US Health Care System - Only For the Healthy and Wealthy? By Anne Clarke Platinum Quality Author

There may not be many ways around the poor-at-best health care system established in this country today. This is an unfortunate, but true fact. Nonetheless, there are ways to improve your overall health. You can try your best to "beat the system," so to speak by maintaining your physical strength and medical health. By living a healthier lifestyle, you will virtually always require less medical attention.
One very important element is to maintain a balanced diet. Another is to stay in shape, or, in other words, to get exercise in some way. Some people are very active and others have to schedule daily stretching, cardiovascular, and muscle-strengthening exercises in order to maintain prime physical fitness. The third is simple: don't smoke. People used to believe that smoking didn't matter as much. But now we know the severe dangers of smoking. With this knowledge, it is an essential health precaution to take for your self.
Being a smoker, whether it is fair or unfair, will be a disadvantage to you medically within the system. Smoking is more difficult to stop that heroin, and many people believe they will never be able to stop. Nutrition and exercise are very important - especially when medical "coverage" is not all it could be in America right now. Medical care, believe it or not, can leave a regular, upper-middle class (with even only one ill family member) family bankrupt under the crushing weight of the medical bills that result from the tragedy of disease. It is anger-evoking, absolutely, to many people in America that although they live in a country that is certainly among the most medically advanced countries in the world. Perhaps more medically advanced than virtually anyone else, our hospitals provide high standard care at life-altering prices. Many other medically advanced countries assure their citizens medical care without cost. It seems as though these countries, despite our government's claims to value human life, care very much more for their citizens.
Our national medical care system shows, loud and clear, that we believe that the elite and the healthy deserve the immense medical advantages that are denied to the already sick or middle to lower class individuals in the United States. We categorize people, treating illnesses based only on what someone can afford and not on what they need to get better. People who could have improved their quality of life with a simple procedure are excluded from coverage, denied access to life-saving medical treatments.
While our nation pours more and more money into scientific research to discover more and more medical treatments and cures, they condone denial of medical care to people who try to get treatment for these same deadly illnesses, if the condition has been pre-diagnosed. There is no reason to ignore your health needs - no mater what kind of medical care to which you have access. We know that quality of life and length of life can be significantly increased by the motivation and the dedication to take care of ourselves the way we should. Do everything you can to improve your health and preserve your health, because, at least for now, our great nation will not.

Anne Clarke writes numerous articles for websites on gardening, parenting, fashion, and home decor. Her background includes teaching, gardening, and fashion. For more of her articles on health and fitness, please visit americanfitness.net, supplier of high quality Cardio Equipment and Fitness Home Gyms.

An American Universal Health Care System By Hugo Gallegos

Health Care System Needs Reform, Not a Government Takeover
Believe it or not, America boasts some of the world's best doctors, the most advanced health care system, and the most technically superior resources in the world, bar none. Those who travel globally and have gotten sick know that their first choice for treatment would be in the U.S. Though health care in America is, more expensive than any other country, many of the worlds wealthiest come to the U.S for surgical procedures and complex care, because it holds a worldwide reputation for the gold standard in health care.
To examine the complex health care issue, a small research study was conducted from randomly selected doctors in a best doctors database. We ask 50 top doctors, located in different states and who practice different specialty fields, " Is a universal health care plan good for America?" Forty-eight of these doctors essentially responded that it was a "bad idea" that would have negative impacts on the quality of our nation's health care.
Social Engineering Medicine
One of the greatest mis-conceptions some people have relied on with regard to the health care debate is that, given a universal health care system, every person in the U.S. would receive the highest quality health care - the kind our nation is renowned for and that we currently receive. However, unlike some public amenities, health care is not a collective public service like police and fire protection services, therefore the Government cannot provide the same quality of health care to everyone, because not all physicians are equally good orthopedic surgeons, internists, neurosurgeons, etc, in the same way that not all individuals in need of health care are equally good patients.
As an analogy - stay with me - when you design a software program, there are many elements that are coded on the back-end, and used to manipulate certain aspects of the software program, that your average "John Doe" who uses the software (the end user) does not understand or utilize, nor do they care about these elements. Certain aspects of the program are coded, so that when one uses that portion of the program, other elements of the program are manipulated and automatically follow the present or next command.
Likewise, once a universal care plan is implemented in America and its massive infrastructure is shaped, private insurance companies will slowly disappear, and as a result, eventually patients will automatically be forced to utilize the government's universal health care plan. As part of such a system, patients will be known as numbers rather than patients, because such a massive government program would provide compensation incentive based on care provided, patients would become "numbers," rather than "patients." In addition, for cost savings reasons, every bit of health information, including your own, will be analyzed, and stored by the Government. What are the consequences? If you're a senior citizen and need a knee replacement at the age of 70, the government may determine that you're to old and it's not worth the investment cost, therefore instead of surgery, you may be given medication for the rest of your life at a substantial cost savings to the government, and at a high quality of life price to you.
Solutions:
Fixing the current U.S. health care system might require that we;
1. Encourage prevention and early diagnosis of chronic conditions and management.
2. Completely reform existing government are programs, including Medicare and Medicaid.
3. Forgive medical school debt for those willing to practice primary care in under-served areas.
4. Improve access to care, provide small businesses and the self-employed with tax credits, not penalties for providing health care.
5. Encourage innovation in medical records management to reduce costs.
6. Require tort reform in medical malpractice judgments to lower the cost of providing care.
7. Keep what isn't broken-research shows 80% of Americans are happy with their current insurance, therefore, why completely dismantle it?
8. Reimburse physicians for their services.
9. Innovate a system in which Medicare fraud is dramatically decreased.
Devil In the Details
Socialized medicine means:
1. Loss of private practice options, reduced pay for physicians, overwhelming numbers of patients, and increasing burn-out may reduce the number of doctors pursuing the profession.
2. Patient confidentiality will need to be compromised, since centralized health information will be maintained by the government and it's databases.
3. Healthy people who take care of themselves will pay for the burden of those with unhealthy lifestyles, such as those who smoke, are obese, etc.
4. Patients lose the incentive to stay healthy or aren't likely to take efforts to curb their prescription drug costs because health care is free and the system can easily be abused.
5. The U.S. Government will need to call the shots about important health decisions dictating what procedures are best for you, rather than those decisions being made by your doctor(s), which will result in poor individualized patient care.
6. Tax rates will rise substantially-universal health care is not free since citizens are required to pay for it in the form of taxes.
7. Your freedom of choice will be restricted as to which doctor is best for you and your family.
8. Like all public programs, government bureaucracy, even in the form of health care, does not promote healthy competition that reduces costs based on demand. What's more, accountability is limited to the budgetary resources available to police such a system.
9. Medicare is subsidized by private insurers to the tune of billions of dollars, therefore if you take them out of the equation, add a trillion dollars or more to the current trillion dollar-plus cost estimates.
10. Currently, the government loses an estimated $ 30 billion a year due to Medicare fraud. Therefore, what makes anyone think that this same government will be able to run & operate a universal health care system that is resistant to fraud and save money while doing so?.

Hugo Gallegos is a health information technology expert & founder of http://www.mdnationwide.org, a research & information company specializing in identifying America's best medical doctors and providing comprehensive medical doctor background reports.

The Future Of Health Care In America By A. Maria Hester, M.D.

The future of health care in America is uncertain, but unsettling. Many experts predict a shortage of up to 200,000 physicians by the year 2020. Should this prediction come true, people of all ages and economic backgrounds will be adversely affected.
In August of 2006, the Census Bureau reported that the number of uninsured non-elderly Americans had increased by another 1.3 million to a total of 46.1 million. This was just another continuation of the trend that started in 2000. Unlike the case for several years prior to 2005, studies showed that even the number of children who became uninsured had increased. The safety net meant to cover the most fragile of citizens has begun to tear.
Most Americans obtain health insurance through their employer or their spouse's employer. However, even this link is deteriorating. The Kaiser Family Foundation
Health insurance is voluntary for both employers and for employees. In other words, employers are not required by law to provide health insurance to their employees and if they do they have the option of choosing between many different options. Some offer full coverage for employees while others offer to pay a small portion of the premiums. Others are taking advantage of high-deductible health plans in which the employee may be responsible for thousands of dollars out of pocket before any insurance dollars kick in.
In addition, not all employees are even eligible for the health insurance offered by their employers.
Unfortunately, no age group is immune to the health care crunch. Seniors are facing tremendous challenges as well. Despite the aging of the population, many physicians are limiting the number of new Medicare patients they will take into their practices. Others are refusing new Medicare patients altogether. With the ongoing debate about how much Medicare will reimburse physicians for their services, they problem will likely continue to escalate over the next few years, if not longer.
The older we get the more medical problems we are likely to face. In addition to the toll on the body, there is a tremendous toll on the wallet. Many seniors are on a fixed income and have significant medical issues, thus do not have the option of getting another job to help pay for medical expenses. As a result, many do not take the medications prescribed simply because they cannot afford them. Even with Medicare Part D many seniors face tremendous challenges affording all their medications and for many the end result is a preventable hospitalization, or worse.
While the current health care crisis did not occur overnight and will be not be fixed anytime soon, there are steps that everyone can take to improve his or her chances of avoiding unnecessary suffering and catastrophic medical expenditures.
1. Learn how to partner in your health care. Communicate with your physician on a level that helps expedite your diagnosis and alleviates the need for excessive testing. There are various resources available online to assist you in learning how.
2. Keep track of your vital health information. For instance, ask for a copy of your lab test results and EKGs when you see a doctor. Having these handy in the case of an emergency can literally be life saving (and money saving)!
3. Keep a record of your medications, medical problems, surgeries, contact information, insurance information, and pharmacy with you at all times. You do not know when you will be rushed to an emergency 911 and chances are your doctor will not be on call in the middle of the night.

A. Maria Hester, M.D. is a board certified physician, patient advocate, and founder of an extensive patient education and empowerment site called Patient School, http://patientschool.net Patient School features articles, hundreds of valuable links, health new feeds, and unusual health tools to help patients partner in their health care. Dr. Hester has also developed a medical record keeping guide that fits on a credit card size USB device to allow everyone to have easy access to a copy of vital health records in case of an unforeseen emergency.

America's Health Care Crisis and What You Can Do About It - Who Can Help? By Dr. Paul Sran

Whenever an election is approaching, politicians talk about America's "looming health care crisis" as if they actually plan to do something about it if and when they are elected. Experts who study the cost of health care say it is one of the most serious problems the country faces in terms of cost and quality of care.
Who Provides Health Insurance?
The Government
Federal, state and local governments insure 39 million workers (including military), 39 million Medicare recipients (a number destined to increase as the first baby-boomers turn 65), and 41 million on Medicaid. Of course, governments do not generate any revenue themselves. It all comes from one place: taxpayers. With an average of 7 health insurance and pharmaceutical lobbyists for each Congressman, it's easy to understand why legislators drag their feet when it comes to improving health care for their constituents. (Anyway, they all get free health insurance for life. They're probably saying "What's the big deal?")
Employers
Employers offer health insurance to 120 million Americans. Those who choose to accept the insurance have hundreds of dollars a month deducted from their paychecks as their share of the premium their employers pay to health insurance providers. In 2005, the average worker paid over $2700 for his or her share of group insurance provided through an employer. That doesn't include annual deductibles and co-pays for visits to doctors, prescriptions, hospital stays, surgeries, and so forth. The National Coalition on Health Care reports that employee's insurance premiums increased by 73% from 2000-2005. Compare that to a cumulative inflation rate over the same period of 14%, and a cumulative wage boost of 15%. Obviously, that 1% difference doesn't come anywhere near meeting the 73% premium increase.
Of course, the employers' share of premiums is increasing too. In fact, the NCHC web site relates this troubling information: "Health insurance expenses are the fastest-growing cost component for employers. Unless something changes dramatically, health insurance costs will overtake profits by 2008." Since the whole point of being in business is to make a profit, employers have some choices: (1) pass part of the additional premium on to employees; (2) pay new employees less and give smaller raises to others; (3) charge more for their products and services, and/or (4) stop offering employees health insurance all together.
Even if you get your insurance through an employer, you have to be very careful that you read and understand the fine print. Don't see a doctor without prior authorization. Don't see one out of the "network" without expecting to pay a good portion of the doctor's fee yourself. Do you need to go to a hospital? Let's hope you're conscious and thinking straight, because you may need to call the health insurance company from the car or the ambulance to get their OK. We've all heard the horror stories of people who rushed someone to the "wrong" hospital in an emergency and were denied coverage by the insurance company because it didn't have "an agreement" with that particular hospital.
What about "the uninsured"?
You might be thinking there must be "some program" to help the uninsured. The fact is that if you have an income, you don't qualify for a "program." Even if you're a single mom making only minimum wage, you can't qualify for Medicaid. People without insurance who do see a doctor often can't fill their prescriptions, or they take less than the amount prescribed. When they get sick, they simply hope to get better, and often the condition spirals into something more serious and more expensive to treat. That's where the emergency room comes in. The costs for the slightest problem are mind-boggling-over a thousand dollars to stitch up a cut, for instance. The hospital will try to collect. If you can't pay, your credit rating could be affected.
In October of 2006, over 46 million Americans had no health insurance. Eighty percent of these are working people and their dependents. Some work for an employer who offers no insurance plan, or they make so little they cannot afford to buy into the program. Many are self-employed, and feel they simply cannot afford the unreasonably high premiums for individual insurance, or they have pre-existing conditions and the only policies they can get exclude those.
What You Can Do
1. Make a Choice.
The health insurance crisis is a real and growing problem. You can choose to believe that the government or your employer will cover increasing costs or not hit you too hard for your share of the premium, or you can choose to go uninsured and hope that you and your family will stay well. It is not an issue where you can take an ostrich attitude and put your head in the sand. You need to make a choice.
2. Set Up an Emergency Account
Many uninsured workers have made the choice to take control of the problem themselves by setting up their own medical savings accounts. Instead of paying $600-$1200 a month in individual-policy insurance premiums, they choose to deposit the money in an interest-bearing account, CD, or other "sure money" account. The funds are their own, whether they are needed or not.
3. Find a Way to Fund It
If you decide to set up a medical savings account, you'll want to deposit as much money as you can as quickly as possible so it can go to work for you making interest. Even if you work for an outside employer and have group health insurance, that extra money in your medical savings account will give you the security of knowing that you'll be able to meet deductibles, co-pays, and other expenses your policy deems "not covered." Many have discovered that a great way to do this is to open a home-based business. You can work your own hours and be your own boss as you accumulate your medical-savings nest egg. You just may find that you can also open another account-one you might label "things we've always wanted" or "savings for trips." A home-based business may very well be your personal answer to the health care crisis. For additional free information, simply contact Dr. Sran.
Wishing You Life's Best,
Dr. Sran MBA, PhD
[http://www.yoursuccessdoctor.com-] Tired of Tiny Checks? This Secret is Your Solution!
dr.sran@professional-income.com
(877) 978-6742 (Direct)

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