National Healthcare Reform

By Teresa L. Chaskin 

We have been told one big myth about our healthcare system being the best in the world while only the very rich can take advantage of some of newer cures. The fact is that we have medical tourism where people leave to go to other countries for better and cheaper healthcare. The truth is that our healthcare system ranks 39^th in the world, we rank just below Costa Rica and just above Slovenia. We have been experiencing an exploding uninsured population. It should not be considered a privilege to have healthcare, it is a god given right for everybody to have access to the same health care. Multinational pharmaceutical corporations charge exorbitant prices for medications that many people cannot afford. They have found ways to increase the length of time for their patents. These large pharmaceutical companies are fleecing our citizens instead of us having true competition for generic drugs that are cost effective. The rest of the industrial countries provide healthcare to their citizens as a right. Most of them also have Healthcare boards that provide oversight, transparency and accountability for what is best for the patient and caps for the cost of healthcare. Here in the U.S. we have no such oversight. This must change if we are to have a truly efficient healthcare system. The Congressional Budget Office has reported that we spend 750 billion dollars yearly on unnecessary medical costs. One thing that must be done to eliminate unnecessary cumbersome medical costs is to have an electronic medical records system so that a doctor can easily pull up the entire records on their patients. In this manner he or she has the necessary information of the patients medical history to assist in prescribing the necessary cures as well as not creating a condition that could adversely affect the patient. By having electronic records would also by-pass all the unnecessary red tape, electronic records would assist in treating the patient most efficiently. The other industrialized countries have electronic records why can't we! This would also reduce the highly expensive administrative costs, which drastically lowers the costs of unnecessary health care. Our medical workforce has a shortage of student nurses, physician's assistance and primary care physicians. We need incentives to recruit more of them instead of having the AMA limiting how many people can enter medical school. Many of our doctors have a continuous education on new-patented pharmaceuticals and equipment provided with perks, free family vacation/seminars provided by multinational pharmaceutical companies to increase their bottom line profits.  The funding has been slashed for the National Institute of Health and other very important institutions for research. Many of our doctors misdiagnose illnesses because of the lack of much needed education and research they should be depending on. We need to have a healthcare system that is efficient in decision-making. I would also like to see more research on alternative medicine that is not invasive and with out the side effects of what we are now using. We have learned that acupuncture is beneficial for curing addictive habits such as smoking, drugs and alcohol. We need more research on our older more traditional and natural cures that can replace the toxic drugs with bad side effects.  We desperately need to move our healthcare system into the 21^st century like the other industrial nations have. We need to have the proper coordination and infrastructure for health care. Our federal government must work with the states to augment benefits. They must also work with community health centers and primary care physicians. For proper infrastructure we need to make sure 3 things are followed: cost, quality and excellence. When a person is moving, changing jobs or has an existing condition they should not loose benefits. We need to have standards where everyone is covered all the time for the same healthcare no matter what happens in his or her life. 

For the first time in my life I believe we will see true healthcare reform, (remember we have been invited to the process so let all of us participate).