It’s a tough call – but I think the basic problem is that we are the only first world country to not actually provide healthcare to it’s citizens. We have been programmed to believe that if its the government it’s bad. Problem is that the free market system, which also controls our political will (the people are sheep – the lobbyists win) – doesn’t really efficiently handle social issues like health care.
You are correct – the supply problem in the ER is that the uninsured must be taken whether or not they can pay. If they added more ER’s and more doctors, the wait wouldn’t go down, it would just get more volume. This is the fundamental breakdown in the system. If even illegals had access to health care (I’m not advocating it one way or another, just a point) then the ER’s wouldn’t be so crowded. If doctors offices operated like any other business, they wouldn’t have bankers hours (funny – but even banks are open till 7pm and on Sat and Sun – Dr’s shut down at 4pm on Fridays.
We need a socialized health care system. We need to start removing the private element from health care. They are delivering a crap product at the highest price on the planet. And the quality of care sucks. We are ranked 34th in health care for a reason….
To me the biggest crime (I just sold my company in pharma) is that our drug companies hide their profits, go offshore, take illegal tax breaks, lie about their cost and profit percentages as a relation to geography, and give huge discounts to all the other countries except ours (they are the best at paying off our corrupt thieving politicians.)
As long as Canada gets our drugs at 1/2 price and we are paying full we have a lot to be ashamed about.
