Win-Win solutions ~ Read “The Price We Pay: What broke healthcare & how to fix it” ~ become part of the “gift that keeps on giving”
Win-Win solutions ~ Read “The Price We Pay: What broke healthcare and how to fix it” by physician & surgeon Dr. Marty Makary and become part of the “gift that keeps on giving”
Dr. Marty Makary (pronounced Ma-carry), a respected leader in the field of healthcare reform who throughly understands our our current dysfunctional system. Working with similar-minded individuals and groups, he has successfully spearheaded important reforms in many aspects of the healthcare systems and its institutions that did NOT depend on Congressional action, a presidential executive order or the federal bureaucracy.
His book is remarkably comprehensive — all you ever wanted to know but were afraid to ask! At the same time, it identifies the needlessly complicated vocabulary of the medical profession, hospital billing departments and insurance companies as strategy to make the lay public think medical care billing it too complicated for them to understand, thereby allowing them to get away with hiding critical information about the specific cost of medical and surgical procedures in way that make it nearly impossible to “comparison shop” for healthcare.
One of the first and most important change identified by Dr. Makary is somethings simple that that can make a world of difference in the price we pay for healthcare, and yet it and doesn’t cost anything. He’s talking about simplifying of healthcare-related jargon so before we become a hospital patient we are told what services, supplies, drugs, medical tests and treatments and surgical procedures will be done and the charged for each of one.
Pricing transparency — knowing what the charges are ahead of time, something that is nearly impossible in our current and badly broken system.
Price transparency is the difference between calling around to different providers and then arranging to have your simple surgery at a hospital that charges $1,200, compared to just showing up at a hospital and then getting a “surprise” bill from the doctor or hospital for $37,000 for the same knee surgery. If for any reason you don’t have $37,000, your unpaid bill will be turned over to a debt collection agency or you can be taken to court and have up to 50% of your wages garnished every week to pay the hospital or doctor.
Other critical topics in Dr. Makary’s book reveal issues such as corrupt pricing, with unnecessary and sometimes risky or harmful procedures being done so solely the provider (practitioner or hospital) can bill your insurance company or federal government Medicare-Medicaid program.
Dr. Makary’s $9.99 book is an Amazon publication available both as a Kindle e-book and/or audio book from Audible.com and if you decide to buy both at the same time they give you a really good deal. Having a copy of the book as well as being able to listen to the book while walking, gardening, cooking, or driving etc. very convenient.
It’s full of factual information that is so important that you’ll want to able to highlight the quotable gems for future reference and to share with others.
I strongly suggest that you read or listen to the first and the last chapters before the rest of the book. I’m not kidding when i say this book will CHANGE YOUR LIFE and as a result, we (midwives, mothers, and others!) will change the very meaning of the words “health care”.
Until now, we midwives thought WE were the crazy ones, or that we were the ONLY people who knew that the whole system was dysfunctional. Often what was happening inside of doctors’ offices and hospital wards was crazy, harmful and outrageously, unforgivably unethical (if not outright criminal) but we assumed it was so hopeless that we could do nothing to change it.
We were dead wrong as it we, as midwives and the thousands of people we eventually influence, have to become a revolutionary force for good. Changing our dysfunctional system for the better is our “revolutionary war”, not one to be fought against King George’s military might, but rather a peaceable war against special interest groups, organized medicine, partisan politics and the deep lack of understanding by so many Americans that wrongly (sadly!) assume that America has “the best damn healthcare system on the Planet”.
We don’t, at least not yet, but we surely can make it better and better until one of these days — 10 or 20 years from now — we might actually be able to brag that we did have a system that really sucked, but we kept working until we got it fixed and now, we really do have one of the best health and medical systems on the planet.
Being the “Gift that Keeps on Giving”
We must figure out how to be “the gift that keeps on giving”. This starts by reading Dr. Makary’s book “The Price We Pay“. After becoming educated ourselves we much encourage/convince at least 2 people we personally know and like to read “The Price We Pay” and then agreeing to pass this information on to two people they know and like.
We must all become “the gift that keeps on giving” until every adult who can read, listen and learn will know that our dysfunctional, predatory and decidedly unhealthy “health” care system has be de-fanged, rehabilitated and reorganized.
Instead of slavishly serving corporate profits and their big corporate egos, healthcare must be changed for the better, reconfigured to serve the genuine needs of its patients, while NOT exploiting its ‘essential’ healthcare workers — doctors and other practitioners, nurses, nursing assistants and the many other caregivers that it takes to make a humanitarian system work.
