US Healthcare

  There are too few therapists and no burn units; doctors can’t accept Medicaid patients and nurses are quitting, because too few “healthcare” dollars go to health...care Imagine a big truck full of bags of money. The bags start rolling down the ramp. The  federal bureaucracy  takes the lion’s share. Then, insurance companies and corporate medicine take another big piece, and only a few dollars are left for patients and their care. Do you think the millions of rules and regulations are free? Can you build Health Insurance Exchanges or expand Medicaid for no cost? Do all those healthcare consultants, accountants, actuaries, billers and coders, compliance officers, lawyers, navigators, regulators, etc. work pro bono? Visit “ Deane Waldman ” for more Information!!

  Our politicians do not learn from history, even our own. House Bill 100 ("New Mexico Health Care Access Wins Final Approval," Los Alamos Post, Feb 19) just passed is touted to "increase[s] access to high-quality health care."Sadly, this is not true. HB 100 will provide additional funds ("tools") to BeWellNM, New Mexico's ACA-created health insurance exchange, which provides subsidies to New Mexicans who make too much money to qualify for Medicaid and too little to afford private insurance and/or do not have employer-supported health coverage. Full closure: From 2013 to 2019, I was the "Consumer Advocate" onBeWellNMBoard of Directors. I support its mission to improve access to care, not merely insuring more people. Both our state representatives and the governor conflate the words insurance and access, implying they are the same. They most certainly are not! Read more... Visit “ Fixing US Healthcare ” for more Info!!  

  Long, long ago (“in a galaxy far, far away”), I was a schoolboy near Liverpool, England. In 1960, I won the Old Wallaseyans Stumps Speeches Debating Trophy. It was nice to win, but the really good part was that in the final round, I beat my brother Stewart. He and I competed for everything from grades and awards to girls. Now fifty-five years later, I need to fall back on debating style to raise an important question about Medicare. Point No. 1: Entitlements Are Free An entitlement is a right to have or to do something. Such a right is granted to you by God or by the government. (Often, the latter thinks it is the former.) You pay nothing for an entitlement. Indeed, that is a hallmark of an entitlement — it is free. Read more... Visit “ Fixing US Healthcare ” for more Info!! 

  Watch this video to learn five reasons why healthcare CANNOT be a federal responsibility.  Sign up for news and information at   How To Fix US Healthcare  

There are so many compelling narratives about healthcare, people simply can't distinguish truth from falsehood. Without knowing the facts about healthcare, we cannot fix it. Following are five examples of commonly accepted wisdom that are bogus, myths, and one true narrative. When you accept that Washington is the cancer in healthcare, the cure becomes clear, obvious, and politically unacceptable (to the Beltway). To fix healthcare, We the Patients need to kick Washington out so we can decide for ourselves, in our states, what healthcare structure works best for us. Washington's one-size-fits-all ... does't. The true narrative is StatesCare, the one and only effective "fix" for healthcare: Eject Washington from healthcare. Let We the Patients decide their care and their spending. Read More:  bureaucracy in healthcare Visit “ Fixing US Healthcare ” for more Info!!

The reason you got a prescription for the wrong medication is simple. Your doctor did not choose it, someone who never heard your name and doesn't know your medical history, that faceless person decided what medicines you take. These faceless, unseen doctors-without-licenses are government rule writers, insurance actuaries, and bureaucrats working for pharmacy benefits management (PBM). Every day thousands of Americans get the WRONG medication for their illness. It’s time to return decision-making authority where it rightfully belongs: with you and your doctor.  Read More:   Doctor Patient Relationship Visit “ Fixing US Healthcare ” for more Info!!

Every day thousands of Americans get the WRONG medication for their illness. Find out why, and why it’s not your doctor’s fault.  Sign up for news and information at  Doctor Patient Relationship

Government-run healthcare systems all fail to provide timely medical care. Patients who could be saved die while waiting in line for care.  Sign up for news and information at  Fixing US Healthcare

The title question might seem silly, even ludicrous. It is anything but. In the United States today, a truck driver is free to choose which gear to use going up a hill and at what speed to go down the hill. Accountants and lawyers are free to accept or refuse specific jobs and how to do their work. Clinical physicians are not similarly free to do their work as they see fit in the best interests of the patient before them People who never went to medical school-insurance actuaries, state insurance commissioners, and federal regulators-dictate to physicians what they can do for their patients, and especially, what they cannot. Hospital lawyers require physicians to strictly follow federal guidelines as though Washington's advisories were stone tablets handed down from Mount Sinai. The one person not free to practice best medicine on you is your personal doctor. Read more... Visit  " We can Fix Healthcare "  for more information and to subscribe for free bo...

If you work in healthcare, the initials HIPAA make you gag. If you are not in healthcare, you are probably unaware of this 2000-pound hippopotamus that you are supporting. HIPAA stands for  Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act  (of 1998). In the early 1990s, there was extensive corporate downsizing, reductions in force (RIF) were common events, and people lost their insurance along with their jobs. The initiating stimulus for this legislation was to make insurance portable, hence the “P” in HIPAA: you could take your insurance with you when you left your job. Gradually, the transfer of medical information became the focus. In this time of the Patriot Act, confidentiality and security were (and remain) king. Eventually, the original problem of loss of medical insurance was “lost” and forgotten. HIPAA now sets forth guidelines about protection of personal medical data. It hints at dire consequences if medical confidentiality is broached. HIPAA produces defen...

We can now design a CoViD-19 strategy based on fact, not flawed theory. Evidence drives a strategy of stopping lock-downs, allowing normal contacts including work, quarantine of high-risk Americans, and mass testing.  There is NO NEED TO FEAR a return to normalcy, and every reason to do it.  Sign up for more videos and information here:  Fixing US Healthcare 

Elected officials such as New York and Atlanta mayors as well as clinical physicians, viz., in Maryland and Colorado, are projecting there will be more patients who need life-saving CoViD-19 services than there are facilities--ICU beds and ventilators--available. Such an imbalance between the needs of critically ill patients and healthcare capabilities requires triage, deciding who gets care and who waits. Who should do the triage? Who should make the life or death decision? Triage of the sick or injured started on the battlefield probably during Napoleon's 1799 siege of the ancient city of Acre in northern Israel. Many of his troops became ill from poor sanitation and inadequate food. The soldiers were separated or "triaged" into those fit to fight and those who were not. So, We must protect the direct fiduciary connection between doctors and individual patients. There should be no other person or group making these Solomon-like life or death decis...

Amidst all the talk about signing up for  mandatory insurance  (or failing to do so) through healthcare.gov, we have probably lost sight of what is really going on.  I suspect that you, like a majority of Americans, think you buy health insurance so it will pay for your health care services and products. If so, I regret to tell you that is not what insurance is for… at all. You purchase homeowner’s insurance to protect you (your investment actually) if your house burns down or is destroyed by flood. You do not expect insurance to pay for lawn maintenance or replacing old, clogged plumbing pipes. You buy auto insurance to protect you — another investment — if your vehicle is stolen, taken for a joy ride, and trashed (this happened to me). You do not expect your insurance carrier to pay for oil changes or buy new tires to replace ones you put 40,000 miles on. Medical malpractice insurance doesn’t prevent the doctor from making a mistake. Nor does it protect the ...

If health care becomes patients’ “right,” then providers lose their right to be free. The logic is inescapable.  Sign up for news and information at  Fixing US Healthcare Also,  Buy the Book “ Curing the Cancer in U.S. Healthcare "  to understand why healthcare is failing and what can you do to save yourself and your loved ones.

The U.S. healthcare system is failing both the American public as well as Americans doctors. Fundamental change is needed but Washington keeps adjusting the financing and never deals with the root cause-breakdown of the doctor-patient relationship. Failing both patients and physicians In 2018, the average American family spent $28,166 on healthcare costs. More than 80 percent went to insurance companies, not to providers. For the vast majority of Americans, who are healthy, this wasted one third of total family compensation. American patients often have great difficulty accessing timely care. Death-by-queueing-preventable demise while waiting in line for care-has been documented in both medicaid and militarypopulations. U.S. healthcare harasses physicians trying to provide care with onerous, time-consuming administrative tasks, increasing regulatory burdens, and immediate guilty verdict when there is an adverse outcome, even when the doctor has done nothing wron...

Before the Revolutionary War, residents of the North American colonies were subjects of the British crown. They were entitled to as much or as little as the aristocracy allowed. Their living conditions and daily activities were dictated by the government. They paid whatever taxes were arbitrarily imposed by the crown. In 1776, the founding fathers rejected such centralized control and replaced it with a structure that gave primacy-freedom-to the individual. The new Americans were free to make their own choices. They were free to reap the benefits of their decisions and their work. They were entitled to nothing, except opportunity. The policies advocated by current contenders for the Democrat presidential nomination, exemplified by Senator Bernie Sanders, repudiate what the founding fathers did in 1776. Is that really what Americans want? Read More: Fixing US Healthcare You can see Related Article on LinkedIn:  Choose Your Healthcare Visit Deane Waldman for more infor...

After describing machine and complex adaptive systems, we define a thinking system with two unique, defining characteristics: having goal(s) separate from survival and the capability to innovate purposefully. Thinking systems always learn and are the only systems that can structure their own learning. Healthcare is a paradigm of a thinking system and is repeatedly plagued with unintended, adverse outcomes particularly after fixes that fail. Systems thinking can dissolve such dysfunction in healthcare and by extension in any thinking system. Specific recommendations follow from this rationale. In the broadest sense, the thesis of this article is that our society must move beyond the industrial revolution and embrace the implications of living in an information age.  Unfortunately, our mental models, organizational structures and management philosophies are shackled by Newtonian (linear) ideation, assembly line mentality, as well as hierarchical, command-and-control attitudes. ...

Obamacare. The American Health Care Act . The Emergency Medical Transport and Labor Act. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Health Insurance Marketplaces (now called exchanges.) The Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act. Medicare. Patient-centric healthcare. The Unfunded Mandate Reform Act. These are some of the ways that Washington has "fixed" our healthcare system. Other than failure, they have one other attribute in common: they're Washington-generated, Washington-in-control. For more than 50 years, the federal government has dominated healthcare using a military command-and-control model. To use a medical analogy, Washington has been the attending physician for a sick patient named healthcare for decades. With all the "treatments" imposed by the doctor-federal government, healthcare has become sicker and sicker, and sicker. Spending on healthcare has more than tripled, rising from 5 percent of GDP in 1960 to 17.8 percent...

Predictions of cost savings through ObamaCare, like most liberal politics, were based on magical thinking. If they want something to be true with sufficiently intensity, liberals know it must be true. Small children are natural magical thinkers. Ask any psychologist, pediatrician, or parent. Magical thinkers believe that because they want it or can conceive of it, "it" is so, or will be so. The magically thinking child ties a cape on his back and knows that with it on, he can fly. When he jumps off the roof, he will, of course, fall, not soar like Superman. The usual cure for magical thinking is tincture of time, and evidence. People in Congress and in the White House, though not always physically small, behave just like children: They depend on magical thinking. Because they say it and want “it” badly enough, "it" will be. If you ever wondered how our “people” in Washington come up with their ridiculous ideas and turn them into laws, here is your answer....

Created in 1965 as a medical safety net for “disabled, aged, and blind,”. Medicaid now provides no-charge medical insurance for 74 million Americans.  Has Medicaid been successful in providing for their medical needs or not?  Buy the Book “ Curing the Cancer in U.S. Healthcare "  to understand why healthcare is failing and what can you do to save yourself and your loved ones.  Visit the Website:  Health Insurance in the United States