I am tired of the debates and the rhetoric and the talk shows and the political posturing that has taken place around Health care reform. I am frustrated and angry. I watched another political program this morning with various elected officials arguing back and forth with their own ideas of what will work, and why the other guy's idea won't. They are all so far from reality!! I don't believe that any of the people we have elected to guide and guard our future have a clue about the REAL state of health care. They are blindly leading us down a road to destruction.
Dr. Starner -Jones was eloquent in his recently published letter to the White House stating that we have a "culture crisis" rather than a health care crisis. He is so right. Most of us who are actually working in health care would agree with his assessment. The is an attitude of entitlement, that the medical card awarded by the state, to provide a safety net to families that qualify, is a porch pass for freebies that Doctors and clinics can provide.
Dr Starner-Jones noted a patient with state funded medical insurance with an expensive car, tattoos, cell phone, and tobacco habit. His observations are not at all unusual. We see this, and worse, multiple times daily. Then, it is common for this patient to ask for prescriptions for over the counter medications like ibuprofen, because they don't have cash. It's hard to do when there is a five dollar pack of smokes and an iPhone hanging out of a seventy-five dollar purse. I believe that anything "free", is not respected as much as it could be. The system is abused and disrespected. Because a family has a medical card, a child is brought in the the Emergency Department with a "cough" that started today..... no fever, no vomiting, just cough. Then, three siblings are also registered into the ED, just "to be checked out". All the children are fine, one has a cold. No antibiotics needed. but Mom wants prescriptions for Tylenol and Motrin, and codeine cough medicine,as well as a note for her caseworker to document her (needless) trip to the ED as an excuse for not attending the job training or anger management or parenting class that she missed. Grand total: about $500.00 of "free" medical care. Not to mention the amount of time the encounter took in an already overcrowded ED. If there had been a co-pay of even $1.00, would we have seen these four kids? I doubt it.
I wish the government officials who are making the decisions that impact the system would involve those of us who actually have first hand knowledge of the problems and suggestions for fixes that may actually benefit all of us.
I feel strongly that there needs to be reform; lets identify the real problems and implement sensible solutions.
