Monthly Archives: June 2017

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no wheels

I took this hiking Mount Walker weekend before last. We are so close to so many hikes, to the forest, to the woods, to the wild rhododendrons, to the trees. That is where I go to heal, away from the current attempt to rob more people of basic health care, my poorest and oldest and most disabled patients….And then I return and keep working on local health care and national health care.

What is so bad about spending our health care dollar to take care of all of us? The next most expensive system spends half as much per person. Our system is set up for corporations to make money and it is destroying people and in turn destroying small businesses and our city and county governments cut services to pay outrageous health insurance costs.

I want to go back to the woods….

For the Daily Prompt: wheel.

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Health care mandate in the United States

At a health care town hall last year, our representative said that US citizens have not given Congress a mandate for health care.

I raised my hand. “I beg to differ. The mandate is already law. The law says that no person in the US can be refused care at any emergency room. We have the mandate. Unfortunately the emergency room is the most expensive and cruel and last minute care that we could possibly choose.”

Expensive: any ER visit costs more than a whole day of visits to my rural family medicine clinic.

Last minute: the emergency room doesn’t do chronic care. Their purpose is to 1. try to stop someone from dying and 2. decide if the person should be hospitalized or should follow up in clinic. They do not do prenatal care, treat high blood pressure, treat diabetes, depression, high cholesterol, alcoholism. They do not do chronic care and aren’t meant to.

Cruel: you can go to the emergency room to try to keep from dying. Say you go coughing blood. They find a lung cancer. Now, you have a choice: be treated and maybe you will survive or maybe you will die anyhow and your house will be sold to pay for the medical care. Do you choose to go home instead and die so that your family inherits the house?

The United States spends twice as much per person as the next most expensive health care system in the world and they have universal health care and we don’t. We care more for corporate profit then US citizens and visitors health. I cringe when the discussion is about health INSURANCE not health CARE.

I am a physician but I also own my own business. As a small business owner, I think that I will soon have to close. Why? I am in my 50s with a daughter. I think that within two years my HEALTH INSURANCE will cost more than I pay myself. And I will close the clinic.

We need health CARE not health INSURANCE. The Obamacare law said that health insurance companies can ONLY keep 20 cents of every health care dollar they collect, down from 22.5 cents. They have to spend 80 cents on health care. For medicare the overhead is 2-3 cents per dollar.

Medicare for all, single payer. Put 97 cents of every health care dollar to health care instead of only 80 cents. Or shall we continue down the road to small business and local government collapse and citizen health collapse?

Congress, you can’t wheel and deal your way out of this one. We want health care for our dollar not insurance.

For the Daily Prompt: wheel.