Is Medical Care Making Us Sick?

I am old enough to remember when doctors made house calls. When you got to talk to your doctor about your ailments until you were satisfied. When there was a doctor on call in case your doctor was busy. The image of the kindly, old doctor was on television, in magazines and even was immortalized by Norman Rockwell. Now, that has all changed.

Now we are shuffled off to a care facilitator, or medical assistant or some other new, made up term for someone that never went to medical school or even college. Now it is an industry that is advertised as a fast growing profession that will give you money. New schools are appearing all the time in commercials on television that will help you be a medical professional in as little as six months. Do you really want to trust your health to someone with six months of training? Someone that entered the field because it promised them good money? And money is what they are entering the field for, where it used to be to help people. Now the medical field has become the healthcare industry.

We are made to feel like cars on an assembly line. Passed along from one to another where no one person can truly help us. There are new specialty fields created all the time. I expect the day where there will be podiatrists that treat the left foot and an entirely different group that treat the right foot. It seems funny but we are not that far off now. We are referred here and there. And all along the way, we must get approval for being treated by an insurance company.

A doctor may prescribe a medication for your ailment. But then the insurance company does not cover it. They are essentially saying that they know better than the doctor that has actually seen you. But the insurance companies are regulated by government and that is where we get a whole new layer of issues. Those making the laws are influenced by the pharmaceutical companies. Or as they are now referred to: Big Pharma. Big Pharma is the one that decides what pills we can take. They back bills that further their agenda and work to defeat any new law that may help the individual find alternatives for their health care.

Don’t worry too much though. The lawyers are also there, watching it all. They will limit what the doctor can tell you. They will tell the insurance companies what they can and cannot cover. They will sue the pharmaceutical companies that fast track drugs that harm us.

It has become a strange, vicious cycle. Actually it more of a cyclone and we the individuals are caught in the middle of the whirlwind. Who knows when the cyclone will stop spinning and where it will carry us. Dorothy got carried all the way to Oz in her cyclone. No telling where we will end up when all is said and done. In the meantime, we are forced to ride the wind and hang on while hoping for the best.

What happened to being able to sit down with a doctor and get help because they were there with the desire to heal. To listen to a patient rather than throw drugs at them and hope their coverage pays. When they could state what they were thinking about your care without the worry that they would be sued if you didn't get healed fast enough or at all.

Where did the compassion go? In the name of progress and business, we have become customers rather than patients.