Public health and costs

Up front I have nothing to do with the industry, to include medical, trial lawyers, and the health insurance industry. In old time talk, I am a Joe Blow. I do have doctor friends, and friends in the Medicare industry. I don’t know any medical trial lawyers.

As the son of a Marine, and then myself a Marine, I think of myself as having grown up through a kind of health care system including the APC pill which is now discredited. The general line was if you were really ill, then the system would admit you, and it would be difficult to get out of it. One of my elementary school male friends, Jim Poindexter, died of leukemia at the El Toro hospital. In the interim, being sick as from the flu was treatable by corpsman and even a medical Chief. Of course as a battalion commander, I had my own doc, and got some special attention, none it deserved, even when he dug out a NC tick I could not dig out at home. It was a nasty tick, and since I have had over 40 ticks through training and exercise, this one got my attention.

The idea of a national health care system is wonderful. So are many other things. As a Marine who lived through the Naval Services health care system, both as a kid and a Marine, I would counsel caution. First I believe that most medical problems presented by the patient or parents are usually treatable by someone else than a doctor. The flu or some lung congestion or some birth control don’t require a doctor. Add in things that basic first aid will do, as in using butterfly bandages vice going to the emergency ward, and things can change.

Even societal change, as in the old days of mothers kicking kids out for day and they come home when night or hunger comes first, should come back.

Any national health care system means “rationing” treatment, assuming doctors and trial lawyers will work at the government rates. So if you need a hip replacement, wait in line, as in 18 to 36 months, and then some politician or senior officer or enlisted man may bump you. That’s what happens today in the Naval Service way, and I am being complementary since the service will be professional, once you make it through the queue, again, if you do.

The wild card I hear is this. Will Americans step up to the plate to become doctors to go through this system. Numbers count. Most won’t. And there are so many trial lawyers who line up to in detail to extortionate doctor’s decisions. They are even on TV advertisements these days. And all we citizens want is medical support.

I’ve made my peace. Limit the trial lawyers medical payments by law so they quit naturally. Bust up the doctors unions with competition. One radiologist having a county wide contract must be subject to competition. And here’s one I know I object to, but do not know how to solve. All the many American administrators who make careers off of Medicaid and Medicare must find other employment, or let’s declare it for what it has seemingly become, a jobs program.

And all most want is affordable health care. And most are willing to wait in the queue, as long as they think they are in the queue. Some may not to want to wait. Then they can pay the extra expense. The friction between the two ways is so American.