Healthcare

Just One Eye

“Don’t worry, doc.  It’s just one eye.  I’ve got two.”

My stomach lurched to hear this statement.  A guy who has done nothing wrong aside from choosing self-employment (and perhaps inheriting less-than-stellar genes) is left with the choice: financial devastation or blindness in one eye.  He works hard, has served the country, didn’t complain to me at all, yet here he is about to be swallowed by the ever widening maw of impossible medical expense.

The Basic Healthcare Transaction

Why do patients feel like they are treated like cows, not humans?  Why does our system produce more sick people getting more procedures?  Why are things so different for the patients in my new practice?  It all comes down to one thing:  the basic financial transaction of the healthcare system.  From it flow all of the bad things doctors and patients experience.  From my rejection of it flow all of the wonderful changes to the care I can now give.  There is no meaningful reform that can happen without changing this basic transaction.