There seems to be a struggle in America among health care providers who work to prevent disease or cure it. Some focus on making the ill well. Other health care providers see their priority as the bottom line. The health care problem in America is serious. Yet, it has little to do with medical and scientific knowledge and discoveries. We are proud to find new medications, drugs for the average American. However, the problem is one of cost and expense. Some European nations provide general national health care. America is serviced by both for-profit as well as non-profit organizations. They vary in the types and even quality of service. Most importantly, they vary in the cost and fees they can (and do) charge their patients. What is perhaps most important to this discussion about difficult choices that so-called "good people" have to make is the cost of insurance. Even with insurance, the specter of expensive co-payments as well as denial of services by some insurers.
Pharmaceutical companies are making big bucks, U.S. doctors are some of the highest paid, fancy new technologies are being sold that purportedly do miraculous things, the hospitals are getting their cut and the insurance companies keep raising their costs, so surely all is swell. Not really. According to the N.Y Times there are '60 million uninsured during a year (May 13)' (Engler 2003 1).
All too often we read about court cases, even deaths to patients denied coverage by their insurers. Why? Because the treatment is regarded as "experimental". We also see insurance companies anxious to move patients out of expensive rooms and back home as quickly as possible. This has led to some hospitals' discharging a new mother. Maybe she just gave birth within the past 24 hours. Out she goes. It's an HMO or hospital policy. Not that her bed is urgently needed. Rather, the insurer is trying to save additional hospitalization costs.
Politicians, especially Senator ...