DO NOT READ THIS POST!!!

Instead, read the much better article from the Charlotte Observer: Why the profit-driven market model doesn’t work in health care. I wish I had written it. Concise and dead-on, it explains why, despite our physician's excellence in treating us, we sometimes feel a bad after-taste connected to the experience. Not that health care providers don't deserve to be paid: they do deserve to be paid, and well-paid, too! It's just that, as the author points out, the delivery of health care is treated as if it were a commodity. And, I would add, by extension we ourselves are turned into commodities as well: A price is set on us. Our contact with the doctor is often limited to 15 minutes; apparently the profit they realize for our visit makes us not "worth" more than that. 

A year or so ago, my wife complained of back pain, and was prescribed a brace to help her. Now, every single day we receive at least two robo-calls offering to help alleviate back pain. As I am writing this, we just got another! My wife's name, history, and phone number have been sold. We feel as if we ourselves have been sold. 

We are like dairy cattle for the health insurers to "milk" for their profit. As soon as we  get sick -- or are likely to get sick, they lose interest in us, fast!

The Pharmaceutical Industry is a good example of what happens when the means of healthcare delivery is owned by public corporations, the shares of which must return a profit competitive with other public corporations. To do that, the price of the product must be raised to the point where some people find themselves too poor to live. The investors are so removed from that reality that they scarcely know about it, let alone care.  

I remember a scene in the Godfather where someone, before being executed for betrayal, tells his executioners that his defection from the Godfather was "just business."

"Just business" -- will  this be the depth to which healthcare will devolve? Not if  Jessica Schorr Saxe has anything to say about it. She is the Charlotte family physician and Chair of Healthcare Justice, in North Carolina. She wrote the piece I'm encouraging you to read.  She can be reached at HCJusticeNC@gmail.com.  I love the piece she's written, and intend to tell her so as soon as I finish this. I hope you will, too.

Dio   

PS: If you'd like to leave a comment, (and I encourage you to do so), just click on the number of comments area, and a you'll see a "comment box" in which you can share your thoughts. Don't be afraid to teach me something. I'm learning all the time from your comments, and I love it!