Stop fake healthcare ‘reform’ - get it right

I was in a major hospital in Philadelphia 3 years ago, before Pennsylvania expanded Medicaid. My hospital roommate had come in due to a livethreatening emergency, which turned out to be caused by cancer. A doctor told him he had millions of cancer cells in his body. The patient had an interview he didn’t understand, which turned out to be for charity care, which was rejected. So after the immediate emergency was relieved, he was released from the hospital with no treatment and no tests - presumably to keep coming back with the next few acute emergencies, until he died.

Instead of abandoning the poor, disabled, and sick, what should be done is to build consensus on making the healthcare system more efficient, so that people and governments alike won’t be priced out of it.

But U.S. healthcare worships one god above all: money. That is why prices and scams go up and up, while population health is behind countries that spend half as much. This problem will be hard to fix, because there is no real competition in healthcare, since quality is not transparent. So all financial incentives are to charge more money. — John S. James