A Waste is a Waste: Straight Talk on Health Care

Arguments about health care are quite contrived as the true victims, the citizens, are but a pawn in this epic power struggle.  Private health care is broken and without salvation.  Big business, drug companies, HMO patient mills, unscrupulous doctors, greedy trial attorneys, weak willed patients, profiteers, government regulation, associations and insurance companies so big only the supernatural could deter them have proven that purely acting in self-interest is not the solution to the health of an entire nation.  Government care is not the answer.  Insurance companies are not the answer.   Best medical practices and forced procedures based on limiting liability make health care a one size fits all solution, that fits few and satisfies even less.  

Our incentive structure awards drug dealing, surgery, and treatment.  Prevention is a profit killer.  The sicker we as a nation get, the better the doctors, drug companies and suppliers get paid.  That said, the insurance business is so cash strapped due to high competition and failure of the healthy,  the tough and those who cannot afford insurance to insure, that denying legitimate claims is a best practice to remain solvent.  

If markets work, why does this one not?  It doesn't work because the interests of the parties are not transparently aligned with respect to one another to create efficient equilibriums.  For instance, auto insurance works because there is no party that "wants" to get into an accident.  In medicine, the patients wants to be healthy, the insurance company wants the patient healthy, the doctor profits more as a patient's health negatively progresses, but the suppliers and drug companies only are rewarded when a patient is sick.  Now, once someone actually becomes sick, the patient benefits from the best care, the doctor profits from the most severe procedure, the insurance company benefits from the least expensive fix possible ( with "no fix" being the most beneficial) and the drug company only benefits with  a drug induced treatment. 

 As a result no solution can be derived in addressing the individual participants.  The solution must result from creating strategies and tactics that result from consistent adherence to a common goal.

Here is the goal of our Nation's health care: a healthy population, who has the opportunity to eat preservative-free and unaltered foods, drink clean water, breathe clean air, who exercises and takes care of themselves and rarely reaches a level of sickness where a doctor is necessary.   

Our goal is broad, sweeping and unapologetically in stone.  All strategies and tactics that serve to fill our goal shall address the smaller issues underneath our goal, but never contradict our goal.  Now that we have a goal we ALL can agree on, let us write our strategies to reach that goal and fill in those strategies with our tactics.  Simple stuff when you remove ideology and special interests, huh?