Monday, April 05, 2004

While Nero Fiddles Health Care in America Burns

Health Care in America continues it long painful decline while the Republican led Congress and the Bush Administration do nothing but pay lips service to the problem, which does nothing to stem the decline. A story in today’s Chicago Sun-Times highlights the growing problems doctors face while trying to provide quality care to their patients. And the soaring, un-checked cost of malpractice insurance is surely at the top of the list.

While the President, Republican leaders and the insurance industry point to the rising cost of malpractice litigation—and resulting payouts—as the reason for the dizzying pace of malpractice insurance premium increases, recent reports indicate it has do more to the insurance carriers trying to shore up lost profits from investments in the stock market—their primary source of income. The cost of settling claims, which actually dropped last year, has little to do with the crisis reports say.

Yet another bait and switch by the Republicans at the expense of us all; how much tomfoolery, half-truths, and neglect is enough, before the American public cry foul?

As the article in the Sun-Times points out, doctors in certain fields are now being priced out of business by absurd malpractice premiums that are in some cases approaching $140,000 a year! How long before the sky falls and the average American can no longer receive decent health care, or find a qualified doctor to administer it, without traveling tens of miles from home?

I say that time is now, given that my spouse cannot find an OB/GYN or Neurologist within 50 miles of our home in the second largest city in the state of Illinois. And we jointly cannot find a non-resident Primary Care Physician for continuity of care; both of our doctors left the state citing the ballooning cost of malpractice insurance as a one of the primary reasons for their exodus.

I quite frankly am fed up with government (state & federal) no longer working for me, but against me at almost every turn. How about you?

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