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Healthy attitudes
Lost in the rabid “debate” about extending health
care coverage to the uninsured is how health
care ever got to be about insurance rather than health care or even health maintenance and prevention.
Hospitals, as we know them, began during the Middle Ages, most often founded by a religious order. The very first free public hospital was opened in Baghdad in the 9th century.
Hospitals in the United States also have been traditionally associated with religious denominations, universities and public institutions such as cities or counties, most being run on a non-profit basis with fee-based services for those who could pay while still providing care for those who could not.
The system of health insurance and Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) that we have today didn’t fully emerge until after World War II.
The problem with this model is that it transferred responsibility for one’s health from the individual to a collective pool of insured that focused on treatment and its costs rather than on individual responsibility for one’s own health. “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” has shifted to something like, “I don’t have to worry, I have insurance.”
Added to this the rapid pace of technology and innovative treatments - which also drive costs - and health insurance began to outpace many people's ability to pay.
Add to that a litigious society that seeks remuneration at the slightest whiff of malpractice and we have what we have today which is a large portion of the population not being able to afford health insurance. In Rappahannock County, that number is an astounding 24.3 percent, higher than neighboring counties and the state as whole.
Who's responsible0 We all are. We are responsible for not taking more seriously our health; we are responsible for assuming that we are entitled to the latest and greatest technological achievement in medicine; we. along with our legal system, are responsible for triggering trillions more in malpractice claims.
Hospitals and insurance companies are responsible for putting profit above care; governments are respon"ible for a laissez-faire approach to health care and letting things get so out of control that the only solutions available cost billions of dollars to essentially feed a broken system.
The point may be that it’s not health insurance that’s the problem, but our whole attitude toward health and health care that needs to be fixed.
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