What's Missing From Our Health Care System?

Our health system has insurers, system-integrators (HMOs and PPOs), not-for-profit and for-profit hospitals, physicians, nurses, other healthcare staff, pharmacies and pharmaceutical plans, ambulances, laboratories, diagnostic and therapeutic radiation equipment, medical schools, dental schools, professors of the healing arts, politicians making speeches about health care, state licensing boards, departments of health, a Drug Enforcement Administration, huge healthcare budgets at the local, state and national level, struggling employer health plans, tax subsidies, health care lawyers, health supply vendors, durable medical equipment, local, state and federal health investigative personnel, the National Institutes of Health, magazines devoted to health, electronic medical records and billing systems, administrative courts dealing with health issues, and a myriad of other health people, appurtenences, institutions and facilities.

With all of this, what is missing? An ethical context.



We have a highly regulated health care system which is political, pragmatic, irrational and emblematic of darwinian capitalism. It is spending too much for care which often is of questionable quality to give those, who can afford it, or those who have their bills paid for them (not necessarily those who need the care), the illusion of freedom of choice in selecting who will provide their health care and what their health care will be, as if obtaining health care is governed by the same criteria as choosing food from an elaborate menu in an upscale restaurant.

We should state our health care goals in an ethical context, develop priorities and time schedule consistent with those goals, build an efficient system for achieving those goals, and fund the system appropriately. We should hold those responsible for performance to high standards and refuse to accept the mediocrity which characterizes our current system.

What's missing? We have forgotten that health care cannot be separated from ethical and moral considerations and that the philosophy of survival of the richest and fittest is inappropriate when determining, apportioning and funding health solutions, services and products.