A Healthy Discourse

Abstract

The United States Healthcare System effects every individual in the United States. It is one of the most powerful and lucrative industries in the world today, and it is broken. The ‘system’ started out with good intentions, however, over time it has become distorted by greed. The legislature around the United States Healthcare System has been developed to support this. It fails to regulate costs and charges issued to patients. It fails to regulate big business, allowing pharmaceutical companies to charge what they wish for unique lifesaving drugs, a practice that would be quickly stopped in any other industry. These issues are embedded in the infrastructure and ideology that has been created. The system must be reformed, doctors need to be trained in a fashion that focuses on providing competent care, not on avoiding liability and fiscal gains. Pharmaceutical companies must be regulated, preventing them from abusing the leverage that is gained in a free market when the product is unique and lifesaving. Hospitals need to operate in a fashion that provides adequate care first, and payment second. The fact is the United States Healthcare System is broken, and due to the money and power it possesses, change will be difficult. The citizens of the United States must recognize that they are being used and must work together to develop a system that is actually focused on the care of its patients, not on emptying their pocketbooks.