Broken Promises
Once when I was a little girl I witnessed a car accident. My family was driving home from a weekend spent with my grandparents sometime in the late fall. We were singing along to the radio when the music suddenly faded out into the distance and sounds of metal on metal echoed through the air. We were stopped at a red light with a front row seat of this horrific accident; a car, out of control, barreling through the red light and colliding with another car right into the driver’s car door. The two cars both spun out and hit a nearby guardrail. My father flung his seatbelt off and ran towards the wreck. When he opened the door of the driver that was hit the door fell off it’s hinges and into the road. The woman in the driver’s seat had cuts all along her arms and face. What I remember the most about that day though was what the woman was saying. From the backseat of my parent’s car I can still hear the woman ,who was hanging on to her life, screaming at my father over and over, “Please do not take me to the hospital, I can not afford health insurance…”.
The healthcare system in this country was put in place to help it’s nation’s people afford medicine, doctor visits, treatment plans, and overall health care. The government funds certain programs that it’s people can access if they qualify depending on how much salary they make in a year. Throughout the years the organizations and institutions that the government has funded has changed. These changes are set in place to better the system and to make healthcare more affordable and efficient, but that hasn’t really been the case in the last couple of years. As the people of the nation we were given a promise by our government that they would serve the people for the better. Looking at what is happening in our nation currently, and what it might be in a couple of years, that promise they made to serve us better has been shattered. Of course it’s not the first time our government has broken this promise, but hopefully something can be done about the corruption hitting our healthcare system.
Recently the progress of the healthcare system has decreased. This could be just an opinion but looking at what our current president wants to put in place it’s clear to see that these changes will only hurt the system. When Obama was president he put ObamaCare into place. This gave thousands of people the chance to afford everything they needed to live a healthy life, but that might all change because of the new president Donald Trump. Trump wants to change ObamaCare to TrumpCare and change a lot of the policies and fundings that ObamaCare promised. The changes are detrimental to people living under the poverty line and for senior citizens. For citizens living under the poverty line, Trump is going to block granting Medicaid to the states, which would permit rightwing states to restrict Medicaid coverage for the poor. This would leave so many people without the ability to seek help/treatment. For those who decide not to get health insurance because of the high costs, there is a 30 percent surcharge if there happens to be an emergency. These are people who can’t afford insurance that will now be getting charged more because of unpredicted medical emergencies. TrumpCare will also increase premiums for senior citizens which doesn’t even make any sense because getting/being older is inevitable. TrumpCare would be defunding Planned Parenthood making it harder and more expensive to obtain birth control and get an abortion. All of this wrapped into a big bow is TrumpCare and if passed the country will be in high debts because it all costs to much and no one has the money to afford it. A vicious cycle for good health, which again makes me question if the government is really holding up their promise on serving their people. If they were serving their people they won’t let this pass. A governor from Utah, Jason Chaffetz, said, “Americans have choices. And they’ve got to make a choice. And so maybe, rather than getting that new iPhone that they just love, and they want to go spend hundreds of dollars on that, maybe they should invest in their own health care.” The lack of respect that this governor has is unethical. There are people in this country that don’t have iPhones or health insurance and the governor have a representative seat to change that for the people of the state they govern. Things need to change fast because their are consequences to all this.
Most people wouldn’t associate the healthcare system with the word corruption but if corruption is defined as using power for a personal gain then corruption goes hand in hand with the healthcare system. The healthcare system in America is designed for one thing, and you would think that one thing would be to save and better lives, but it’s actually making money. With an appetite for profit the system allows many people to feed off the funding and make money while hurting the patients it’s suppose to be helping. Pharmaceutical companies, device manufacturers, hospitals, insurance companies, and doctors are the ones that benefit by putting money in their pockets. This happens by doctors scheduling unneeded tests and surgeries, pharmacies giving less pills and more refills needed, and hospitals by admitting people in when some cases are unnecessary. All of these things are a reality and the patients are the one suffering. More bills and fees that have to be paid, draining the pockets of some that are struggling to even pay monthly bills. It’s unfair, immoral, and harming patients in the process. Patients are suffering higher rates of chronic illnesses correlated with lower life expectancies in this century because of the cost of living. The cost to stay alive and well is to much and that is unacceptable.
The reality of care is that people’s health are decreasing but more money keeps getting made. How does that make sense? Shouldn’t the health be increasing because more money is being spent? That’s how it should work, but in America we have different ways of things working. The quality of health for patients is assumpted to be placed in the hands of our doctors, but in reality it’s in the hands of the insurance companies and hospitals that the doctors work for. The bond of trust with doctors and patients is being broken and it’s because doctors have become puppets on strings to the people they work for; this ultimately is harming patients. Hospitals and insurers have a reward and punishment system for doctors. Specific metrics are set for amount of tests given and the treatments they practice. In a contract it’s called “pay for performance”. Physicians who meet the metrics for the hospital are rewarded with bonuses and higher ratings on insurer websites. Those who don’t abide by the rules get lower pay and lower ratings on insurer websites. Think about it, who wants to go to a doctor who has bad reviews? So it’s true that doctors are ordering unnecessary tests, adding on more refills, and scheduling more follow ups all to meet a certain quota. This increases risk and sometimes the risks outway the benefits of extra testing. Hospitals also have a “quota of admissions” for their emergency rooms. This causes more people to be hospitalized even when they might not need to be. This is like dangling money in front of doctors faces and telling them they can have it if they follow the rules. It takes out morals and individualism from health care completely.
From the distrust that people have accumulated from excessive tests and follow up appointments, the amount of people going to the doctors in America is lower than any other country with a healthcare system. Over the past year twenty five percent of American’s claim to not have seeked medical attention when sick because of the high costs. Twenty three percent skipped scheduled tests, treatments, and follow up appointments recommended by doctors. Another twenty three percent didn’t refill prescribed prescriptions. That is being compared to both Canada and the United Kingdom. Canada didn’t exceed five percent on any of those categories, and the United Kingdom didn’t exceed three percent for any of those categories. As a result to people not seeking treatment, there has been a significant spike in chronic illness in the United States over the past five years. More and more people are being diagnosed with life long illnesses that require lots of maintenance. Coordination of care is important with these type of illnesses. The problem is, these chronic illnesses aren’t getting treated properly because people can’t afford to get those treatments. As stated above, people are not going to the doctors, or their treatments/tests/follow ups, or refilling their medication. This is all due to the fact that no one can afford it. Comparing the amount of money an individual spends on health care in the United States to an individual in Canada is sickening. It’s over a four thousand dollar different for the same ending goal, to get better and be healthy. Numbers don’t lie, but politicians do. Not that this is a new fact, but it is shocking to see that the structure of our healthcare system is not built on the wellbeing of the people it’s there to serve, but on the profit that will be made after the bills are passed out. People are dying. Life expectancy has gone down and chronic illness has gone up. It’s time to pay attention to what is happening to the people.
The cold fact is that people are dying. Actual lives are being lost because they can not afford to pay for things like medication and doctor visits. Alec Raeshawn Smith, a twenty six year old man, was found dead in his apartment on June 27, 2017. He had died from trying to ration out his insulin after aging out of his parents health insurance. He couldn’t afford insulin and payed the price of his life instead, and he’s not the only one. Shane Patrick Boyle died March 18, 2017 after being fifty dollars short on a GoFundMe page for his insulin. Boyle couldn’t afford insulin, a drug that people with diabetes need to survive, and died from lack of it. The stories of people not being able to afford the luxury of live don’t stop with Smith and Boyle. It’s sicken to think that this is a system put in place to prevent things like this from happening, but because the government is money hungry they place money over lives. The real question here is where is the morality? Morality is how we determine what is right and what is wrong. At some point these people in government positions have to stop and ask themselves if what they are passing is moral, and I hope they all come to the conclusion that it is not. If they really did that though maybe this wouldn’t be an issue, but instead of basing decisions on the morals and ethics they base it off of the dollar signs. We live in a world where people are more concerned with the amount of money they can make over the well being of thousands of lives. To stress this one more time, people are dying. Lives are being robbed because people can’t afford basic needs to stay alive in this day of age.
In a recent article by Ian Johnston, he explains the choices that people have to face when rationing out their money. In today’s society it’s hard to live happy lifestyle when the money brought home from a long days of work is taken by endless bills and fees. There is mortgage/rent, car payment, gas, electric, water, food…the list goes on. When deciding where to put the money health doesn’t come high on the list for some people. Another medical tragedy stories involves a young man by the name of Conan Soranno who died sometime in early August of this year. He passed away because he couldn’t afford to go to the hospital after throwing up buckets of blood. Soranno made a Facebook post about his experience a couple days and minutes before his death. He posted that he was forced to sell his car for rent and that he had to cancel his health insurance policy in order to buy groceries. Soranno knew his health was declining and that he needed medical attention but didn’t seek help. In a Facebook post he mentions making the decision to be hospitalized or homeless because he couldn’t afford the price of health care and treatment. Minutes before his death, around three-o-clock in the morning, Soranno asked friends and family to be with him in his final hours. Haunting that someone was looking death in the eye because of his financial standing and knew it. He died that night and never received medical attention.
So what can be done to help get this nation back on track? It might seem like a far stretch to ask the government to change it’s ways, but there is no other way around this problem. The government has become money hungry and is metaphorically feeding on the lives of the people that are dying at their hands (or decisions that will only hinder the over wellness of the population). What needs to change is the attitude that the government has towards its people. Once again, the government is only put in place to serve and protect the people. It was designed to help those live better and come to an overall agreement on how to better the quality of life for the whole. The promise that was made was that we the people would be that whole. As the years went on, somewhere down the line or politics, that promise was broken and forgotten about. Instead of bettering the whole the government is only bettering the people within itself. That isn’t wholistic, but individualistic. It doesn’t serve the people, but a select portion of those who call the shots. The people need to be heard; they need to be listened to. In order to better the quality of life for the people the government needs to understand how to do that. What better why than to ask the people themselves? The thing is, we have been screaming at the top of our lungs for equality in a lot of topics involving our government, but when it comes to the overall health of the nation they seem to tune us out. That needs to change.
The list for changes goes on and on, from letting doctors practice ethically rather than trying to meet and quota, to making sure all people who need help can afford to do so. As a nation we have the power to come together and stand up for what we believe isn’t right. Ever since I was a little girl I always went back to the thought of that woman trying to tell the paramedics not to take her to the hospital. This woman was in a state of life or death and all she was concerned about was how she wouldn’t be able to afford the bills that come with her life being saved. I understand that money is important, but I would have never thought it would be so important that it determined life or death for some people. As time goes on the problem is getting worse. Protests, petitions, rallies, and simply raising awareness for the corruption hitting our healthcare system is the only chance we have to see a better tomorrow. For all those people about to reach retirement, all those couples being new lives into this world, and for those that suffer quietly under the poverty line, things need to change.
When looking at the government deception and corruption should be common words to associate with them now. After looking over all that has been done about the system that is placed to help people and to end illness is causing more deaths and losing the trust of it’s nation. Morality and ethics are being forgotten by the illusions of the dollar bill. People are dying at the expense of money. All these broken promises.
Work Cited
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The New York Times, The New York Times, 18 Nov. 2014, .
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http://www.dailywire.com/news/14226/9-biggest-problems-trumpcare-aaron-b
andler#.
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final message on Facebook.” The Independent, Independent Digital News and Media,
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D-private-healthcare-los-angeles-photographer-vomited-blood-a7916191.html.
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The New York Times, 18 Mar. 2017, http://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/18/opinion/the-fake-freedom-of-american-health-care.html
Pieterse, Pieternella and Tom Lodge. “When Free Healthcare Is Not Free. Corruption
and Mistrust in Sierra Leone’s Primary Healthcare System Immediately Prior to
the Ebola Outbreak.” International Health (1876-3413), vol. 7, no. 6, Nov. 2015,
400-404. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1093/inthealth/ihv024.
Ross, Millar, et al. “It’s All about the Money? A Qualitative Study of Healthcare Worker
Motivation in Urban China.” International Journal for Equity in Health, vol. 16,
07 July 2017, pp. 1-9. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1186/S12939-017-0616-9.
“Ten Reasons Why American Health Care Is so Bad.” The American Prospect,
prospect.org/article/ten-reasons-why-american-health-care-so-bad
“This is how American health care kills people.” The Week – All you need to know about
everything that matters, 19 Jan. 2017, theweek.com/articles/666799/how-american-health-care-kills-people.
Rowan Counterintuitive 