Health Care
I’ve been reading a lot about the state of health care in the U.S. as well as still seeing the occasional news report on it. Several things are disturbing, including the rise of DTC (direct to consumer) marketing of drug companies, the change from University run trials of drugs to private paid groups doing it, and the lack of requirement for full disclosure in medical journals on clinical trials. One of the ideas that keeps making more and more sense to me is allowing workers to get their own health care versus the traditional company route. Employees would get the money that would otherwise go towards the company health care plan to use themselves. One report I heard the other night is that the average income in the U.S. is $18/hr with an added $6-$8 an hour going towards company health care. Individuals would be able to tailor their own health care programs to meet their own needs and personal risks. Health care companies would have to focus more on customer relations and individual needs versus a group policy/business oriented approach. Of course I still think health care needs to be provided at an adequate level to people below a certain income line, the elderly, and especially people under 18 years of age. I am against socializing our health care system because I believe that it still generates a good deal of money for the U.S. economy. Competition should drive down cost of health care, but business health care plans versus individual health care plans involves different interests. This of course would only be half the battle. Drug prices also need to be controlled and I think we should expand the role of specialized nurses for people suffering from minor ailments. For free health care service due to income there needs to be more restrictions on monetairy rewards for all but gross negligence- I personally favor the professional jury comprised of health care workers to oversee such a process. More drugs should be available over the counter. There is no reason that the most commonly prescribed antibiotics should not be sold over the counter, especially when it is already done in most developed nations. The more powerful antibiotics of course should still be by prescription only, but it makes no sense to restrict access to an antibiotic where if resistent bacteria emerges in one part of the world or due to overprescription here- the regulation wouldn’t make a pinch of difference. Another problem as I see it stems from the war on drugs. When Doctors have to worry about their medical liscences it impacts the liklihood of them prescribing it for the patients who need it. There are several staggering estimates on the number of americans who live in pain that could be managed with access to medicines- often opiates, which when taken properly, are safer for people than even aspirin is. To kill two birds with one stones, and this has been an idea brought up by others- regulate poppy production in Afghanistan to go towards medically sound pain killers. The only real difference between opiates created synthetically in a lab and opiates refined directly from opiate producing poppies-is about several dollars per pill. It would generate a local industry in Afghanistan, help curtail the influence of terrorists and drug cartels in Afghanistan and around the world, and give farmers a similar level of income without the risk involved from state and cartels in growing the poppies illegally.
Other good ideas that I have heard is to stop direct to consumer marketing. In the U.S., people have about an 80% chance of getting a drug prescribed they ask for by name. This is compared with about 40 some percent in most developed nations where drug advertising is not allowed. People die younger in the U.S. than in much of the developed world, while we may have good health care service it isn’t always the service that is best for us. Doctors in the U.S. are much less likely to talk about lifestyle changes versus in most developed nations, and much more likely to prescribe a drug. Rather than seriously working on a change of diet for high cholestoral-people in the U.S. are more likely to get a drug to take care of the problem. We are over medicated all across the spectrum. Kids get drugs to keep them from acting like kids, people are kept on psychological medications for years at a time. We glorify drugs on one hand and blast them on the other. Both causes harm to us, as it keeps people from the medications that should be using and on the ones they should not. Vioxx and similar drugs are thought to have caused up to 50 heart attacks a day in the U.S., yet they were hailed as salvation simply because potential for abuse was low compared to opiates. Some people might abuse oxycontin, but overall that drug and ones like it are much safer for people. The DEA should not be involved in medical affairs. The fact that a few people may abuse a substance should not mean the rest of us should suffer. This goes as much for medical marijuana as it does for opiates for people living in constant pain and the host of other drugs that work, but aren’t used because people might abuse them.
