{"id":162,"date":"2013-12-06T08:50:04","date_gmt":"2013-12-06T13:50:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leiferreport.com\/?p=162"},"modified":"2013-12-06T08:50:04","modified_gmt":"2013-12-06T13:50:04","slug":"obamacare-red-herring-attention-real-issue-plaguing-american-healthcare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leifer.com\/?p=162","title":{"rendered":"Obamacare Distracts From the Real Issues Plaguing Healthcare"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Caduceus<\/a>The calamitous launch of the Obamacare web-site has been an embarrassment to the administration, and a rallying cry for Republican opposition to the landmark legislation.\u00a0 Yet, within short-order, even detractors acknowledge that the web-site will be fixed, the vitriolic rhetoric will subside, and Obamacare, however flawed, will become part of the national healthcare landscape.<\/p>\n

The real danger of Obamacare is not so much what it does, but what it fails to do.\u00a0 After all, improving access to care for millions of Americans would seem to be a good thing in a wealthy, developed nation\u2026unless that access is to a fundamentally dysfunctional system desperately in need of meaningful reformation.<\/p>\n

Our system is terribly broken, and Obamacare, despite its 2,000+ pages of text, fails to address the core issue plaguing American healthcare \u2013 the issue of insatiable greed. While pundits pontificate on Obamacare\u2019s failure to launch, our nation is spending more than $7 billion per day to fund a bloated, dysfunctional system that, at times, seems to exist more to line the pockets of the few, than to meet the health care needs of the many.<\/p>\n

Greed has driven our nation\u2019s healthcare bill from a paltry $12.7 billion in 1950 to $2.7 trillion in 2013. It has catapulted healthcare to the top of the hit parade relative to GDP expenditures\u2026accounting for approximately 18 percent of our nation\u2019s gross domestic product.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Greed versus Value<\/h2>\n

Yet despite the escalating costs of care, we pale by comparison to other nations in the value our system delivers.\u00a0 Just ask Arnold Relman, M.D., Editor Emeritus of The New England Journal of Medicine, who opined:: <\/i>\u00a0\u201cConsidering that we spend so much more on medical care than any other advanced country, we ought to expect health outcomes to be at least as good, and our citizens ought to be at least as satisfied with the system. But we can claim neither.\u201d<\/p>\n

After spending thirty years working within the healthcare system, I can attest to the fact that the American healthcare system is without peer when it comes to creating wealth for certain stakeholders. \u00a0You need look no further than the profits of the pharmaceutical, biotech, and medical device manufacturers for proof.<\/p>\n

The real question we should be asking is: Why does our society allow an unparalleled level of\u00a0profiteering to occur within the healthcare industry? Why should we pay $10 for an aspirin and $500 for a bottle of saline (saltwater) when we are hospitalized?\u00a0 Part of the answer can be found by looking at the strength of the medical-industrial complex.<\/p>\n

The Medical-Industrial Complex<\/h2>\n

The first reference to the medical-industrial complex<\/i> was made more than 30 years ago by Barbara Ehrenreich. Ehrenreich borrowed a potent phrase from Eisenhower\u2019s 1961 farewell address to the American people, in which he warned of the dangers of the growing \u201cmilitary-industrial complex:\u201d<\/p>\n

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.<\/p>\n

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex<\/span>. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.<\/p>\n

As is evident from this quote, Ike\u00a0did not merely coin the term, but also admonished the American people to be wary of the growing clout of the military-industrial complex.<\/p>\n

The very abuses that Eisenhower envisioned occurring within the military-industrial complex are today rampant within the medical-industrial complex. Such abuses drive-up costs of our care at the expense of quality and accessibility. \u00a0Proof is rampant. Here\u2019s a teaser:\u00a0 According to a report published by OpenSecrets.org: \u201cTotal annual lobbying in 2012 for pharmaceuticals and health products, which includes: medical products, dietary and nutritional supplements, etc. = $234,104,389.\u201d What kind of influence does $234 million buy one?<\/p>\n

When will we take off our blinders and redirect our focus from the red herring that currently taunts our highly divisive politicians, and instead focus on an issue desperately in need of a solution \u2013 the issue of rampant greed?<\/p>\n

Until then, we will continue to be mired in political rhetoric regarding our current attempt at healthcare reform that has little to do with true reformation of the delivery system.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The calamitous launch of the Obamacare web-site has been an embarrassment to the administration, and a rallying cry for Republican opposition to the landmark legislation.\u00a0 Yet, within short-order, even detractors acknowledge that the web-site will be fixed, the vitriolic rhetoric will subside, and Obamacare, however flawed, will become part of the national healthcare landscape. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,10],"tags":[76,92,106],"class_list":["post-162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-healthcare","category-healthcare-reform","tag-healthcare-greed","tag-medical-industrial-complex","tag-profiteering"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/leifer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/leifer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/leifer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leifer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leifer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/leifer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/leifer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leifer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leifer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}