Socialized Medicine: The Argument to Support Moving Forward
Many people have a misunderstanding that if the government funds health care then THEY control our health care - a concept which in all reality is impossible. What they do provide is funding for hospitals and any facility that delivers health care. It's up to the facilities to decide how to spend the funds allocated to them.
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They will run things as they do now except they would have a lot more input and would not be controlled by the insurance companies as they are today.
There would be a department within the Government whose main task would be to establish performance-improving strategies for the hospitals and a timeline for them to be met. Guidelines would be implemented for hospitals to follow and protocols would be initiated by the hospital itself to help them achieve the goals set out by the government. The aim being that care will be standardized across the country. This meaning that hospitals who provide substandard care now will be expected to improve their standards of care in the future. Of course, this would not be achieved quickly nor would it happen overnight, and yes it would cost money, but in the long run, it would be cost effective. The main aim is to improve the quality of care to the patient and at the same time establishing across the board initiatives which all hospitals would need to follow in order to ensure all hospitals are providing the same standard and quality of care. Independent companies would be established to govern the government for example in the UK they have an independent company known as NICE,
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"NICE is an independent organization responsible for providing national guidance on promoting good health and preventing and treating"
More emphasis would be made on care in the community, focusing on keeping the chronically ill out of the hospital and in their own homes. Health education would play a major role focusing on prevention rather than cure. For example, some of our expensive hospital beds are often taken up with the chronically ill which could well have been managed in their own home, freeing up valuable nursing time which can now be spent with the acutely ill. Opening up more opportunities for nurses to develop their skills and utilize their education for something other than carrying out orders from Doctors
Diabetes can be effectively managed in the home with a team of skilled health professionals, accessing the hospitals for major illnesses rather than glucose control. Nurses could play a major role with diabetics in the community, after all, a large part of our formal nursing education focuses on health education, which a lot of us struggle to find time to implement in the hospital environment
Patients will be more compliant with their medication because it is now affordable. They would not be worrying shall I pay the bills or shall I pay for my medication. This would mean Asthmatics, Diabetics, COPDers wouldn't be having the same crisis situations finding themselves in hospital costing a fortune.
Of course, there will always be non-compliant patients, this group will never change easily, but my question is would we see a reduction in non-compliant patients if we made medication affordable. If we had no co-pays for hospital, tests, procedures, scans or doctors visits? My guess is yes we would see a reduction because some of those non-compliant patients are in this situation through no fault of their own but because of financial constraints either due to a poorly paid job or their pension doesn't quite cover everything they need.
Health professionals could more readily access the schools, youth groups with a lot more health education, again focusing on prevention rather than cure. "Catch em, Young".
I am sure you will be saying to yourself we have all this anyway yes but it would be "free" to establishments affording them to spend their funds elsewhere within the education system but at the same time ensuring we start our children's knowledge of a healthy lifestyle off earlier.
Everybody could afford to be pregnant and access high-quality pregnancy care. It would not only be the rich who are able to afford expensive pre-natal care, classes and education it would be available to all without further cost. Pregnancy care is an ideal opportunity for health care professionals to discuss dental care, diet, smoking cessation, birth control, pap smears the list is endless of what you could provide in health education to the younger generation which they can take through life. This population has probably had not much in the way of health care since their teenage years so are ripe for further education, again focusing on prevention rather than cure.
Of course, we all have heard the horror stories of the NHS there are plenty of them, there are more of the negative kind than the positive kind mainly because we focus in on the negative more readily. The Media are only too happy to report stories which involve sensationalism and negative press than to focus in on the 'nice' stories because 'nice' stories don't sell newspapers. Have you always noticed how bad press is always top of the news whereas the nicer stories are thrown In at the end?
The UK is one small country, whereas the 50 states of America are almost like 50 countries so if we took all the negative press in one day from each of the states of America it would be interesting to see/read how many horror stories we would find from the current medical health care system in the USA. Then we could compare the horror stories to the ones reported from the UK then correlate the figures to establish which country offers greater health care and what cost.
Remember the people who pay insurance here in America it will not cost you any more money unless you choose to take out private health insurance. The difference is it will not cost you one cent more unlike now where there are numerous co-pays for anything you access.
