by John C Smith

Created on: March 29, 2009

OK here are my thoughts on a few issues, I might need more then one posting here.

The health care system here in the United States lags behind a lot of other countries and is light years ahead of others. Our system is not completely broke it is however flawed. It does not work for everyone and that is the biggest flaw in it. When something is broke or not working 100% what do you do? First you have to find out what the problem is, and I bet we can all agree that the biggest issue with health care not working is that it is just so expensive. Why is health care so expensive here in the States? To find out the answer to that we must go back to the beginning. We have to go back to the fundamentals of our health care system.

This may sound hard and nearly impossible but it is in fact relatively easy. Take a look at your last medical bill. Most are itemized to show how much each thing on your bill costs and then the total of course. Well lets look at each line of that bill and determine why they all cost what they do. It is almost like finding out why a pair of shoes cost $50.00, There is the cost of materials, labor, shipping and storage. We know that if we buy a pair of shoes for $50.00 we can trace where that money is going. Who is making what, how much the manufacturer is earning, the assembly line worker, the sales man. The state and federal taxes. We can see where each penny goes. By doing this it allows us to look at where we can cut costs to reduce the cost to the consumers.

With medical professionals and pharmaceutical companies we can do the same thing in fact I have done so with my last medical bill. My last bill was for $634.67 this total did not even include the medicine I would need to get better. I found that the most expensive charge was for all the hospital did. They had to charge me that much to recoup their costs of my care. For each patient that goes into a hospital there are over head costs just like any other business. There are over head costs for electricity, land rent, employee wages and materials. Of all of their over head costs the most expensive is the wages of their doctors and nurses.

I found myself asking why a doctor had to charge $125.00 per visit when the actual time spent with each patient averages out to less then 35 minutes. I have asked a few doctors about this charge and how they can justify it and they all said the same thing it is the going rate and that there are other doctors who charge much more. This is so true go to a dentist

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