Capitalism vs. Greed: What Has Been the Nursing Impact

[Mijourney]

Capitalism seemingly started off as a good ideal but has gone awry in the U.S. according to my readings. Capitalism has impacted healthcare for a long time. Now greed, or extreme capitalism, seems to be the prevailing force. Health and medical care is now an industry and not a ministry.

Should we nurses accept the direction of the industry which is in crisis mode and may crash our economy or should we become proactive workers toward seeing healthcare turn back into a ministry of sorts. What is nursing's responsibility in truly improving access and the provision of healthcare and preventing healthcare from completely crashing from the weight of greed? How has nursing been part of the problem? What are steps that we can take to turn the ship around and be the solution?

Keep in mind that research indicates the U.S. forks out the most amount of money for health and medical care but yet our country's health status does not reflect this.

[Mijourney]

There are reportedly reputable sources that offer some information on health spending and health status. The World Health Organization (WHO) is one entity. Below is a link to another entity.

U.S. Health Care from a Global Perspective - The Commonwealth Fund

Spending on US Health Care, 1996-213 | Health Care Economics, Insurance, Payment | JAMA | The JAMA Network

[Mijourney]

So Avid, just to put things in a perspective, do you see health care as a priviledge, right, or necessity? I get a bit flustered when someone talks about their rights because that is different then being right, IMHO. Also, are we our "brothers" keeper or should healthcare be an each person for him/herself? The point is, should the healthcare "system" be designed in the extreme or can middle ground be found?

[TriciaJ, RN]

So Avid, just to put things in a perspective, do you see health care as a priviledge, right, or necessity? I get a bit flustered when someone talks about their rights because that is different then being right, IMHO. Also, are we our "brothers" keeper or should healthcare be an each person for him/herself? The point is, should the healthcare "system" be designed in the extreme or can middle ground be found?

It is a necessity, just like food and that doesn't mean someone owes you groceries. No one wants to lose their home just because they need an emergency appy; that's why insurance in necessary. I really think a combination of catastrophic coverage and health savings plans would be a way to go. Unfortunately, that requires people to fund some things out of pocket and there seems to be great reluctance to do that.

[Avid reader]

Mijourney, you choose. I see it as a moral and ethical decision. If you are a Christian then your religion demands it of you. Help thy neighbor thingy. I'm more of a pragmatist. Society succeeds through co-operative efforts and fails conversely. When religion and philosophy is taken into the equation, morality and ethics becomes significant, which appeals to a higher sentience which immediately activates kindness, benevolence and altruism, which apparently differentiates us from sociopaths. The holy books of all faiths apparently are deluged by these principles.

[Mijourney]

So, if noted authorities in our great U.S.A. says that we were "founded" on Judeo-Christian principles, where did this mentality go when it came to executing healthcare? Was it ever there? Both the ACA and ACHA are based on extreme thought processes, IMHO. True prinicples of the Bible could have been ideally used to settle the score but alas, everything has become relative including morality and ethics.

[Avid reader]

No offense intended but we are an inward looking society with a veneer of civility. We use civility as a means to project an image when underneath beats the savage. Needing guns, racism, hypocrisy, misogyny and now rampant lies from people we've selected as role models. Make no mistake, he is representing us and the damage is significant.

Putin in whatever guise he portrays, will always be a murderer, thief and liar and that's the image people now have of Russians because they support him. Our votes count as an endorsement of whatever now happens. Most Europeans actually immerse themselves in civility and do not wear it as a cloak and the detractors are almost always poorly educated but the huge difference is that they are allowed to discuss things and will, given the chance. We are so politically correct which can be good but it shouldn't be regulated. It should be educational efforts instigating that need. That I think seriously is why we are in this situation. Someone who spoke their mind giving permission for the repressed to have that role model. Unfortunately it speaks volumes about us and how easily conned we are.

Look at Austria and recently Holland how they responded to wild rhetoric. What baffles me is when the college educated were unable to differentiate. How impotent were our men to respond and support such obvious chicanery. Cannot even begin to mention the women!

[Mijourney]

Avid, you make great points. But believe it or not, my concern is not just with who is in the white house (he is just a microcosym of society), it is with the people within this country that seemingly vote their emotions and jaded values. Because what is right is confused with "our" rights due to relativity, we are once again in a win or lose situation with healthcare. I feel that nurses, who make up the bulk of healthcare workers, have an opportunity to really impact things for the better not only by how we care for our constituents, but by how we conduct ourselves personally and what we stand for. Alas, there are a good number of nurses who have no true regard, no love for people. This is evidenced in a number of ways including how we as nurses relate to one anther on the job. Additionally, how we as U.S. citizens truly feel for one another has been manifested in a number of ways and has been witnessed or dramatized through the 24-hour media.

[Avid reader]

Hear, hear, Mijourney. Wish I could have liked your statement multiple times. You are so right. I'm confounded really. College education should absolutely teach us critical thinking and it is so absent in some of our colleagues. He is so obviously tainted so why does an excellent politician like Ryan or even Pence support him? I don't agree with their policies but they are good politicians who are simply corrupt. But how does business which he's abysmal at even align itself with politics. It's almost as if they've realized that in America our attention spans are so short that even their crude agendas will be forgotten. No integrity or virtue seems to be their motto. Very sad.

[beckster]

[h=1]Says it all:Mayo Clinic: Privately insured patients to get priority over Medicaid, Medicare patients[/h]https://www.statnews.com/2017/03/15/mayo-insurance-medicare-medcaid/

[ChryssyD]

Here is Rand Paul's plan.

• Ensures that Americans can purchase the health insurance coverage that best fits their needs.
  
• Eliminates Obamacare's essential health benefits requirement, along with other restrictive coverage and plan requirements, to once again make low-cost insurance options available to American consumers.
  
• Provides a two-year open-enrollment period under which individuals with pre-existing conditions can obtain coverage.
  
• Restores HIPAA pre-existing conditions protections. Prior to Obamacare, HIPAA guaranteed that those in the group market could obtain continuous health coverage regardless of preexisting conditions.
  
• Incentivizes savings by authorizing a tax credit (up to $5,000 per taxpayer) for individuals and families that contribute to HSAs.
  
• Removes the annual cap on HSAs so individuals can make unlimited contributions.
  
• Allows HSA funds to be used to purchase insurance, cover premiums, and more easily afford a broader range of health-related expenses, including prescription and OTC drugs, dietary supplements, nutrition and physical exercise expenses, and direct primary care, among others
  
• Equalizes the tax treatment of the purchase of health insurance for individuals and employers by allowing individuals to deduct the cost of their health insurance from their income and payroll taxes.
  
• Frees more Americans to purchase and maintain insurance apart from their work status.
  
• Does not interfere with employer-provided coverage for Americans who prefer those plans.
  
• Expands Association Health Plans (AHPs) to allow small business owners and individuals to band together across state lines through their membership in a trade or professional association to purchase health coverage for their families and employees at a lower cost.
  
• Also allows individuals to pool together through any organization to purchase insurance.
  
• Widens access to the group market and spreads out the risk, enhancing the ability of individuals and small businesses to decrease costs, increase administrative efficiencies, and further protect those with pre-existing conditions.
  
• Creates an interstate market that allows insurers who are licensed to sell policies in one state to offer them to residents of any other state.
  
• Enables states to fully exercise current flexibilities afforded to them through Medicaid waivers for creating innovative state plan designs.
  
• Allows non-economically aligned physicians to negotiate for higher quality health care for their patients.
  
• Amends the Internal Revenue Code to allow a physician a tax deduction equal to the amount such physician would otherwise charge for charity medical care or uncompensated care due to bad debt, limited to 10% of a physician's gross income for the taxable year.
  

Oh, dear.

I respect your nod to libertarianism, which does have much to offer. Just not in healthcare policy.

Health insurance that fits one's needs? Don't you mean one's pocketbook? No one WANTS to believe s/he needs health insurance...until s/he does.

And how dare Obamacare assert that some healthcare benefits are essential?! Darn those regulations! We can't possibly have minimal standards--why, that might interfere with an insurance company's God-given right to stiff its customers! A for-profit organization trying to maximize profits by short-changing its customers? Not possible!

Health savings accounts? Please. A tax shelter for people who make plenty of money and aren't sick--if they were, they would soon find their savings accounts to be woefully inadequate in the face of ridiculously inflated healthcare costs spurred on by reimbursement regulations that only allow a percentage to be paid, so that the price charged is out of all proportion to reality, because the reality is that massive overcharging is the only way for many hospitals to stay solvent. Healthcare savings accounts manifestly don't work, never have and never will.

As for competition across state lines, though, I don't understand how that isn't already possible. Seems like a no-brainer to me, but when it comes to government, lack of a brain doesn't seem to be a problem.

At the end of the day, though, the only objection to single-payer health care I can come up with is the general stupidity of the federal government. Only one entity could possibly do it worse: The rapacious vulture that is the American for-profit healthcare insurance industry.

[TriciaJ, RN]

So, if noted authorities in our great U.S.A. says that we were "founded" on Judeo-Christian principles, where did this mentality go when it came to executing healthcare? Was it ever there? Both the ACA and ACHA are based on extreme thought processes, IMHO. True prinicples of the Bible could have been ideally used to settle the score but alas, everything has become relative including morality and ethics.

Everything has to be paid for. Loftier principles tend to fall by the wayside when it comes to our pockets.

[Orca, ADN, ASN, RN]

Health insurance that fits one's needs? Don't you mean one's pocketbook? No one WANTS to believe s/he needs health insurance...until s/he does.

This has been one of the main criticisms of Paul's plan. It dumps people into the open market for health insurance, with insurance companies being free to charge extortionate rates to anyone who might dare to cost them money.

Health insurance is one of the few cash-only businesses around. They build nothing (except for huge office buildings), they produce nothing (except for mountains of paper, and procedures that are intentionally vague and open to interpretation that allow them the flexibility to deny claims for things that should be covered).

I have a very low opinion of health insurance companies. This was heightened by a chance meeting with an employee of one of said companies, who told me that he hated his job. I asked him to elaborate. He said that he had just left the office because they were having a party over canceling the policy of a cancer patient. The employee who found a technical reason to cancel the policy was given a $5,000 bonus, and the whole office was celebrating essentially giving one of their customers a death sentence.

This is Rand Paul's vision for America: Leaving health care decisions in the hands of people with a profit motive.