Reflections on Health Care

Having worked in the healthcare industry for almost three years and the health insurance sector for the past 18 months, I am a seasoned expert on all the problems relating to the health care crisis we are in.

The reasons for our troubles:

• People expect to get something for nothing. The consumers of health insurance are outraged that it costs to provide coverage. Granted, the costs are astronomical, but most Americans believe that insurance, especially governement regulated like Medicare, is some magical system that offers coverage greater than what they (or the taxpayers) are putting into it.
• Americans are greedy. Insurance companies, doctors, etc are in business. They work to make a profit off of consumers, and with the demand for healthcare, they are set to make a big profit. And trusting the system to capitalism that encourages greeed or trusting it to greedy politicians are equally prone to disaster for the consumer.
• People expect the healthcare system to solve all their problems. Americans want to pass the buck and they will rely on drugs to make them healthy and expect to pay (or have thier insurance pay) someone else to fix their problems for them.
• People are uninformed. The depth and cause of the healthcare crisis itself are a mystery to Americans, let alone their health needs, their insurance policies, and basic reality.
• People think a brief blowup will sove their problems. Well observed in Customer Service, the typical response to an issue, from the copay of a medication to the national healthcare crisis is to voice one's opinion loudly, with antipathy, and expect a response without further action.

There are many problems, but the people and our perspective are perhaps the worst.