal that one another time. It’s all quite simple, actually! All we voters have to do is grow large quantities of GUMPTION.

 

Joe Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. You may comment on his column by clicking here.