Health care incentives bizarre

Feeling healthy today? 

I sure hope so because these days the state of our health care system is at its highest level of disappointment. 

Whatever happened to the days when Dr. Pepper would come to your house and fix your broken finger for free because you were too much of an idiot to keep it out of the car door?

In our country, business is focused on making money and this does include our health care providers. Their primary goals are to make as much profit as possible.

There is something seriously wrong with this logic.

Our health should be their top priority. If not, the public is not going to receive the care it needs and deserves.  

A few days ago, my friend told me a story about a young man in need of help. He was having excruciating tooth pain and did not know what to do. A visit to the doctor was definitely in order.

Two hours and 50 signed proof-of-insurance waivers later, he entered the examination room. The young man explained his symptoms and was immediately told that it was just his wisdom teeth. He was thrown some pain pills and discharged with a recommendation that he should get his teeth removed.  

Two weeks after his wisdom teeth were ripped out, this young man still had problems. He returned to the nitwit doctor’s office, waited another two hours, filled out even more forms and was finally correctly diagnosed with a completely different problem.

It turns out it was not his wisdom teeth that were giving him the problem, but a completely different set of teeth. To make matters worse, he could not receive the corrective surgery he needed due to the fact that his wisdom teeth had been taken out! 

The doctor’s office spent more time having the patient sign forms and prove that he could pay for treatment than actually seeing what was wrong with him.

Is money an important issue? Of course, but proper care should be an even larger priority. 

Doctors are supposed to care about their patients, not how large their next paycheck will be. Maybe they should be forced to forfeit their pay whenever a misdiagnosis is made. If this is the case, they would have a little more incentive to get the diagnosis right the first time around. It is a win-win situation. We would get the health care we need, and they would get the paycheck they love. 

Careless professionals are not our only scourges in this country. Prescription prices are absolutely outrageous.

The prescription medicine Prozac costs patients $247.47 for 100 pills. The cost of the general active ingredients is only $0.11. I am no math major, but that is almost a 225,000 percent markup. 

Obviously, there is no easy way out of this problem.

Many look to Canada, a country that provides public health care. If you are a Canadian citizen and have a valid address, you can receive health care. However, Canada has its own problems.

Canadian health care services are saturated with patients. Since everyone qualifies to be healthy, the wait times for appointments are outrageous. Some are so fed up with waiting that they travel to the U.S. to avoid it. Others just don’t bother with getting the care they need.  

So what do we do?

If we keep things as they are, those wealthy enough can have health care and the poor will be ignored. If we decide to change, our system will be overwhelmed by demand.

The only advice I can give is to stock up on apples.

Rebecca McGrath is a junior liberal arts major.

4 comments

The Author.

Wed Nov 18 2009 14:14

I am sorry that you feel I scorned you and your whole profession. However, I felt it was obvious that I could not be speaking of every single doctor in the world, seeing as I have not met all of them. And yes, there are many proactive people in the medical profession that deserve praise instead of criticism. I was only stating my opinion on the docs I have met in my limited experience and heard stories about.

On the subject of prescription medication...yes you can get it for a cheap price but how long after the drug actually comes out? Not immediately, I am sure, and those that need it can not wait.

Your name

Wed Nov 18 2009 09:49

Yep, not a math major... and not a business major either. Does anyone at Sidelines do any fact checking?

Your name

Tue Nov 17 2009 09:26

Rebecca, how much research did you actually do on this article? You cite a single case of misdiagnosis to blast all physicians everywhere. To top it off, this sounds like a dental/oral surgery issue that probably did not involve medical doctors in the first place (we don't pull teeth, wisdom or otherwise). You don't bother to mention all of the physicians that donate their time to help the underserved both in this country and overseas. Several of my partners and I travel to 3rd world countries each year at our own expense to donate our time to those that would not receive ANY medical care if we did not come. We also see uninsured/underinsured patiients in our office at cost or below. There is a primary care physician shortage in this country that will only be getting worse as the baby boomers age because medical students have realized that they cannot pay off their student loans, often $200,000 or more, on what they will make as primary care physicians. Personally, I spent 7 years in training beyond college then 7 years in the military in order to afford to practice without having to worry about loans that would limit my ability to practice without debt. I guarantee that If you pass my house, you would not be able to identify it as where a "rich doctor" lives because the lifestyle that I am able to enjoy is no different than my neighbors who work as builders, electricians, and postal workers. Understand that I am in no way asking for sympathy -- I live quite comfortably, this is the profession that I have chosen, and I cannot imagine doing anything else. I don't believe however, that I deserve the scorn that you have placed on me and all of my fellow physicians. Are there money-grubbing doctors out there? Certainly, just as their are money-grubbing lawyers and businessmen. But they are not the majority.
As for your suggestion that physicians only get paid if their diagnosis and treatment recommendations are correct -- I'd love to take you up on that. If you don't get better after seeing me, you owe nothing. BUT, if my diagnosis and treatment save your life, you pay what your life is worth. I think that I'd do well under that system.
As for the price of Prozac, you can get a 3 month supply of the generic for $10. You need to be a smarter shopper.
Healthcare in this country is certainly in crisis but the blame rests with us all -- physicians, patients, drug compaines, insurance companies, govenment. Let's look for answers together rather then tearing each other apart.

Jeremy

Mon Nov 16 2009 09:30

You make a good point that there is a large amount of mark-up in prescription drugs; however, you do not take into account the years of research and development that a drug must undergo before being on the market. For some drugs, the final development cost may have been several million dollars. By that point, the manufacturer only has a few years to recoup this money (and yes, make as much profit as possible) before the compound is no longer protected, and at that point, generic companies begin to produce it. (Generic companies spend $0 on R&D typically.) I agree that prescription drug prices are often ridiculous, but one cannot over simplify things.

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