Our Healthcare system is clearly business based according to the article “Cost Conundrum” and on the movie “Escape Fire”. In the movie it had an impacting story of an older lady who had heart problems where she went to a doctor and they were going to charge her thousands of dollars were later she went to a different doctor and they charged her a couple hundred dollars for t he same procedure. I couldn’t believe that in a different office she would get the same procedure done for a lot cheaper than in the other doctor’s office.Also, it surprised me how the medical staff are giving all these medications to our soldiers were they are clearly abusing the medication and taking much more than they should. I was really happy to see that later the soldier who was overdosing on medications decided to stop and later tried a different form of medication of acupuncture.
Although overdosing on medication is a problem in our country it is not the biggest one in our healthcare. Our healthcare system is the one that is collapsing.Our healthcare system is not like it was many years ago, our healthcare system is market based and doctors don’t focus on quality care on their patients and rather view them as dollar signs. In the article “Cost Conundrum” it states that McAllen is one of the most expensive healthcare markets in the country, many are unsure why it spends more per capita but it states that because the people there are obese and have cardiovascular diseases and fall under the poverty line.
In the article it states “the way to practice medicine has changed completely before it was about how to do a good job, now it’s about how much will you benefit”. I clearly agree to this statement because I have gone through this experience with my father. He was diagnosed with diabetes at a late stage in which it caused a retina detachment on his left eye.When he was diagnosed I would go to all of his appointments at the LAC USC Medical Center in Los Angeles, we would arrive early in the morning and have to wait on average 6 hours for him to get attended.
It wasn’t just a couple of patients waiting for their appointments it was more than 50 people waiting to see the doctor. When it came time for my father to see the doctors they just did a quick look and in less than ten minutes we were done seeing the doctor.I was surprised because he didn’t even give us a chance to ask any questions and the most astonishing thing to me was that we waited a long time to see the physician and for him to tell us he will see us next week. This clearly shows to me that our healthcare system is market based because he clearly didn’t take the time to see my father.
Another case that had happened for my father was that in order for my father to receive surgery he had to wait 6 months until the next available operating table, were it took him 2 years to receive both surgeries in his eyes.This hasn’t stopped and is continuing since my father has been receiving medical care I believe that my father has probably seen the doctors more than 150 days each year for the past 4 years that he has been receiving care. Our Healthcare System needs to change from market based to salary based for all the physicians because this will stop the overspending and the doctors will focus on the patients quality care rather than seeing the patients as money and making unnecessary procedures and test on the patients.
