U.S Health Care Systems Professor Asi [HSA 3111] Assignment #2 – Bitter Pill

Reading up on Steven Brill's TIME magazine article Bitter Pill has been a very informative and great read on the current standings of the healthcare industry. Before listening to Brill and the new healthcare reform under ObamaCare, I was under the assumption that the Unites States government was doing all they could to keep healthcare costs to a minimum. I was sadly mistaken.

In all 25,000+ words Steven Brill assigned to the topic of price gouging in U.S. healthcare, he covered all the aspects of why the healthcare bills are so high. He left no stone unturned, shed perspective and exposed the current healthcare system as a corrupted and inevitable, multi-billion dollar organization that has the power to impose any dollar amount for services provided, due to its monopolistic structure. Healthcare is its own economy, where taxpayers assume the cost of "affordable care for all", while the CEOs and political lobbyists of hospitals and pharmaceutical companies are generating incredible profit margins.

I definitely agree with the overall viewpoint of Steven Brill. His stand on healthcare has shed a whole new perspective for me. Our healthcare system has capitalized on the fears of Americans getting sick or injured, because they know the value of life, and if you could put a price on it, it would be extremely high. It almost getting held up at gunpoint every time you enter a hospital, the assailant is the healthcare industry, giving you the option between your money and your life. You don't have a choice. Which is the rationale of the 60% of bankruptcies in the United States attributed to inability to pay for exorbitant healthcare fees. Between doctors filling

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prescriptions based off pharmaceutical incentives, running expensive laboratory tests, sending referrals out to their friends partners, and hospitals operating off of a standardized, profitmaximizing “Chargemaster”... Reason for a seemingly simple operation costing tens of thousands dollars burying uninsured patients in crushing debt and ultimately bankrupted.

In my opinion, the critiques focused on things like life expectancy and birth and death demographics. I see that they wanted to disprove Brill by comparing prices of pharmaceuticals to other nations, but I feel they didn't go far enough in their research. If anything, they just contributed more insight on semi-related issues. Although I cannot vouch for the accuracy of numbers Brill accumulated in his data, it definitely gave an enlightening overview of the value of "arm and a leg" in healthcare, and it’s disgusting. Brill accurately dubbed our current healthcare as "a profit motive with no accountability". There’s no way anyone can justify how a 3 mile trip to the emergency room should cost the same as an international flight to London. Or a box of gauze tissue should never costing $77, and a single niacin pill for $27. Never. All those ridiculous profits are going toward some affluent CEOs penthouse and Ferrari, while a family that can't even afford a car is getting evicted from their home due to preposterous healthcare expenses.

So it’s difficult to really say if we are getting what we pay for with healthcare. Fundamentally, the answer is no, isn’t black and white either; I look at it from this perspective. If you’re cured from Stage IV cancer and you had to pay $100,000 in medical bills – it’s probably worth the cost. However, if you fracture your ankle in a slip and fall, and get rushed to the

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hospital by paramedics, you’ll end up paying around $45,000 after x-rays and lab work is done, that’s illogical. America is the most advanced country in the world, but it’s astonishing that we still can’t get a premium healthcare system. We spend over $6.5 billion per day; 50% more per person as Canada and Germany, and taxpayers are getting exploited especially when we are spending so much, and American overall health is lower than other countries that spend significantly less!

For decades, American healthcare has organized a system that victimizes its patrons into dissipating millions of dollars. Unethical practices carried out by the overuse of medical services for patients who don’t really need them. Underusing the treatments that are proven effective in curing, increasing complications and the need for future costly procedures. Misuse by incorrect medical documentation, and lack of interest in patient preferences and concerns leading to more expensive services and unsatisfied patients. Why is that? Because nobody is going to argue with the “doctor’s orders”, who just-so-happens to be employed to the nation’s biggest monopoly. At the end of the day, healthcare is a business operating off price inflation. We’re getting something, just not enough for the amount we’re paying. I feel now is the time for Americans to take their health into their own hands, instead of making bad choices and waiting for doctors to prescribe that "magic pill" that fixes one ailment, and causes two others. The concept of preventive care should be the poster child of healthcare industries - that will probably never happen.

Healthcare wants to keep people alive, but as sick as possible for their entire lives.