Barbaric, predatory healthcare system
Refilling a prescription is nearly an insurmountable obstacle for the world’s most expensive healthcare system
I attempted to refill a prescription recently. The prescription service told me the refills were on the way. It was unusual for them to initiate a contact. Then I received a letter from an entirely different company saying I did not qualify for the prescription service I had been using for several years. They gave no specific reason. I called the original company. They didn’t know if I no longer qualified, and referred me to a third company. My wife has the same healthcare insurance provider and the same prescription service. Her prescriptions were refilled.
In the meantime, my supply of pills was nearly exhausted. I need them to avoid seizures and other problems. Apparently I was caught in a Kafkaesque bureaucratic maze. I had the misfortune of requesting refills just as one corporation was devouring another corporation and those two were then devoured by a third corporation.
During these feeding frenzies, CEO’s and other corporate executives congratulate each other and award each other massive bonuses for improving efficiency (see the book Barbarians at the Gate.) Meanwhile the company is left stripped of its flesh as cleanly as a fish in a school of piranhas.
The U.S. healthcare system is tailored for the free market. In other words, profits are everything, patients are nothing. Our healthcare dollars are split among exorbitant salaries for executives, high dividends for people who do nothing but sit on their asses all day, layer upon layer of bureaucratic filters to squeeze every possible penny out of healthcare premiums, advertisements to convince the unwary to buy snake-oil products, hire lobbyists, pay bribes to corrupt politicians and build voodoo factories to give the impression that they want to find cures for ailments and diseases. At best, we get about 25 cents of healthcare for each dollar we pay into the system.
In the industrialized world, the U.S. healthcare system is unique. No other nation is cruel enough to allow a few to profit so much from the misfortune and misery of so many. That predatory system could not exist in a democracy or a civilized nation.
I attempted to refill a prescription recently. The prescription service told me the refills were on the way. It was unusual for them to initiate a contact. Then I received a letter from an entirely different company saying I did not qualify for the prescription service I had been using for several years. They gave no specific reason. I called the original company. They didn’t know if I no longer qualified, and referred me to a third company. My wife has the same healthcare insurance provider and the same prescription service. Her prescriptions were refilled.
In the meantime, my supply of pills was nearly exhausted. I need them to avoid seizures and other problems. Apparently I was caught in a Kafkaesque bureaucratic maze. I had the misfortune of requesting refills just as one corporation was devouring another corporation and those two were then devoured by a third corporation.
During these feeding frenzies, CEO’s and other corporate executives congratulate each other and award each other massive bonuses for improving efficiency (see the book Barbarians at the Gate.) Meanwhile the company is left stripped of its flesh as cleanly as a fish in a school of piranhas.
The U.S. healthcare system is tailored for the free market. In other words, profits are everything, patients are nothing. Our healthcare dollars are split among exorbitant salaries for executives, high dividends for people who do nothing but sit on their asses all day, layer upon layer of bureaucratic filters to squeeze every possible penny out of healthcare premiums, advertisements to convince the unwary to buy snake-oil products, hire lobbyists, pay bribes to corrupt politicians and build voodoo factories to give the impression that they want to find cures for ailments and diseases. At best, we get about 25 cents of healthcare for each dollar we pay into the system.
In the industrialized world, the U.S. healthcare system is unique. No other nation is cruel enough to allow a few to profit so much from the misfortune and misery of so many. That predatory system could not exist in a democracy or a civilized nation.
posted by Unknown at 2:59 PM
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