Swine Flu an Excellent Case Against Universal Health Care

Swine flu is turning out not to be a pandemic in the US, however, it could be one in other countries. The reason, Universal Health Care. It is true. If you live in the United States, you are able to go to the Doctor or Emergency Room and get care immediately. More importantly, since here we have competition between pharmaceutical companies, they are always developing better therapies to cure illness.

It is not uncommon for people in Canada to travel to the US for medical treatment or just for a simple test. In Canada it may take months for a patient to get a CAT scan or MRI and another month for someone to read it. In the US, you can get a scan within days if not hours and a diagnosis just as soon. Why would any one want to change our system?

Politicians say the main reason is so everyone can be covered at a reasonable price. Why? I better not ask, someone will say I don't care about the children. I say don't their parents care about them? Now I'll be accused of being rich and not caring about the poor. If you say that you have never been poor. I have. I used to pick up cans at a dump to make ends meet, use the same clothes, catch my dinner, boil water for a bath etc. I know what it is like to be poor.

Now I get accused of being different. I am not. I am short, overweight, and never graduated college. Maybe the true difference is when things got tough, I worked harder. What a novel concept. If you need something, work hard and you will get it. I did not believe in a bailout. If my boat has a leak and I am not bailing myself out, I will sink.

Under the current laws no hospital can refuse to treat anyone. If that is the case why do we need Universal Health Care we already provide it. What we need is to reduce the cost of care and treatment. Needles, IVs, hospital beds, or any medical products are not the reason, it is the cost of malpractice insurance and the possible law suits that medical professionals face everyday. Care and treatment is expensive because of tort law.

There are cases that deserve attention, like a doctor leaving and instrument in a patient. It is neglect and should be prosecuted so it does not happen again. The cases I am speaking of are when patients sue their caregivers for a scar from a cut, a women having a child with down syndrome, or not prescribing a drug addict opiates. In some states, doctors have left because the cost of practicing medicine is not cost effective.

If we want lower cost for medical insurance, we need to lower the cost of providing it. Only in a free market society can we do it. Lets change out tort law system so doctors are held liable for neglect only. They should not pay for scars or other out comes that are controlled by a persons body or genes. I haven't meet a doctor yet that has wanted to intentionally hurt me. I have meet some that I would not like to be seen by, and in a free market I can chose another doctor.

If you are poor or work for a company that has no health coverage here are a few sure ways you can get health care. Get another job. If you deliver newspapers or pizzas, you will earn enough money to buy an excellent health plan. If you work for a company that does not provide health coverage you can also get another job or find one that does. Stop being a victim. Do something. If you do nothing you will get, exactly nothing. If I can do it, everyone can.

Harry

Abortion needs to End

I am tired of being called “Pro Life”. I like the old phrase “Anti-Abortion”. Anti-Abortion is a better description that reduces the political correctness associated with “Pro Life”. To get to the bottom of the barrel I could call myself an “anti killing unborn defenseless children supporter”. That would be the most descriptive and accurate, however, it may give some children nightmares knowing that we have people in our country who support killing unborn defenseless children. Oh yes, that’s what you should be called if you support abortion, not the politically correct phrase “Pro Choice”.

Now I can hear the screams of women who have been sexually assaulted saying I should be able to have an abortion since I was attacked. Why? Why not give the child up for adoption? It never did anything to harm you, yet you want to kill it? Why? The answer, it is easy to do. Take no responsibility and just do what feels good. Strange that our pets do everything that feels good to them, yet have not come up with a way to have and abortion. Yes humans are the only species that will kill its offspring before it is even born.

Okay now I need to settle the problem of the unborn killing the mother. The answer is go to another doctor. With our technology we can do amazing things that can save both the mother and child. Let us use our minds to develop solutions to problems before we give up. Giving up is not the American way.

Now for those of you who think that it is not a human at conception please pick up a textbook on reproduction. When an egg and a sperm join, in whatever plant or animal that requires both, it becomes what they were meant to be. Yes, life does begin at conception. Genetic material is shared, half male and half female, and thus begins the origin of sexual reproduction. Not nine day later, nine week later, or nine months later it is at conception. This not a religious belief, it is a scientific fact.

Abortions time has come and gone. America it is time we remove it from the law books. Let us become a society that embraces life and family. In the past many believed we needed abortion because unwed mothers were socially unacceptable, medical technology could not save the unborn, contraceptives we either unavailable or socially unacceptable and sadly women had little say or rights. We have changed. Women are no longer second-class citizens their voices are heard. Women who want a child out of wedlock have them. And it is acceptable for women to buy contraception. There are no more excuses.

Harry

Medical Record Keeping Plan

During the early 90’s, I operated a computer consulting business. One of my clients was a dentist. He was a man who loved technology and hired me to install a network of computers in is office. The goal was for him to be able to access patient records, x-rays, and other data from any terminal in his office. This was no ordinary task. Back then the top of the line computer had 486 processor, 1 megabyte of memory, and a 40-megabyte hard drive. A compact disk writer was brand new technology and most networked computers were in large companies not in a small business. The hardware was just half the battle. My biggest challenge would come when I would need to integrate, medical billing software, patient information, patient records, x-rays, and what ever else the doctor wanted stored. To make things even harder I had a limited budget.

The doctors reasoning for all this was to reduce his overhead. He was spending a large amount of money every month storing patient records. He could only see a few patients a day because an employee would sometimes need to drive a couple of miles and search though his storage area to find needed files to bring back to the office for review. Seeing how much money was spent doing this convinced him that there must be a better way. I agreed and started work on solving his problem. I wont go into details, suffice to say, most of his goals were meet. It would take technology a few more years to be able to complete his dream.

Lets jump a head to today. All of what my dentist client asked for can be done very simply today. Most doctors and dentist use some sort of electronic patient record storage system. What is needed now is a smart system that will streamline the filing of claims, ensure accurate and secure patient information, and allow patient record secure access anywhere.

This is my design for the all in one device. It will store all your medical records or be the key to access your records from a secure site. It will transmit and receive information and updates via RFID. It will display general information incase of an accident i.e. what medications you are taking, allergies, and who to contact. Once connected to the health care providers system, it will fill out the proper forms, if needed send prescriptions to the pharmacy, and since it is also your flexible spending account debit card, it will pay the bill and update your balance.

All of the technologies exist today to build this device or we could just write a Java based program that could do the same and be loaded into a cell phone or flash memory. The savings in time will reduce cost for doctors who must pay a lot for storage, employees to file claims, payment collection etc. The patient will benefit by always having important medical information with them, avoid medications that they are allergic to, and reduce the amount of time waiting for things to happen. When you are sick or dying speed is essential.

There needs to be standards that health care professionals must conform to such as digital note taking. Speech recognition or typing data in to a persons file will reduce the redundancy of note taking and transcription. They must decide on what each prognosis will be called. This will facilitate database accuracy. There are many more standard to workout, and since I am not a health care provider the rest should be left up to them.

This is just one piece of my health care plan. There are a few more to go. So to keep this as post short as possible, I will stop now.