(Snippets from the frontline)
Decreasing life expectancy
After rising 26 years, US life expectancy decreased for the second straight year. News reports attributes opioid fatalities as a contributing factor to this CDC statistic.
Here are a few more:
– removal of physician medical decision-making and placed in the hands of hospital, insurance, and pharmaceutical administrators;
– denial of care including specialists, testing, surgery, and medication;
– elder seniors placed on hospice prematurely sending them into end-of-life;
– overpriced medication;
– blocking hospital admission until the patient is extremely ill;
– patients delaying care because of increased financial burden;
– cut-rate hospital care including discharging patients home too soon;
– hospital computer mistakes;
– less time for doctors and nurses to discuss illness with patients, receiving incorrect care;
– doctor bonuses or contracts dangled by hospitals and insurance companies to minimize care;
– more Americans with inadequate health insurance or high deductibles;
– Medicare cost-cutting measures adversely affecting senior care;
– Medicaid forcing patients into HMOs receiving inferior care;
– the dismal VA system that does not care for those who served;
– the increasing number of homeless who have no access to healthcare.
Life expectancy for Americans will continue to decrease, as politicians allow profits for hospital, insurance, and pharmaceutical administrators to increase.
Gene Uzawa Dorio, M.D.
Let’s start a website comparing cities and states for access to care, including medical schools’ teaching hospitals. Once applicants have a choice of 2 acceptances, the competition has begun…
Our capitalist system focuses on growth for ever increasing profits. Society is under the spell of capitalists who control us with their religion that the “free market knows best” regardless of the impact of more sickness and deaths. We will continue on the path of social decay and homelessness until democracy is restored to the people and not the aristocracy that dominates us.
Put up a grading-sheet on the internet (Facebook?) to help patients and doctors compare and choose hospitals: Call it something like “Our Right Choice.”
Consult a lawyer! H