community health care

I wonder if health care might not just have to bite the bullet and fix itself.

What if ...

What if a bunch of new providers offered great services at low prices?

Hmm ... ?

I say 'new' because most of the 'old' ones can't be expected to lower their prices. If they were thoughtful that way, we wouldn't be in this boat; the prices wouldn't have skyrocketed in the first place.

I'm not talking about insurance here, folks.

I'm talking about the ones who actually provide the services.

Independent practitioners,  not mega-corporations.

Imagine that.

They'd likely be so busy we'd need an army of them.

In my long-lost youth we had a doctor in our small town, for example. He knew all of us and we all knew him.

When it comes right down to it, guess what.

We the People, believe it or not, are the authority when it comes to governing ourselves.

So could we not kind of go back to the olden days, sort of?

Is there anything forbidding individual communities from searching for their own local doctors and other medical professionals? Is there anything forbidding us from getting together and deciding to hire people, locally, to fill niches that seem to be opening up all over the place because the big keep getting bigger and the small are just disappearing on account of it?

So ... what if ...

Say a community gathers itself and chooses this route? That community sets its standards and goes looking for like-minded professionals, offering young (or old) professionals whatever incentives they can to come to their community. It might be an agreement among all to be loyal to their new community member/s; it might be good deals on housing; it might be anything the community can come up with when they decide to make their offer. Stipulations, the standards set by the community, would have to be agreed to, of course. They would likely boil down to accessibility, great services, and prices that aren't going to kill anybody if whatever ails them doesn't. Seems to me I remember hearing a story pretty much like that about how that small town of my youth got our doctor ... he was a good one and he stayed with us. Does nobody do that any more?

The thing is that we keep looking to Washington to 'fix' things. That's where our government is, right? And isn't the government supposed to fix things for us?

Well yes, that's true.

Oh.

Have we forgotten something of vital importance to us as United States citizens?

Hmm ... ?

Oh yeah.

This is still the United States of America if I'm not mistaken. We are still governed by our Constitution and Bill of Rights as far as I know. And guess where the governing authority resides, according to those documents?

Yep.

Take a look at your hands, a good long look at those capable hands of yours, the strong palms and all those attached fingers that you use for a million things every single day. Smooth or callused, big or small, young or old, those are the hands that hold the reins in this nation. Maybe we need to think about gathering those reins into those hands again, eh? YOUR hands, my hands, Grandma's hands, Auntie's hands, neighbor's hands ... hands that we see every day doing those millions of things.

As a nation we are a Constitutional Republic. We are too big for pure democracy to function effectively when we are taken as a whole. It is at the community level that democracy can and does function darned well.

If our health care woes are to be 'fixed' we might have to step up to the plate and start looking closer to home for solutions.

And no, I'm not suggesting the quest would be an easy one, or necessarily a quick one, or that success is in any way guaranteed, or that anybody but me might think it's a good idea. I'm just saying that we've been inside this box for so long that we've maybe forgotten we might actually have options outside of the box.

And I'm not talking about major things here. Just about every town I know of has at least one ambulance for things a local doctor/clinic/pharmacy would have to refer out. I'm talking about everyday ordinary things like physicals, or if you've got the flu but it isn't all THAT bad (yet), or whatever other stuff that pops up in a general population.

Since I'm pattering here, dreaming about the good old days, what if a community lucks out (or puts the effort in) and finds a doctor who believes that the general health and well-being of his/her community is a priority. I don't know about you, but I've been getting the impression that the health care providers almost prefer us to be continually sick in every way you can think of and a lot that might never cross your mind. Job security  no doubt. But what if not everyone thinks that way and you can find someone who prefers a healthy population? What if you found a doctor who would focus on prevention instead, someone who would go to your local PTA meetings, or visit organizations, or whatever, and clue you in about all the things you can do your own self to first of all prevent a LOT of ailments and secondly try yourself before you call the doctor? What if a community sets its own health goals? What if they say, with the full backing of their doctor, 'We're going to be healthy and careful this year and we're going to cut our doctor/medication bill in half.' Instead of putting their doctor out of business, they could give him/her a raise and have a celebration. S/he could go on a lecture tour telling all about it, and not worry about the home folk because everyone would be healthy.

Hmmm ... ?

What if ...

The specialists are forever and always going to be needed but IF we on a local level get a grip on those reins with our own strong capable hands and become a stronger healthier nation at that level, maybe the health care issue can be dealt with, or at least addressed, within our own communities.

Remnants of the good old days really do still linger, if only in the memories of some of us, although there might still be places out there that are fortunate enough to have held onto some of the best of those good old days.

I think if you break our current 'health care crisis' down, you might find that insurance is expensive because costs are prohibitive. Pharmaceuticals are outrageous, and it seems like EVERYTHING has to have a prescription even though there are other options - either preventative or steps a person can take on their own to, for example, nip a sinus infection in the bud ... but people go with the pharmaceuticals because 'insurance covers it' and they pay an arm and a leg for that insurance so they're by golly going to use it.

Now there's some 'logic' for you. Talk about a vicious cycle.

Well.

That's about enough of that rant, eh?