Should the American Health Care System Be Scrapped Entirely?
Ben Biddick
Integrating tech, wellness, and education to create emotionally intelligent solutions for public service organizations.
The legendary Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles is the latest hospital to face a strike by its healthcare employees. "We're struggling to keep up, and people are leaving because they just can't afford to work here. But the ones really paying the price are our patients and their families," Eric Melo, an emergency room technician at the hospital, said in the union release. Cedars-Sinai responded: "Our goals remain clear and firm: We are dedicated to the safety and well-being of our patients and the community."
The business of healthcare, government, and private health insurance continue to struggle to meet the medical needs of American customers while ensuring their employees are safe, valued in practical ways, and bearing a balanced patient care responsibility load. It's alarming that healthcare companies that often array billboards, websites, and hallways with claims of mercy, compassion, and health expertise are so unskilled at ensuring their own staff are operating at their optimum capabilities with consistency and longevity.
Instead, it appears clear that many healthcare companies grind their own staff into burn-out and focus very little time or energy on longevity, quality, and optimal, sustained employee performance. One scratches their head and wonders why healthcare leadership fails to recognize that thriving employees create thriving patients (customers).
The Cedars-Sinai hospital administration stated their employees receive “strong market-based pay and benefits,” but employees appear not to agree with their leadership's assessment along with many healthcare employees across the United States. Is it because the current “market-based pay and benefits” are too low for rational people to take on the liability, patient loads, and insurmountable list of health-related responsibilities piled onto them while lives hang in the balance?
It’s difficult to argue when fast food workers get paid more than Certified Nursing Assistants.
This is of particular concern to Baby Boomers. Boomers are more likely than prior generations to have multiple health problems. Research has shown they also have 2 or more health conditions 20 years earlier than other generations. Experts have articulated this is due to improvements in chronic disease treatment which allow people to live longer. They also report the reason diagnoses occur earlier is due to technological advancements. Boomers' healthcare concerns don't merely exist for themselves; however, they exist for those they're caring for in addition to themselves.
One in 5 Americans served as an unpaid care partner in the last year. It's stunning to learn that half of these Americans are caring for a person with some form of dementia. It's also stunning to learn that healthcare companies do not regularly include detailed, insurance-covered care plans for people diagnosed with dementia to ensure quality of life for as long as possible using dementia-skilled, paid caregivers. Instead family, friends, neighbors, and/or acquaintances often become a tangled web of care partners who lend a hand when able or in the worst case scenario, exploit the person in their vulnerability. Regardless, "the caregiver bears much of the cost of care, including out-of-pocket expenses, without compensation."
While politicians continue to bicker and squabble about lesser issues, our population continues to age. Patients continue to suffer medical challenges and emergencies and will continue to do so as they've done from the beginning of time. Government will have to step in at some point as private healthcare continues to hemorrhage money and human capital due to unsustainable business practices and employees who are desperate to shed toxic environments created by mentally ill, morality-corrupt healthcare leadership. This leadership has been allowed to pillage as much profit as possible off every ailment that walks through their doors using a myriad of capital-generating codes for decades, but for those with a spine or a soul, it's clear this isn't a business model for compassionate, sustainable, excellent health care.
领英推荐
Regardless of what all these statistics tell us, when it’s our heart, lungs, or brain that are experiencing a medical emergency, we hope to find a fully staffed, well-rested set of hospital staff who can implement flawless, life-saving care. Will it be there for Boomers and other generations? For how long?
Sources:
#healthcare #shortage #strike #healthcarecrisis #healthcareshortage #CNA #RN #physicians #nurse #medic #ambulance #medical #ER #emergencyroom #bankrupt #bankruptcy #finance #healthcaredisparaties #disparaties #chronicdisease #health #generations #babyboomers #boomers #technology #pay #benefits #emergency #doctor #hospital #diagnoses #diagnosis #aging #ageing
Living with Young Onset Dementia
1 年In my opinion, something as fundamental as health and wellbeing should not be sold in the marketplace. It should be the right and expectation of EVERYONE that they receive the best care regardless of circumstance. What is the point of a society that puts profit and growth before health and wellbeing? Charity may "begin at home", but it shouldn't end there. EVERY citizen should contribute to properly fund an adequate healthcare system, free at the point of use, rather than a class and wealth-based one that fosters inequality and profiteering. We CAN have utopia, but we need to embrace altruism and compassion first.
Next Trend Realty LLC./wwwHar.com/Chester-Swanson/agent_cbswan
1 年In my Opinion, Only If they Have something Better.
Global Dementia and Care Partner Advocate, Lewy Body Dementia Care Partner Peer Mentor, Support Group Facilitator, and Support Services Volunteer
1 年Sometimes you just have to rip the bandaid off.