Triggerband Web Journal

There is a lot of talk these days about how Medicare and Medicaid will bankrupt the federal government in a few decades or less. Likewise, the rising costs of private health insurance are placing an ever-increasing burden on families and small businesses. Furthermore, businesses of all sizes are becoming so overwhelmed with worker’s compensation costs, it is no wonder many of them are moving operations overseas to remain competitive in world markets.

What will it take to solve the current healthcare crisis and prevent this looming calamity? The most common suggestion put forth is national health insurance, European style. There is ongoing debate on this topic, and what I gather is that national health insurance will solve problems while creating new ones.

Ultimately, the plan will simply move the impending budgetary disaster to a new location, rather than solving it. But what about the lower costs of healthcare in Europe? Well, those savings presume that Americans are as healthy as Europeans, and they are not. Americans will use more healthcare services than their European counterparts regardless who pays for them.

For all the discussion about healthcare’s problems – going around in circles debating the same tired arguments – you would be surprised that the solution is an elephant in the room. It is that the medical treatments and healthcare services themselves need to improve. There is no other way to solve the healthcare crisis. It is not okay, to give you an example, for a doctor to tell someone they have arthritis and place them on potent pain killers forever with no hope of recovery. It is unacceptable to have cancer treatments that compete with the cancer itself in trying to kill the patient.

We assume that educated, hardworking, intelligent doctors and researchers will find and use the best treatments possible. That is simply not the case. There is as much corruption in the medical profession and healthcare system as Wall Street or anywhere else. I really believe that the only reason no one does anything is because no one understands the healthcare system. True, people understand parts of it, enough to keep things going. But no one really understands the system as a whole and recognizes that waste, corruption, and deceit are rampant.

Does this mean we need to work harder and develop better treatments? Yes and no. Technology allows for far better treatments than are currently available. Treatments can improve dramatically without any new advances in medical technology. Case in point: Researchers recently discovered that small doses of antibiotics can slow the progression of multiple sclerosis.¹ What is needed now is an effective system for implementing the practical changes this discovery demands into the medical profession worldwide, quickly and effectively. Such system does not exist, and this discovery will likely be in vain.

More important than working harder (and, believe me, healthcare professionals work hard) is the need to work smarter. Pharmaceutical companies spend billions of dollars a year promoting their medications to patients and doctors. If this money were spent creating better medications, and non-commercial professional organizations were left to evaluate the new medications and pass that information along to doctors, we would make more progress with the same resources.

Other areas of great waste are within the booming market for alternative medicine. Certain forms of alternative medicine are definitely legitimate, but others are, well, crazy. Acupuncture, magnets, crystal therapy, Reiki, chiropractic spinal adjustments – practitioners who perform this nonsense are often intelligent, hardworking, and otherwise competent. But their time and skill is sadly being wasted on treatments that are similar in nature (albeit more technologically oriented) to those found in primitive animist cultures.

I realize I am stepping on toes by saying some of these things. Nevertheless, I have a solution to healthcare’s problems at a time when Americans desperately need one. Eliminate waste, stamp out corruption, establish a universal standard by which treatments are evaluated and a centralized organizational network by which new treatments are disseminated – these are merely a few of the policy recommendations I have to save the life of a critically ill system.

Alexander Typaldos, JD

¹See BBC news article at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7136088.stm.