Politics has Inundated (with) our Healthcare System
According to a few, What Matters most in Healthcare is who gets Elected to the Office
This article was originally published by Illumination-Curated on Medium
Healthcare is the preservation or promotion of health through prevention, diagnosis, treatment, recovery, or cure of disease, illness, injury, and any other physical and mental impairments. Healthcare is planned and delivered by health experts in the medical field. In a simple word, those who contribute to healthcare delivery must hold specific knowledge about patient care, just like any other domain. But tactlessly, that isn’t always the case, especially in today’s highly bureaucratic sphere.
A salubrious healthcare system’s fundamental necessity is the environment where relatively high-quality medical care is available to every person at an affordable cost. The biggest intricacy is that we have yet to discover such an environment.
Some of you who are reading this may think this vision of mine is unrealistic. If so, I must say I could not disagree with you more!
The fundamental necessity of every healthcare system to have the right people hired for the right job for the patient’s welfare. But is that what we have today? — and is it what politicians are offering?
The main steam irrespective of the political party affiliation is what they believe. That is, the type of healthcare system is defined by who gets elected to the office. That is for sure, what the ordinary citizen of the post 19th century believes. Because population health has been the instrument of government bureaucracy and the political game since its birth. Naturally, the government has a role in Healthcare, but should ideally be limited to ordinance, not micromanagement.
The Vision and Mission of Sovereign Healthcare
Every person, entity, and community have a particular vision and mission on what the simple healthcare system should offer. However, the most understandable vision and mission live in simplicity. That is something politics and bureaucracy can never comprehend.
Sovereign Healthcare needs a self-determining patient and independent physician. It is every legitimate healthcare system’s mission to embrace the logistics of delivering top-notch medical care to the door of every patient. Such logistics necessitates the right players aligned at the center of which rests a doctor-patient encounter. Players of a healthcare system include almost everyone who has the basic knowledge of the healthcare delivery system, from engineering, management to clinical nursing. The government is indeed part of that continuum of the healthcare overhaul. But dictation of the logistics is not what it is elected to do!
Photo by Jordhan Madec on Unsplash
Photo by Martha Dominguez de Gouveia on Unsplash
Role of Government in the Healthcare System
Today Governments have taken upon themselves, of course, with the support of their constituents to regulate various aspects of the healthcare logistics from financing, mobilizing the necessary resources through public budgetary and other mechanisms, pooling resources, and guiding the process of resource allocation. Such substantial involvement of the administration in the healthcare affairs has made the core players of the healthcare system dependent on their acts of bureaucracy, further alienating the patients from the vision and mission of Healthcare. Just imagine such capacity over something as personal as the healthcare system is subjected to the corporate lobbyist efforts and partisan war amongst various factions?! it will indeed be adversely affected, decisions made based on political affiliation than patient-focused tactical missions of healthcare scholars.
The government’s role in medical practice started with the initiation of the concept of population health and the evolution of third-party payers. The latter was further enhanced upon the corporations’ personification giving them the lobbying privilege of a person in conjunction with the collective power of the group of people. The symbiotic relationship between the governments and corporations, such as insurance and pharmaceutical industries, would have only required building populace reliance and trust of their administration to tighten the noose around the healthcare inlet. More people feel politicians are the savior of them; the lesser effort will take on behalf of the entities to ensure the flow of money in their direction. Ironically, today, even those countries with government-run healthcare coverage are dependent on the corporations, for the reason that; they are the entities that have bogarted the market through kickback safe harbors are the same entities that have lobbying power over the governments. Hence, in a simplistic description, they have created an elaborate scheme to curb the healthcare market, keep costs high, and physicians and doctors dependent on their services. That is precisely why citizens believe in staying healthy and receiving medical care, some other agents must pick up the tap, despite not realizing that no healthcare is free. Even those who receive care through the redistribution of the financially well endowed; don’t realize that the government will eventually run out of the wealthy people’s money. Such a system will ultimately crumble amid increasing public knowledge and expectation. That affordable and high-quality healthcare system will only prevail if the administration ensures transparent, open healthcare logistics devoid of monopoly, intermediaries, and legal extortion.
Start of Population Health and the Demise of Personalized Healthcare
As much as personalized Healthcare thrives on individual autonomy and personal responsibility for one’s wellbeing; to the same extent, if not more, population health has invited bureaucracy and dependence amid the populace. Governments, for centuries, have successfully used population health to simplify the care for their constituents. Simultaneously, by implementing it later, they tried to make the cost of medical care affordable and delivery efficient. But today, despite such high hopes, Healthcare is everything but cheap. Thanks to the government bureaucracy and corporate monopoly. So why should we expect politicians for anything different?
History of Third-Party Payers and their Involvement in Healthcare Policies
Over the last century, the healthcare system has moved from a home-based scheme to a hospital-based network. It has stridden from a nursing care-based system to a technology- established scheme. It has shifted from a patient-driven system to an insurance meddle system. Each change introduced wicked negative facets. As the new system is being cultivated and implemented, it is crucial to comprehend how the current systemic problems evolved. Only at that moment can actions be taken to avoid analogous pitfalls in this new third-party payer-driven system.
Third-party payers have mastered the art of population health and its pitfalls and, utilizing their corporate power, have entered into a critical role; that is, healthcare policy. That is how managed care systems were born under the notion of reducing costs, supporting medical practice, and providing patients with what they need; and not necessarily what they expect. Third-party payers are by default anti personalization of medicine; something which has failed to contain escalating medical costs but also has sidelined the Individual patient expectation. Then one ought to ask the question; why do we trust the government to give us better Healthcare.
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History of the National Health, Socialized or Nordic Medicine
The National Health System (NHS) was the first universal healthcare delivery system ever established in world history. Later, the concept took up different administrative and political names such as socialized medicine or the Nordic design. Today, the modern progressives call it the Single-payer system. But all apply to the various forms of the same core concept.
On July 5th, 1948, a historic moment occurred in British olden times, which marked the starting of an administrative plan to make Healthcare no longer exclusive to those who could afford it but to make it accessible to everyone, even the “tourists’. ‘Hence, the Central Office of Information for the Ministry of Health sent a leaflet to every household in the UK explaining that It will provide them with all medical, dental, and nursing care. It was the beginning of allocating taxpayer money to reimburse for medical treatment. Today, the British NHS is in big trouble, as it has not been able to keep up with the growing needs of its citizens. It ranks at the bottom 4 of the healthcare quality in Europe, the wait time for medical services is higher, A more significant proportion of public spending goes on health. At the same time, they spend less of the tax proportions on Healthcare, it pays more on the NHS than ever before, and Fewer older people are getting help with welfare. It seems like Margaret Thatcher, the Ex-Prime Minister of the UK, was right by the motto:
“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”
The power of government in healthcare policies makes citizens dependent on the political game of the politicians. Yes, it is true that within the current social sphere, people do, indeed, trust the administration and place their faith in who gets elected to office. But I don’t think most who do have tried to look back in history. For the reason that, if they did, they probably would find themselves in more scrutiny as to how they trust a system that perpetually failed in the past.
Politics is the Enemy of the Healthcare
Politicians use Healthcare to their benefit. They do; they always have and most likely will in the future. Because it is their job to win the vote of their constituents. Healthcare is one issue that almost always wins the voice of the populace, especially those who are swayed; there is such a thing as free Healthcare, and Healthcare is a right. But what politicians perpetually fail to provide is a common understanding of the science behind how the healthcare system should work and be reimbursed. And the reason bureaucrats fail is that they are disconnected from the reality of Healthcare as being personal.
Healthcare is personal, whereas Control of Healthcare belongs to the domain of patient and doctor. Everything the government touches becomes chaotic, under its utter disconnect from patients and doctors. It is so that you can hardly find a politician who would use the same healthcare system that is the product of their legislative efforts.
Political leaders have a significant effect on the industry but stressed that it’s up to the industry itself to solve health care’s biggest challenges.
If Healthcare is going to be reinvented, it has to be done by individuals. So why ask politicians for a solution that we already know will be an utter failure.