Health Care- Your Way

Healthcare and the Insurance Principle

Amidst all the talk about signing up for mandatory insurance (or failing to do so) through healthcare.gov, we have probably lost sight of what is really going on. I suspect that you, like a majority of Americans, think you buy health insurance so it will pay for your health care services and products. If so, I regret to tell you that is not what insurance is for… at all.

You purchase homeowner’s insurance to protect you (your investment actually) if your house burns down or is destroyed by flood. You do not expect insurance to pay for lawn maintenance or replacing old, clogged plumbing pipes.

You buy auto insurance to protect you — another investment — if your vehicle is stolen, taken for a joy ride, and trashed (this happened to me). You do not expect your insurance carrier to pay for oil changes or buy new tires to replace ones you put 40,000 miles on.

Medical malpractice insurance doesn’t prevent the doctor from making a mistake. Nor does it protect the patient from having an adverse outcome. It only protects the insured physician from losing his or her life savings in a lawsuit.

Insurance of any kind is a betting pool, one where the “winner,” is actually the loser. When you collect insurance money, i.e., when you win the bet, your house burned down; your car was totaled; or a patient was badly injured and sued the doctor successfully. “Winning” an insurance betting pool means you get something you really don’t want and then receive money to compensate for your bad luck.

Read More: Health Insurance

Visit Deane Waldman for more information and to subscribe for free bonus videos and articles.

Restore American Health Care by Reconnecting Patient with Physician

The U.S. healthcare system is failing both the American public as well as Americans doctors. Fundamental change is needed but Washington keeps adjusting the financing and never deals with the root cause-breakdown of the doctor-patient relationship.

Failing both patients and physicians

In 2018, the average American family spent $28,166 on healthcare costs. More than 80 percent went to insurance companies, not to providers. For the vast majority of Americans, who are healthy, this wasted one third of total family compensation.

American patients often have great difficulty accessing timely care. Death-by-queueing-preventable demise while waiting in line for care-has been documented in both Medicaid and military populations.

U.S. healthcare harasses physicians trying to provide care with onerous, time-consuming administrative tasks, increasing regulatory burdens, and immediate guilty verdict when there is an adverse outcome, even when the doctor has done nothing wrong.

The two primary reasons to become a physician-financial gain and psychic reward-are shrinking. A doctor’s income is now decided by a third-party, not by the physician, while Washington constantly lowers reimbursement schedules read more…

You can see Related Article on LinkedIn: Healthcare System that Works

Visit Deane Waldman for more information and to subscribe for free bonus videos and articles.

Thanks for reading this blog. You can subscribe for regular update about technology news and tips via RSS Feed. you can also follow us on facebook & linkedin.Thanks for visiting!.

Will Americans in 2020 Repudiate 1776?

Before the Revolutionary War, residents of the North American colonies were subjects of the British crown. They were entitled to as much or as little as the aristocracy allowed. Their living conditions and daily activities were dictated by the government. They paid whatever taxes were arbitrarily imposed by the crown.

In 1776, the founding fathers rejected such centralized control and replaced it with a structure that gave primacy-freedom-to the individual. The new Americans were free to make their own choices. They were free to reap the benefits of their decisions and their work. They were entitled to nothing, except opportunity.

The policies advocated by current contenders for the Democrat presidential nomination, exemplified by Senator Bernie Sanders, repudiate what the founding fathers did in 1776. Is that really what Americans want?

Thinking Systems Need Systems Thnking

After describing machine and complex adaptive systems, we define a thinking system with two unique, defining characteristics: having goal(s) separate from survival and the capability to innovate purposefully. Thinking systems always learn and are the only systems that can structure their own learning. Healthcare is a paradigm of a thinking system and is repeatedly plagued with unintended, adverse outcomes particularly after fixes that fail. Systems thinking can dissolve such dysfunction in healthcare and by extension in any thinking system. Specific recommendations follow from this rationale.

In the broadest sense, the thesis of this article is that our society must move beyond the industrial revolution and embrace the implications of living in an information age. Unfortunately, our mental models, organizational structures and management philosophies are shackled by Newtonian (linear) ideation, assembly line mentality, as well as hierarchical, command-and-control attitudes. Most results in a modern world are derived from interactions within systems composed of machines, computers and people. These are thinking systems, and thinking systems need systems thinking.

When you understand what a thinking system is, you can accomplish more of what you want. YOU are a “thinking system,” that is capable of both true greatness and great evil. Like you and me, healthcare is a thinking system. Washington doesn’t understand this.

Read More: Fixing US Healthcare

Visit Deane Waldman for more information and to subscribe for free bonus videos and articles.

Instead of the House healthcare bill, replace federal healthcare laws by letting the states decide what to do

Obamacare. The American Health Care Act. The Emergency Medical Transport and Labor Act. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Health Insurance Marketplaces (now called exchanges.) The Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act. Medicare. Patient-centric healthcare. The Unfunded Mandate Reform Act.

These are some of the ways that Washington has “fixed” our healthcare system. Other than failure, they have one other attribute in common: they’re Washington-generated, Washington-in-control. For more than 50 years, the federal government has dominated healthcare using a military command-and-control model.

To use a medical analogy, Washington has been the attending physician for a sick patient named healthcare for decades. With all the “treatments” imposed by the doctor-federal government, healthcare has become sicker and sicker, and sicker.

Spending on healthcare has more than tripled, rising from 5 percent of GDP in 1960 to 17.8 percent in 2016. Many accountants fear it will be 20 percent by 2025. That would be a 400 percent increase in 65 years. And what has the public gotten for all that spending?

Read more: American Healthcare System

Magical Thinkers in Washington

Predictions of cost savings through ObamaCare, like most liberal politics, were based on magical thinking. If they want something to be true with sufficiently intensity, liberals know it must be true.

Small children are natural magical thinkers. Ask any psychologist, pediatrician, or parent. Magical thinkers believe that because they want it or can conceive of it, “it” is so, or will be so. The magically thinking child ties a cape on his back and knows that with it on, he can fly. When he jumps off the roof, he will, of course, fall, not soar like Superman. The usual cure for magical thinking is tincture of time, and evidence.

People in Congress and in the White House, though not always physically small, behave just like children: They depend on magical thinking. Because they say it and want “it” badly enough, “it” will be.

If you ever wondered how our “people” in Washington come up with their ridiculous ideas and turn them into laws, here is your answer.

Read More…

Website: Fixing US Healthcare

Great Britain Offers Cautionary Tale on Single Payer

First Charlie Gard and now Alfie Evans. These are babies who, though verbally silent, still gave clarion warnings to proponents of single-payer health care: The government — not my parents — is in charge of my life, and the government chose death.

Charlie Gard was born in August 2015 with a rare genetic disorder that carried a poor long-term prognosis. In July 2017, little Charlie was just 23 months of age and on a ventilator. Over the objections of his parents, British doctors decided to withdraw life-sustaining care. According to British Courts, the National Health Service (NHS), the country’s single-payer system, is the ultimate medical decision maker — not the family. Ventilator support was withdrawn and Charlie died.

Starting in March 2018, another 23-month old British baby hit the headlines. Alfie Evans was a comatose child whose NHS doctors said his condition was hopeless. They wanted to terminate life support, but the parents wanted to transfer their child to Rome’s Bambino Gesu Pediatric Hospital for further care. The British High Court ruled against the parents’ wishes, leaving Alfie’s fate to the NHS. As Justice-Baroness Hale wrote in Aintree v James: “we [referring to patients] cannot always have what we want.” On April 28, 2018, with ventilatory support withdrawn, Alfie died.

Read More: American Healthcare System

You can see Related blog on Tumblr: Affordable Health Insurance

California wants single payer and Texas wants free market – say hello to ‘StatesCare’

California may try to create a statewide single payer healthcare system. Bernie Sanders still wants single payer Medicare-for-All for Vermont despite its demise aborning in 2014. Texas wants a free market system. Washington desperately seeks a way out of their healthcare dilemma, especially the imploding Medicaid program.

Believe it or not, there is a way to make everyone’s dreams come true. Washington just has to do two things: one fairly easy and one very hard.

The easy part is to give each state:

(a) a large, fixed amount block grant for Medicaid plus

(b) a portion of the state’s federal tax contribution according to how much was spent on healthcare in prior years.

The hard part is easy to write but most would say is politically impossible. (I don’t.) Washington should repeal all federal mandates referring to healthcare.

Then, let the states to decide how to structure their healthcare both for the medically needy and the general population. Read More…

Dr. Deane Waldman

More coverage doesn’t necessarily translate into better patient care

Everyone believes that the purpose of a healthcare system is to get the right care on time to the most people, and everyone is right. Where common wisdom goes astray is the presumption that coverage equals care. Most people think that having health insurance guarantees getting healthcare, i.e.,

1. Those who have coverage will get care, and

2. those who don’t have coverage won’t get care.

Both statements are wrong.

Ever since EMTALA (Emergency Medical Transport and Labor Act) was passed in 1986, U.S. hospitals have cared for millions of sick Americans who have no insurance. Care is provided to those with no coverage at all.

Between Medicaid, Medicare, and other public programs, the federal government is by far the largest single U.S. insurer, covering 120 million Americans. Washington has given people the expectation of receiving care when and where they need it. But coverage does not lead to that happy result. In fact, as no-charge coverage has increased, care has gone down — the seesaw effect.

We need to understand that having insurance coverage is not the same thing as getting the medical care you need when you need it. Read More…

Dr. Deane Waldman

Health care is not a federal responsibility | Choose Your Healthcare

There are a host of good reasons to “repeal” the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare). “Replace” is an entirely different matter. Start with its negative effects on individuals and on our country.

Americans are experiencing skyrocketing health insurance costs—premiums, co-pays, and deductibles—which is the opposite of what the law’s name promised: affordable. The ACA is wasting trillions of dollars even though President Obama initiated his takeover of health care claiming we had to “bend down the [health care] spending curve.”

Supporters of President Obama’s signature law loudly tout its one success—an increase in the number of insured Americans. Regrettably, it did so by reducing access to medical care for all Americans.

Read the Complete Blog “A doctor’s straight talk: America, your health care is not a federal responsibility” to know why healthcare shouldn’t be controlled by Washington. Health care decisions should be made by We the People, not by federal bureaucrats or insurance executives.

Deane Waldman

87176-7396