Lunacy in Healthcare

A recent article relates some of why healthcare is in trouble. After reading the article, I ran reports at work to see how our own hospital fared under the same problems. (Yes, I already knew we had an extraordinary number of "habitual offenders".)

Here goes;

1. A illegal immigrant requiring dialysis came to the ER 3 times a week to get approval for dialysis. Each ER visit costs taxpayers an average of $1000.00-1500.00, Dialysis costs an average of $350.00 per session.
That is approximately $156,000.00 per year for ER visits and another $54,600.00 for dialysis for a grand total of $210,600.00 a year for this one illegal. We have a total of 22 illegals doing the same thing to get dialysis. That's better than 4.6 million spent at one county hospital on just illegal immigrant dialysis.

2. One crack smoker-- This woman had asthma, and smoked crack cocaine. By the time she was 42 years old, she had been intubated and put in the ICU 44 times, with an average length of stay of 8 days. 7,000.00 per intubation for 308,000.00, $1500.00 per day in the ICU for $528,000.00 total. She also incurred costs for three heart attacks, four strokes, the last of which ended her life. In all, the approximate total to the taxpayer was almost 2 million on her own.

3. Homeless- We have approximately 30 different homeless patients who come in an average of four times a week for everything from COPD, to substance abuse, to vague undefinable complaints. (Typically-- that its cold outside or hot outside, or to panhandle in the ER--no, we don't allow panhandling.) I only chose the top visitors-- those that use the ER greater than 3 times a week. These thirty patients cost the taxpayers approximately 6.2 million a year.

As you can see, a relatively few patients can result in extraordinary expenses. Our ER sees approximately 120-150 thousand patients a year. You can begin to see how quickly it adds up.


Now, as to the cost;

1. Medical professionals practice "defensive medicine". What that means is, that we might well be fairly positive what you have, due to tort and government regulations, we automatically screen you for anything that might cause your symptoms. This is incredibly expensive and slow, as we have to wait on ALL the results before telling YOU what we were likely to tell you right from the start.
How often does this method result in a different diagnosis? About once in 10,000 cases.
Is that often enough to warrant us working in this way? Depends on if you're the 1 in 10000 wouldn't you say?

2. Every single piece of equipment has to pass FDA approval prior to use-- what this means is regardless what it is, if it's used in medicine, it has to pass years of testing by the FDA to ensure safety. This adds billions to the cost of medical equipment annually. Biomedical companies are not in the business for altruistic reasons, just as you don't work for nothing. 'nuff said?


OK, now for the bugaboo lefties just swoon over. Socialized Healthcare;

British citizens pay over twice the taxes Americans do. Doesn't sound like much, right?
OK, in Britain, they ration healthcare. Healthcare is "free"....when you can get it. (It's only free in the sense that you don't pay for it at point of service,, you actually pay for it in taxes). Patients needing a bypass surgery in the UK wait an average of 175 days to get it. Wait times for a MRI in Canada is a whopping 22 months.
Some reports have initiation of treatment for pancreas cancer in Canada being months, despite the urgent need for interventions immediately.

You see, in socialized medicine, all care is rationed, budgeted, and unavailable once the annual procedures have all been spent, despite need. In the British system, care is more restricted on the elderly, as they have less to contribute to society because their working years are behind them.

When it comes to medical professionals in socialized medicine- Canada and the UK can't seem to keep people in nursing and working as doctors. Both lag behind in OECD averages due to lack of pay, horrible conditions and patient overloads.

Just remember- Government knows what you need for health care better than you do,, right?