Health Care Today

      I recently was forced to come face to face with the reality of the Arthritis that I was suffering from.  Arthritis was not what I had intended to talk about in this blog, but sharing my experiences may be beneficial to many. I have (I used to have had) crippling arthritis in my hip. Upon reflection, I now realize that arthritis had been destroying my hip for a very long time.

      My son is an analyst in DC.  He researched what was globally available for me for hip replacement.  He found Israel and Costa Rica to be the two best medical options for my hip replacement surgery.  I liked the concept of warm beaches and cool breezes, so he arranged for my surgery to take place in Costa Rica.  I enjoyed a glorious medical experience in Costa Rica, and one that used to be available in the United States.  My son paid the necessary costs up front; Passport Medical, my travel, the Doctors, the hospital, the hotel, the therapy and the food.  All of those people delivered exactly what he paid them for and each participant delivered those services very graciously and in a very professional caring manner. 

 

     When I was in the building business, I had a single paragraph contract.  It said, “I will build your building and you will pay me for what I build.”  Insurance, legislation, and bureaucracy have made the "normal" cost of a building 40%-50% more than the cost should be.  Insurance, legislation and bureaucracy have driven the medical cost to a multiple of what it should be with a devastating loss in the quality of service.  I could not find a doctor that I trusted in the US …. all anyone in medicine wanted to talk about was insurance.  All I wanted to talk about was having my arthritis go away.

 

      Until I had my Costa Rica medical experience, I did not recognize what huge obstacles exist in the US medical field today.  My first-hand experience and then the analysis of my experience made the problems crystal clear.

 

All causes in the in the life of Yahoos start as a movement, become a business then a racket.

 

      In the United States we now have so many levels of parasites that consume all that the medical insurance market will bear.  The doctors must employ a staff, not for medical purposes, but they must employ a staff to successfully extract their fees from those feeding at the medical trough.  I built an office for a neurosurgeon that had to have a room for depositions.   How incongruous is this situation, to have to devote money, time and effort to insurance, legal and advertising before you devote one minute to medicine?   The medical moochers offer no added value to the medical process, yet they take the lion's share of medical expenditures; they exist to take, not to help. 

 

      The United States no longer provides a supportive environment for those in need of medical treatment.  The US no longer offers an attractive environment to encourage the best and brightest to practice medicine.  Why would anyone want to be a Doctor today when the medical structure dictates how you are to practice "medicine"? 

 

      I asked a friend how well his health insurance worked.  He said, "As long as I make my payments and file no claims, my insurance works just fine."  Medical services should be straight forward and easy, those medical services in the US used to be a direct relationship between only the doctor and the patient.  That direct relationship between a Doctor and a Patient, exists in Costa Rica right now.... for a while anyway. 

 
      The most powerful, enticing, calming and misleading word in the English language is “FREE.”  I have a fit, full of life 91 year old friend that I have known for over a year.  During the year that I have known him, the US medical system has tried to kill him twice with two infections resulting from two surgeries.  He reacts with a big smile on his face saying, “It did not cost me one cent!”  The total “bill” from two surgeries along with two follow-up lifesaving maneuvers comes to a total of around $200,000 medical  US "monopoly" dollars.  In fact, my friend did not have to pay one penny, but the real “cost” to his 91 year old body has to be significant.  Yet, he is happy as a clam because the medical abusers used the drug “FREE” on him.  Everyone in the medical sham got their fraudulently “earned” money and in addition, he was merely their money vehicle.  When the drug "FREE" is applied, all accountability vanishes in the mist.  In all of my years of building many doctor's houses and knowing them personally and professionally, I have never heard one doctor even pretend that their work even remotely approached the condition of the original equipment.