I agree with you about the crazy financial side of health care. The confusing array of health care delivery options make it hard enough to choose, and the lagging economy throws another monkey wrench into the mix. Much of the medical community has gone from being patient-centered to fee-centered. When doctors adopted a fee-for-service model, they changed the face of medicine in the U.S. If you talk to people that are over 50, they tell you that doctors in the U.S. used to make house calls, and you could call them any time day or night and they would come to your house. When patients could not afford to pay, doctors would accept payment in the form of food or services. Admittedly, doctors did not gain as much financially under that system as they were truly worth, but when they changed to fee-for-service, service levels dropped dramatically too. Few doctors allow you to call them any time day or night, and it is only doctors that cater to celebrities who are willing to make house calls. A patient rushed to the emergency room of a hospital for treatment has to pay not only the hospital but the doctors, individually, who attend to him, as well as the ambulance service, and generally a number of other entities as well. While I would acknowledge that doctors deserve to be paid well for what they do, the fee-for-service approach makes them wealthy at the expense of patients without sufficient means to pay. A doctor making $600,000 per year and charging an elderly patient on Social Security a princely sum for every service rendered is basically engaging in highway robbery, except that it is legal.
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