Rescuing the Sinking Healthcare Ship
Although a single-payer system might sound good on paper, neither the inefficient federal government nor the greedy private insurance companies would be able to execute that idea in the real world.
In the United States, we spend 17% of our GDP on healthcare, while comparably-rich nations spend 10-12%; however, our life expectancy ranks 28th out of 37 countries participating in OECD data.1 Therefore, we have low-value, low quality care. Would you want to spend nearly $1000 a month on a car that performs worse than a car with $550 monthly payments? Then why would you tolerate the same with your healthcare?
As a physician, I know firsthand where the problems in medicine lie, and I am uniquely qualified to propose concrete solutions:
Expensive, brand-name medications have zero benefits over generic alternatives. Physicians should be encouraged to prescribe cheaper generic drugs, and patients should be educated that “more expensive does not mean better” with medications.
Clinical care that is driven by high-quality guidelines reduces cost of care and (more importantly) decreases health disparities by treating patients EQUALLY
Physicians are currently paid more for doing complicated procedures; they should be paid for having conversations with their patients and explaining their care thoroughly. Including patients engages them and improves health outcomes.
On a daily basis, I deliver high-value, efficient care to my patients, and applying these practices on a larger scale would rein in costs and produce superior results for Americans.
But the current players would never stand for this.
This complicated issue will not be resolved quickly while we have the influence of powerful lobbying groups from Pfizer, Blue Cross, CVS, Walgreens, Merck, Johnson & Johnson, Cigna, United Healthcare, etc (the list goes on).
We must first eliminate lobbyist influence by implementing term limits; then we can focus on rebuilding an efficient, effective healthcare system.
https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/e0d509f9-en/index.html?itemId=/content/component/e0d509f9-en