The Worst Patients in the World
Americans are hypochondriacs, yet we skip our checkups. We demand drugs we don’t need, and fail to take the ones we do. No wonder the U.S. leads the world in health spending.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
For years, the United States’ high health-care costs and poor outcomes have provoked hand-wringing, and rightly so: Every other high-income country in the world spends less than America does as a share of GDP, and surpasses us in most key health outcomes.
Recriminations tend to focus on how Americans pay for health care , and on our hospitals and physicians . Surely if we could just import Singapore’s or Switzerland’s health-care system to our nation, the logic goes, we’d get those countries’ lower costs and better results. Surely, some might add, a program like Medicare for All would help by discouraging high-cost, ineffective treatments.
But lost in these discussions is, well, us. We ought to consider the possibility that if we exported Americans to those other countries, their systems might end up with our costs and outcomes. That although Americans (rightly, in my opinion) love the idea of Medicare for All, they would rebel at its reality. In other words, we need to ask: Could the problem with the American health-care system lie not only with the American system but with American patients?
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I think this article raises a very good point. Does universal care sufficiently address negative patient behaviors that contribute to the cost of care? Can it?
I've heard many people complain that their doctor is rude when he tells them they need to lose weight. When such an attitude is common, are we really going to get good health outcomes, no matter how we pay for it?
I think people have unrealistic expectations in many cases. My x wife's mother is a classic example. She would be in the doctors office once a month insisting that she wanted to lose weight but refused to do any exercise at all. She just wanted more pills to watch the pounds melt off her.. He tried to explain that it doesn't work that way. Finally, he told her, "if you want to lose weight, stop eating so much garbage and exercise!!!". She never went back to him...I bought him dinner, (seriously, it was a very small town).
I worked a summer job in a doctor's office in college. Mostly filing, answering phones, etc. So many people showed up asking for phen-fen with a bottle of Coke in one hand and a bag of chips in the other. The same ones bitched at the doctor for not getting their cholesterol under control. That's when I decided that med school wasn't for me. Back then, people who lived on soda and didn't brush their teeth knew they would lose them, but they thought a pill could fix any medical issue.
I worked in healthcare for....8 years? Nurse. I learned a lot but like I said, people just have unrealistic expectations.
After my bowel resection went bad, (9 surgeries in all, long long story), a surgeon got me back on my feet. Six months, I went back for my last visit and I told him that I felt fine...(blah blah blah), but told him my jeans fit funny because of all the scar tissue, etc.. His reply..
"Hey man, I was trying to save your life, not worry about how your jeans fit." He was of course, right and to be fair, I wan't actually complaining, just joking with him.
As to the cost...and quality of care. The cost shouldn't have any impact on the quality of care. People that want to take care of fellow human beings, for the sole purpose of making a nice paycheck? They picked the wrong profession...
My surgeries cost just over 1.2 million dollars. My surgeon that saved me? Took less than $50k. He wrote the rest off. He gives a shit about the people he takes care of.
I'm glad your surgeon was able to keep you going.
As to the cost - I can't agree. I didn't go into healthcare to get rich, but I do have expenses to pay, myself. I do free and discounted care at times, but I have rent to pay, employees to pay, supplies to buy, equipment to buy and repair, and a teenage boy to feed (probably my biggest expense right there
). In dentistry, the most expensive care generally involves lab fees for crowns, dentures, etc., so if I do those for the same as less expensive options, I'm actually going in the hole financially just paying the lab tech, before I add in any other expenses. Providers can't be expected to do that on the regular, or they bankrupt themselves, and then they can't deliver care, and their families and employees' families suffer.
That's an excellent point, I stand corrected.
Dear Friend Sandy: Its a valid consideration.
Thanks for rasiing our awareness of it.
Rx for Peace and Abundant Blessings.
Enoch. D.D., P.T.S.A., U.S.D.A. Prime.
Only the dentist....evil people, i'm telling you..
Quit smoking? Exercise? I can't even convince people to floss!
I quit smoking, exercise, and floss daily.
I WIN! LOL!
I floss all the time.....mostly.
Hurrah!
I never smoked, exercise (admittedly, not as much as I should), and floss daily.
Well, I still chew Copenhagen...but have been trying to slow down.
I don't smoke or drink, I do exercise between 30-45 minutes a day but I'm guilty of not flossing as often as I should. I do brush twice a day.
You may have a french fry.
Same here...well except for that summer between 3rd and 4th grade. I bought a pack from a vending machine and stashed it in a small clump of shrubs in a not so near by field, yet I frequented it going to the community pool in the summertime.
I might have smoked, maybe 3, maybe 4 cigarettes and wondered wth is up with this? I could by a car magazine for this much money. Yeah even a a young kid I worked for my dad in the evenings and weekends doing tree work and got paid. No allowance in our house. But I usually had a little spending money.
Car magazines 1, cigarettes 0.
Most of my extended family smoked, as did my dad when I was growing up, and being around their smoke always gave me a headache, so I was never even tempted. Dad apologized to me and my brother and sister a few months ago for smoking around us when we were growing up. He now hates the smell of cigarette smoke, too, but it took him quite a few tries to kick the habit.
I hear that from many folks who manage to kick the habit (addiction).
Glad he could and I can understand his apologies to you and siblings. It was so normal years ago. I remember so many pretty girls smoked back then. What a turn off for a kiss to taste like smoke.
Yes, it was more normal back then, and he had smoked since he was in high school. Also, he really did try to quit, and did several times, but it never really stuck until I was in college. He found out that his share of his health insurance premiums would double if he kept smoking, so that was good incentive.
Unfortunately, this is a reality in many hospitals and even at the VA. The VA is fantastic at testing, but once they figure out what it is you have, they twiddle their thumbs and come up short unless you hold their feet to the fire.
My dad had prostate cancer a few years ago. It was going to take the VA months to do his surgery, and his was an aggressive cancer, so he had it done at a private hospital. It was much more advanced than the biopsy showed, so if he'd waited, he might not be alive today. He's an otherwise healthy man - golfs every day, can still do strenuous work around the house and yard, so he'd have lost quite a few good years.
Thanks to a great dentist I still have almost all of my teeth