Poor healthcare quality hits home
My dad, who already was dealing with a serious health issue, was hospitalized a week ago with what turned out was a urinary-tract infection. That cleared with antibiotics in a couple of days, but then he developed a fever, so he could not be released. While we were waiting for that to subside, he developed a hospital-acquired infection, namely pneumonia. He’s still in the hospital and the hospital is still able to bill Medicare for all these extra days — plus the physical therapy he will get in a rehab center that the hospital owns once he’s discharged because being in bed for a week is a serious setback to his original condition.
If anyone thinks the U.S. has the “best healthcare in the world” and that good insurance will get you good care, think again. Please pass this link around and share your own stories in the comments section so we can help spread the truth about quality deficiencies and perverse financial incentives.
United States is a great country but will never achieve the status of “the greatest in the world” unless it implements universal healthcare.
Laura, you simultaneously missed and proved my point. Universal coverage has nothing to do with healthcare quality. Having insurance does not guarantee good care. How exactly would universal healthcare prevent hospital-acquired infections? Universal coverage is a noble goal, but there needs to be accountability, too. My dad has Medicare, which pays most of the bills, but he still got pneumonia because someone in the hospital didn’t follow protocols for infection control. Meanwhile, the hospital benefits financially and we taxpayers get ripped off because the fee-for-service Medicare system has to pay for the extended stay and extra care.
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I shoud have been more specific. Universal heathcare with a single payer system.
It was your statement about the hospital still being abe to bill Medicare for extra days in the hospital. It read like you meant they don’t care if patients get infections, need to stay longer because they can bill more, especially since it is Medicare.
In Canada this would not likly be a motivation. There are patients waiting to be admitted and therefore the hospitals will be paid regardless. There is no underlying need to be careless (infection control) in order to “bill for all that extra money”. This is what a universal healthcare with a single payer system helps eliminate.
Universal health care will only magnify these problems. Physicians and hospitals are being forced to take drastic, ridiculous cuts in payment, excessive scrutiny from government and private payers, excessive regulation etc. Health care is struggling to survive. No other type of business is forced to endure this. Look at socialized medicine in other countries, this is where we are heading.
So you’d rather see more people die to support an ideology? Nice.