Medical Health Insurance Quotes

Because doctors can’t name the illness, everyone—the patient's family, friends, health insurance, and in many cases the patient—comes to think of the patient as not really sick and not really suffering. What the patient comes to require in these circumstances, in the absence of help, are facts—tests and studies that show that they might “in fact” have something.

He asked for national compulsory health insurance to be funded by payroll deductions. Under the system, all citizens would receive medical and hospital service irrespective of their ability to pay. And

Bear in mind that since medications do not fix anything, they allow the underlying problem to continue uncorrected and actually accelerate. Meanwhile, new symptoms and new seemingly unrelated diseases are the inevitable consequence of this biochemical faux pas. Furthermore, drug side effects are the leading cause of death. NSAIDs as an example of only one group of medications, are fatally toxic to thousands of people each year by damaging joints, lungs, kidneys, eyes, hearts, and intestines. And they are covered by insurance. You and your doctor have been screwed into believing every symptom is a deficiency of some drug or surgery. You've been led to believe you have no control, when in truth you're the one who must take control. Unfortunately, the modus operandi in medicine is to find a drug to turn off the damaged part that is producing symptoms.

I swear, I am not usually a person who looks up medical conditions online. I lived without health insurance long enough that I am far more likely to try to sleep off anything short of decapitation.

She described her new treatment with a topical chemotherapy that came in the form of a potent cream that she applied, wearing gloves, to burn off the cancerous areas—then she produced a package of the stuff from the bathroom so I could see how mundane this lifesaving medication looked. I blinked in disbelief as she held up what resembled a tube of toothpaste, and explained that each one cost over two thousand dollars. Or that’s what it would cost, if not for the insurance she had purchased through the health insurance exchanges that had been set up as part of Obamacare. I thought—and spoke—of that moment often, later, as I talked about why health policy was not a theoretical question for our family.

I don’t think the people today who start hearing voices, stop eating and sleeping, and run amuck are likely to get good treatment. Having more knowledge, better diagnostic capabilities, better medications with fewer side effects, can’t make up for the fact that most patients are being treated by doctors, therapists, and hospitals, who are operating under constraints and incentives that reward non-treatment, non-hospitalization, non-therapy, non-follow-up, non-care. Lost to follow-up is the best outcome a health insurer can hope for.

A Harris/Harvard School of Public Health poll of 1989 showed that most Americans (61 percent) favored a Canadian-type health system, in which the government was the single payer to doctors and hospitals, bypassing the insurance companies, and offering universal medical coverage to everyone. Neither the Democratic nor the Republican party adopted that as its program, although both insisted they wanted to “reform” the health system.

Some people do not afford a healthy diet and lifestyle because of their health insurance.

Every institution that impacts your health makes more money when you are sick and less when you are healthy—from hospitals to pharma to medical schools, and even insurance companies.

strengthened a conviction that had been growing for some years, namely that adequate medical care can only be provided by a comprehensive health insurance scheme with federal backing.

Stigma takes many forms, comes from all directions, is sometimes blatantly overt, but can also be remarkably subtle. It is the cruel comment, the unkind smirk, the extrusion from the group, the lost job opportunity, the rejected marriage proposal, the ineligibility for life insurance, the inability to adopt a child or pilot a plane. But it is also the reduced expectation, the helping hand when none is needed or wanted, the solicitous sympathy that one cannot really be expected to measure up. And the secondary psychological and practical harms of having a mental disorder come only partly from how others see you. A great deal of the trouble comes from the change in how you see yourself: the sense of being damaged goods, feeling not normal or worthy, not a full fledged member of the group. It is bad enough that stigma is so often associated with having a mental disorder, but the stigma that comes from being mislabeled with a fake diagnosis is a dead loss with absolutely no redeeming features.

To my thinking the greatest advance in recorded medical history is the thirty-minute walk before breakfast. Premiums for life insurance are usually paid for the benefit of someone else. If you want any life insurance for yourself you had better pay the daily premium of a thirty-minute walk.

A statistician for the Prudential Insurance Company predicted the imminent extinction of Black people in his epic book that relied on the 1890 census figures. Unlike the Plessy ruling, Frederick Hoffman’s Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro received plenty of attention in 1896. Packed with statistical tables and published by the American Economic Association, the book was a pioneering work in American medical research, and it catapulted Hoffman into scientific celebrity in the Western world as the heralded father of American public health. At “the time of emancipation,” he wrote, southern Blacks were “healthy in body and cheerful in mind.” “What are the conditions thirty years after?” Well, “in the plain language of the facts,” free Blacks were headed toward “gradual extinction,” pulled down by their natural immoralities, law-breaking, and diseases. Hoffman supplied his employer with an excuse for its discriminatory policies concerning African Americans—that is, for denying them life insurance. White life insurance companies refused to insure a supposedly dying race. Yet another racist idea was produced to defend a racist policy.3

Over the years Jim had heard, and more often overheard, objections to the Program’s expanding practice: Many people who worked and paid taxes struggled to pay for health insurance. Why should their money go to providing what some would consider concierge medicine for these people who lived at public expense? For people who produced nothing except indecent public spectacles, and didn’t even try to take care of themselves? Heard from inside a shelter clinic or McInnis House or out on the van, such protests seemed irrelevant. What was the alternative? Ignore chronically homeless people, as the city used to do, or imitate draconian regimes and imprison all rough sleepers in a stadium? In fact, the Program lightened the burdens that homeless people placed on other medical organizations, and did so while providing good care at lower cost than in hospital emergency departments.

I have often witnessed this at hospital billing counters, where salaried or reasonably well to do people typically have a health insurance to take care of their bills, while a common man loses out. In such a pesky situation, these commoners are compelled to either take loans or sell their personal assets to be able to afford a reasonable medical treatment. Lack of home insurance has always been another concern. People lose out on their entire life’s savings when their homes get whisked away due to calamities.

• Auto and Homeowner Insurance—Choose higher deductibles in order to save on premiums. With high liability limits, these are the best buys in the insurance world. • Life Insurance—Purchase twenty-year level term insurance equal to about ten times your income. Term insurance is cheap and the only way to go; never use life insurance as a place to save money. • Long-Term Disability—If you are thirty-two years old, you are twelve times more likely to become disabled than to die by age sixty-five. The best place to buy disability insurance is through work at a fraction of the cost. You can usually get coverage that equals from 50 to 70 percent of your income. • Health Insurance—The number one cause of bankruptcy today is medical bills; number two is credit cards. One way to control costs is to look for large deductibles to lower your premium. The HSA (Health Savings Account) is a great way to save on premiums. The high deductible creates a much lower premium, and this plan allows you to save for medical expenses in a tax-free savings account.

I started to question what was being taught—I didn’t get much guidance in medical school or residency on what to do when your patient can’t pay for health insurance or when she has lost childcare for the third time in two months and is being fired from her job. Instead, I was taught to prescribe medications or provide psychotherapy for issues that were clearly systemic. While there is certainly a great need for both of these medical interventions, the lack of attention to the inhumanity of our social policies left me feeling powerless—just like my patients.

Well, “maybe it is,” Chotiner wrote, “but the Republican Party must do something more than point out the evils of the administration’s plan—it must show that it is ready to meet the needs of Tom Jones when illness strikes.” And so Congressman Nixon joined with other Republican moderates to introduce a national health insurance plan in which the states and federal governments would subsidize the purchase of insurance from private companies. “Our bill involves neither socialized medicine nor medicine for indigents only,” the announcement said. “It recognizes that the problem of medical care for the people is urgent and that government should participate in its solution.

It was only when professionals believed that reports on errors and near misses would be treated as learning opportunities rather than a pretext to blame that this crucial information started to flow. Managers were initially worried that reducing the penalties for error would lead to an increase in the number of errors. In fact, the opposite happened. Insurance claims fell by a dramatic 74 percent. Similar results have been found elsewhere. Claims and lawsuits made against the University of Michigan Health System, for example, dropped from 262 in August 2001 to 83 following the introduction of an open disclosure policy in 2007. The number of lawsuits against the University of Illinois Medical Center fell by half in two years after creating a system of open reporting.

The truth is, I don’t really believe that Republicans are ever going to come up with a real replacement for the Affordable Care Act. Because it seems to me that they don’t actually care about making sure that every American has access to quality, affordable health care. What do they care about? They want insurance companies to be able to sell you junk policies. They want drug manufacturers to be able to gouge people who rely on medications to stay healthy. They want to make it harder for people who’ve suffered from medical malpractice to get their day in court. They want rich people to not have to pay for health care for poor people. And, most of all, they want to keep using this issue to rally their base, reward their donors, and punish Democrats. I don’t know what’s going to happen going forward.

In March 2002, the National Academy of Sciences, a private, nonprofit society of scholars, released a high-profile report documenting the unequivocal existence of racial bias in medical care, which many thought would mark a real turning point. Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care was so brutal and damning that it would seem impossible to turn away. The report, authored by a committee of mostly white medical educators, nurses, behavioral scientists, economists, health lawyers, sociologists, and policy experts, took an exhaustive plunge into more than 480 previous studies. Because of the knee-jerk tendency to assume that health disparities were the end result of differences in class, not race, they were careful to compare subjects with similar income and insurance coverage. The report found rampant, widespread racial bias, including that people of color were less likely to be given appropriate heart medications or to undergo bypass surgery or receive kidney dialysis or transplants. Several studies revealed significant racial differences in who receives appropriate cancer diagnostic tests and treatments, and people of color were also less likely to receive the most sophisticated treatments for HIV/AIDS. These inequities, the report concluded, contribute to higher death rates overall for Black people and other people of color and lower survival rates compared with whites suffering from comparable illnesses of similar severity.

The proof that the One Stone Solution is political lies in what women feel when they eat “too much”: guilt. Why should guilt be the operative emotion, and female fat be a moral issue articulated with words like good and bad? If our culture’s fixation on female fatness or thinness were about sex, it would be a private issue between a woman and her lover; if it were about health, between a woman and herself. Public debate would be far more hysterically focused on male fat than on female, since more men (40 percent) are medically overweight than women (32 percent) and too much fat is far more dangerous for men than for women. In fact, “there is very little evidence to support the claim that fatness causes poor health among women…. The results of recent studies have suggested that women may in fact live longer and be generally healthier if they weigh ten to fifteen percent above the life-insurance figures and they refrain from dieting,” asserts Radiance; when poor health is correlated to fatness in women, it is due to chronic dieting and the emotional stress of self-hatred. The National Institutes of Health studies that linked obesity to heart disease and stroke were based on male subjects; when a study of females was finally published in 1990, it showed that weight made only a fraction of the difference for women that it made for men. The film The Famine Within cites a sixteen-country study that fails to correlate fatness to ill health. Female fat is not in itself unhealthy.

My Future Self My future self and I become closer and closer as time goes by. I must admit that I neglected and ignored her until she punched me in the gut, grabbed me by the hair and turned my butt around to introduce herself. Well, at least that’s what it felt like every time I left the convalescent hospital after doing skills training for a certification I needed to help me start my residential care business. I was going to be providing specialized, 24/7 residential care and supervising direct care staff for non-verbal, non-ambulatory adult men in diapers! I ran to the Red Cross and took the certified nurse assistant class so I would at least know something about the job I would soon be hiring people to do and to make sure my clients received the best care. The training facility was a Medicaid hospital. I would drive home in tears after seeing what happens when people are not able to afford long-term medical care and the government has to provide that care. But it was seeing all the “young” patients that brought me to tears. And I had thought that only the elderly lived like this in convalescent hospitals…. I am fortunate to have good health but this experience showed me that there is the unexpected. So I drove home each day in tears, promising God out loud, over and over again, that I would take care of my health and take care of my finances. That is how I met my future self. She was like, don’t let this be us girlfriend and stop crying! But, according to studies, we humans have a hard time empathizing with our future selves. Could you even imagine your 30 or 40 year old self when you were in elementary or even high school? It’s like picturing a stranger. This difficulty explains why some people tend to favor short-term or immediate gratification over long-term planning and savings. Take time to picture the life you want to live in 5 years, 10 years, and 40 years, and create an emotional connection to your future self. Visualize the things you enjoy doing now, and think of retirement saving and planning as a way to continue doing those things and even more. However, research shows that people who interacted with their future selves were more willing to improve savings. Just hit me over the head, why don’t you! I do understand that some people can’t even pay attention or aren’t even interested in putting money away for their financial future because they have so much going on and so little to work with that they feel like they can’t even listen to or have a conversation about money. But there are things you’re doing that are not helping your financial position and could be trouble. You could be moving in the wrong direction. The goal is to get out of debt, increase your collateral capacity, use your own money in the most efficient manner and make financial decisions that will move you forward instead of backwards. Also make sure you are getting answers specific to your financial situation instead of blindly guessing! Contact us. We will be happy to help!

Give us an idea of…” Noya Baram rubs her temples. “Oh, well.” Augie begins to stroll around again. “The examples are limitless. Small examples: elevators stop working. Grocery-store scanners. Train and bus passes. Televisions. Phones. Radios. Traffic lights. Credit-card scanners. Home alarm systems. Laptop computers will lose all their software, all files, everything erased. Your computer will be nothing but a keyboard and a blank screen. “Electricity would be severely compromised. Which means refrigerators. In some cases, heat. Water—well, we have already seen the effect on water-purification plants. Clean water in America will quickly become a scarcity. “That means health problems on a massive scale. Who will care for the sick? Hospitals? Will they have the necessary resources to treat you? Surgical operations these days are highly computerized. And they will not have access to any of your prior medical records online. “For that matter, will they treat you at all? Do you have health insurance? Says who? A card in your pocket? They won’t be able to look you up and confirm it. Nor will they be able to seek reimbursement from the insurer. And even if they could get in contact with the insurance company, the insurance company won’t know whether you’re its customer. Does it have handwritten lists of its policyholders? No. It’s all on computers. Computers that have been erased. Will the hospitals work for free? “No websites, of course. No e-commerce. Conveyor belts. Sophisticated machinery inside manufacturing plants. Payroll records. “Planes will be grounded. Even trains may not operate in most places. Cars, at least any built since, oh, 2010 or so, will be affected. “Legal records. Welfare records. Law enforcement databases. The ability of local police to identify criminals, to coordinate with other states and the federal government through databases—no more. “Bank records. You think you have ten thousand dollars in your savings account? Fifty thousand dollars in a retirement account? You think you have a pension that allows you to receive a fixed payment every month?” He shakes his head. “Not if computer files and their backups are erased. Do banks have a large wad of cash, wrapped in a rubber band with your name on it, sitting in a vault somewhere? Of course not. It’s all data.” “Mother of God,” says Chancellor Richter, wiping his face with a handkerchief.

What the research shows is that the charge master and commercial insurance company prices for the same test or treatment will also vary substantially even at neighboring medical facilities where, presumably, basic input costs such as rent and wages do not vary substantially. Colonoscopies in New York City can vary fourfold—between $2,025 and $8,700—depending on the hospital. This variation in price is very hard to justify. Typically, neither patients nor physicians have access to the price, so they cannot shop around for lower prices. Imagine you were shopping for a new shirt but there was no price tag and you could not know until weeks after you bought it whether the shirt cost $25 or $200. This would make shopping a crazy experience.

records in any form I request under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act within thirty days and for a reasonable handling and processing fee. If this material is not quickly forthcoming, I will file a complaint with the federal Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights, which prosecutes HIPPA violations. Sincerely, 3. TO CHALLENGE OUTRAGEOUS CHARGES/BILLING ERRORS Dear Sirs or Madam: I’m writing to protest what I regard as excessive charges for my operation/hospitalization/procedure at your medical facility. The operation/hospitalization/procedure was billed to my insurer/me at $__________,__________. This total included several itemized charges that were well above norms for our nation and our region, such as a $__________,__________ charge for __________ and a $__________,__________ charge for __________. The Healthcare Bluebook says a “fair price” is $__________,__________ and $__________,__________. Likewise, my bill includes entries for treatments I simply did not receive, such as $__________ for __________ and $__________ for __________. Before sending in any payment, I’m requesting that your billing and coding department review my chart to revise the charges, or explain to me the size and the nature of such entries. I have been a loyal customer of your hospital for many years and have been happy with my excellent medical care. But if these billing issues are not resolved, I feel compelled to report them to the state attorney general/consumer protection agency, to investigate fraudulent or abusive billing practices. Sincerely,

Batteries, Bug repellent, Belts, Bags , Barbecue equipment, Boots, Bath towels. Bikes, Bike rack. C - Cash and credit cards, Cell phones & chargers, Camera and film/memory cards, Coffee pot, Can opener, Cups, Cutlery, Computer, Clock, Cleaning utensils, Clothes and coats, Camping Guides, Condiments (salt, sugar, pepper). D - Dishes, Drainers, Disinfectant. F - First Aid kit, Fire Extinguishers G - Glasses, (drinking, reading, sun), Games. H -Herbs, Hair brushes, Headphones. K -Keys (house, RV, Lockers), Kindle & cable, Kitchen Gadgets. M - Medication. Money belts, Measuring implements, Maps, P - PERSONAL DOCUMENTS: Passports, Health Certificates, Insurance, Driving License, RV documents, Power adapters, Pens, Pets:

There is rightful objection to the denial of appropriate investigations and to the nationwide implementation of behavioural modification as the sole management strategy for the nosological disorder ME/CFS. That strategy is believed to be based on (i) the commercial interests of the medical and permanent health insurance industry for which many members of the Wessely School work and (ii) the dissemination of misinformation about ME/CFS by the Wessely School, whose members also act as advisors to UK Government agencies including the DWP, which it is understood has specifically targeted “CFS/ME” as a disorder for which certain State benefits should not be available.

Fiscal Numbers (the latter uniquely identifies a particular hospitalization for patients who might have been admitted multiple times), which allowed us to merge information from many different hospital sources. The data were finally organized into a comprehensive relational database. More information on database merger, in particular, how database integrity was ensured, is available at the MIMIC-II web site [1]. The database user guide is also online [2]. An additional task was to convert the patient waveform data from Philips’ proprietary format into an open-source format. With assistance from the medical equipment vendor, the waveforms, trends, and alarms were translated into WFDB, an open data format that is used for publicly available databases on the National Institutes of Health-sponsored PhysioNet web site [3]. All data that were integrated into the MIMIC-II database were de-identified in compliance with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act standards to facilitate public access to MIMIC-II. Deletion of protected health information from structured data sources was straightforward (e.g., database fields that provide the patient name, date of birth, etc.). We also removed protected health information from the discharge summaries, diagnostic reports, and the approximately 700,000 free-text nursing and respiratory notes in MIMIC-II using an automated algorithm that has been shown to have superior performance in comparison to clinicians in detecting protected health information [4]. This algorithm accommodates the broad spectrum of writing styles in our data set, including personal variations in syntax, abbreviations, and spelling. We have posted the algorithm in open-source form as a general tool to be used by others for de-identification of free-text notes [5].

Taiwan30 has used its National Health Insurance powerful IT to provide near real-time information on expenditures and utilization to prevent unnecessary expenditure. There is also a panel review system of medical records to keep healthcare costs down, whilst maintaining the quality of healthcare.

Consider the automobile industry. For a century after 1894, most of the cars manufactured in North America were made in Michigan. Since 2004, Michigan has been replaced by Ontario, Canada. The reason is simple: health care. In America, car manufacturers have to pay $6,500 in medical and insurance costs for every worker. If they move a plant to Canada, which has a government-run health care system, the cost to the manufacturer is around $800 per worker. In 2006, General Motors paid

I met Dr. Freeman in 1991 when he came to Harvard to talk to my fellowship program about his New England Journal of Medicine article. With calm deliberation, this tall, elegant physician disrupted my vision of Harlem and other Black communities throughout the United States. He detailed a cascade of health conditions triggered by inadequate facilities, lack of access to health insurance, and a shortage of medical personnel, healthy food, safe neighborhoods, and basic education. He called the problem a national tragedy, an emergency analogous to a hurricane, flood, or other ruinous natural disaster, yet one for which no one was sounding the alarm.

Black people don’t just face death at the barrel of a policeman’s gun or within our medical system. Life is taken from us on a daily basis, through housing discrimination; through the inability to get or maintain a job that allows us to pay rent, have health insurance, and buy food; and through under-compensation.

According to their filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, most for-profit insurance companies maintain a medical loss ratio of about 80 percent, which is to say that 20 cents of every dollar people pay in premiums for health insurance doesn’t buy any health care.

Or maybe you're like me - a mental health professional who has been faithfully filling out insurance forms for thirty years, jotting down those five-digit codes from the DSM that open the money taps, rendering diagnoses even though you are pretty sure you're not treating medical conditions, and for just a moment you hesitate, contemplating the bad faith of pouring a lie into the foundation of a relationship whose main and perhaps only value is that it provides an opportunity to look someone in the eye, and, without fear of judgment or the necessity to manipulate, speak the truth. And, having contemplated it, you tell yourself whatever story you have to and you sign the paper, and the best you can do is to curse the DSM in a kind of incantation against your own bad faith.

Note: The first incident happened after the arrest by the Netherlands police in May 1980. I suffered from that, which destroyed my career, future, health, and life. I tried and tried to investigate that, but the police didn't even register the first information report (FIR). It stayed, refusing since 1980 until now, which creates suspicious questions about what the reasons are for not filing the case. It mirrors whether the Netherlands government victimised me or whether the hired ones of the international intelligence agencies have been a hindrance or the criminal groups. - The second incident happened in the shape of uncurable cancer; it was a deliberate mistake and ignorance of the Netherlands Urologists, who did not follow even the primary medical borderlines for the checkup during one year from 2016 to 2017. After the diagnosis, they are hiding the reality, and they still do not take it seriously. I still hope that the Netherlands' neutral and free media will awaken to help me investigate the incident. It will save millions of lives around the world. In God's name, take it seriously to protect me and others. I feel suspicious elements around me. I cry and pray day and night for God's protection since I do not exclude the Qadeyanis witches and magicians, who keep doing black magic continuously that the West does not understand. My Real Story In A Poem *** I never thought I would suffer from cancer The metastatic prostate gland I still cannot decide that It is natural or human-made Since everything is possible In the medical-criminal world How it happened in Western society; Civilized urologists ignored it deliberately From 2016 to 2017 Telling that nothing was wrong Whereas I was suffering from Bleeding, burning, and pain During urinating I begged urologists for a wide-scale checkup With MRI scans and other new technologies But urologists stayed rejecting; Whereas I was paying insurance for that Consequently, at the beginning of 2017 The diagnosis became a time bomb that I had metastatic prostate gland cancer, Which was not curable, They listed me on the death list, Treating for longer life expectancy However, they do tell not the truth And stay suspicious It confuses me and creates grave fear Since then I am bearing terrible side effects Factually, I became victimized twice By criminals, Intelligence Agencies And underground-mafias Which I am unable to trace alone In this regard, I approached Western Media, Ministries, police, courts, Euro Union Unfortunately, none of those responded Even my motherland media cruelly ignored It seems as if I am in the grip of the demon And The Prisoner Of The Hague Everyone has left me alone in pain, Stress, fear, depression Even my children don't care And realize my tears Where resides sympathy, empathy, And humanity? I feel death before death It is a silent cruelty Ah, where should I ask and beg For justice, help, and investigation That civilized world should know An innocent is under victimization I believe God will help and protect And someone from somewhere Appear to hold my hands To eliminate all criminals and demons My cancer will be curable With a longer life expectancy, in some ways Amen, O' merciful God amen.

Naturally, immunity is a natural physician that fends off all invading bacteria and viruses, whereas food becomes its medicine or trouble since that appears to increase or decrease your immune system; thus, choose the right and healthy food, and adopt this proverb: Eat to be alive, not live to eat. Experienced and qualified doctors understand the side effects of medicines before the prescription. Indeed, the majority of doctors hold a professional degree and certificate, whereas virtually none of them has the latest and accurate knowledge; as a result, it executes no difference between such doctors and a robot. When naturopathy experts and spiritual figures predict with significant certainty that you have no cancer or whatever other sickness, it confuses, surprises, and creates suspicious feelings in your mind, whereas doctors have diagnosed metastatic cancer. What should one believe and what not? However, one’s enemies are still awaiting its death. One breathes, expecting and waiting for the miracle of God; it will soon happen if one believes. You neither feel trust in your family doctor and specialists nor feel satisfaction with their treatment. You always realize that they do not tell the truth about how risky your disease is, and they never discuss it. If doctors fail to meet your sufferings of mucus, shortness of breath, and swallowing difficulties because of medication’s side effects, they will indeed put you on medical victimization, ignoring the better quality of life that the medical system promises. Most doctors work for the insurance companies instead of caring for patients. It is factually a medical crime that doctors, hospitals, or insurance providers put patients at high risk. Many doctors do not respect patients’ requests to fulfill it because patients want treatment according to international medical guidelines. Such refusal results in the spreading of their suffering. It saddens patients that the doctors only think about the insurance provider and not the patient. Indeed, such a situation can put one on the track in a dilemma. However, one’s experience and others may prove that none of the medicines give patients a good quality of life, whether homeopathy, allopathy, naturopathy, or even a spiritual one. If your fate stands as a barrier in front of you, no one sees or realizes what you have faced and is still facing worries about your health. Factually, robot doctors cannot provide significant information that may help to ease patients’ suffering; there is only one way to change lifestyle and stay strict on diet; it will have a better result than medicine, which is full of toxins that damage patients’ health instead of curing it. One can think or predict that the medical world has become a medical trade in which one cannot exclude the medical mafia. Is it a valid context that requires an authentic answer?

According to a 2009 Harvard Medical School study, as many as 45,000 people die annually in the United States because they lack health insurance. As one of the study’s coauthors pointed out, this works out to about one death every twelve minutes. It’s

Select the best affordable health insurance to keep your family’s health and stay stress free about the costly medical bills in New York.

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The tobacco settlement money went to lawyers and to governments, which effectively turned the money into a tax and then spent it on state bureaucracy. Regular folk did not receive any tax refund checks, nor did we see lower health insurance premiums, but we did pay more for everyday products not related to smoking. This means we are, in effect, paying billions of dollars in additional tax besides the billions in legal fees because of the tobacco settlement, as well as funding the next legal campaign to collect another large pay-day in contingency fees. It is very interesting to note during the tobacco suit that, while claiming various individuals were being victimized, or medical costs were mounting from misleading advertising or dishonest business practices, it was lawyers and governments, not the people nor their insurance companies, that collected all the loot. This the type of litigation did nothing to improve your life and it raised your cost of living.

Alcohol and drug abuse by employees cause many expensive problems ranging from lost productivity, injuries, and an increase the health insurance claims.Vector Medical specialists helps to resolve these Problems in the workplace.

Sec. Particulars Amount 80C Tax saving investments1 Maximum up to Rs. 1,50,000 (from FY 2014-15) 80D Medical insurance premium-self, family Individual: Rs. 15,000 Senior Citizen: Rs. 20,000 Preventive Health Check-up Rs. 5,000 80E Interest on Loan for Higher Education Interest amount (8 years) 80EE Deduction of Interest of Housing Loan2 Up to Rs.1,00,000 total 80G Charitable Donation 100%/ 50% of donation or 10% of adjusted total income, whichever is less 80GGC Donation to political parties Any sum contributed (Other than Cash) 80TTA Interest on savings account Rs. 10,000 1              Tax saving investments includes life insurance premium including ULIPs, PPF, 5 year tax saving FD, tuition fees, repayment of housing loan, mutual fund (ELSS) (Sec. 80CCB), NSC, employee provident fund, pension fund (Sec. 80CCC) or pension scheme (Sec. 80CCD), etc. NRIs are not allowed to invest in certain investments, such as PPF, NSC, 5 year bank FD, etc. 2              Only to the first time buyer of a self-occupied residential flat costing less than Rs. 40 lakhs and loan amount of less than 25 lakhs sanctioned in financial year 2013-14 Clubbing of other’s income Generally, the taxpayer is taxed on his own income. However, in certain cases, he may have to pay tax on another person’s income.  Taxpayers in the higher tax bracket (e.g. 30%) may divert some portion

The worst thing about pills was that they worked. Without them, you might just adapt; medical optimism suspended you in a maintenance reality. He'd never known how sick he was until he'd gotten health insurance. The pill that really wanted inventing was the bitter one that cured you of optimism and made time go faster.

When it comes to our most precious commodity, our own health, many of us are like sheep following whatever our doctors and insurance companies and other medical care providers tell us to do and not to do. about our health.

Employees are shielded from being healthcare consumers because they rely on their employers’ priorities and judgment instead of their own to select insurance.

A medical student is sent for training at a clinic specializing in sexual disorders. The head of the clinic takes the student on a tour. In the first room they enter, there’s a patient masturbating. “What’s his diagnosis?” the student asks. “He has a severe case of Semen Buildup Disorder. If he doesn’t ejaculate multiple times a day, he becomes disoriented and nauseated.” In the second room they find a patient with his pants down around his ankles, receiving oral sex from a beautiful nurse. “What about his diagnosis?” the student asks. “Same condition. He just has better health insurance.

Out of one pocket, we pay billions of our tax dollars to support the production of expensive, disease-causing foods. Out of the other pocket, we pay medical bills that are too high because our overweight population consumes too much of these rich, disease-causing foods. Our tax dollars are actually used to make our society sicker and keep our health insurance costs high.

A far better way to slow medical costs is to use Medicare and Medicaid’s bargaining power over drug companies and hospitals to get lower prices and to move from a fee-for-service system to a fee-for-healthy-outcomes system. And because Medicare has far lower administrative costs than private health insurers, we should make Medicare available to everyone.

But though I admire their intentions and ambitions, I contend that they have missed the big picture: the underlying insurance-based structure of our health care system drives excess treatment, cost inflation, and medical errors. It is this structure that needs to be changed.

Domains of Human Concerns: Common Types of Possibilities For Action 1. BODY: exercise, medical checkups, traveling to an appointment. 2. PLAY or AESTHETICS: taking a vacation, going to the movies, going to an art museum, painting, putting a puzzle together. 3. SOCIABILITY: inviting a new person into a conversation, meeting an old friend, declaring a person trustworthy or untrustworthy. 4. FAMILY: getting married, sending children to college. 5. WORK: finishing a report, writing a letter. 6. EDUCATION: enrolling in a class, reading a book. 7. CAREER: choosing a major in college, getting a new job. 8. MONEY or PRUDENCE: investing money, bargaining for a new salary, buying health insurance. 9. MEMBERSHIP: joining a professional organization, becoming a citizen of a new country, founding a new club. 10. WORLD: working in a political campaign, visiting another country or culture.        11. DIGNITY: declaring pride in your work, declaring that your work is significant or insignificant, declaring standards of action for yourself to live up to.        12. SITUATION: declaring that your future is good or not good, declaring that you have more possibilities than you have been seeing, declaring that you have fewer possibilities in life than you supposed, discussing your possibilities with other persons. 13. SPIRITUALITY: reflecting on the facticity of life, going to church, philosophical discussions with others.

The Importance of Bookkeeping Services for Doctors Managing the financial side of a medical practice can be challenging for doctors, as they are often focused on providing quality patient care. However, maintaining accurate financial records is essential for the success of any healthcare practice. Bookkeeping services tailored specifically for doctors help ensure that their financial transactions are organized, compliant, and manageable, allowing them to focus on what they do best—caring for patients. Why Doctors Need Specialized Bookkeeping Services Doctors face unique financial complexities, such as billing for medical services, managing insurance claims, handling payroll for staff, and keeping track of medical supplies and equipment. Additionally, they must ensure compliance with healthcare regulations and tax laws. Professional bookkeeping services designed for doctors take these unique needs into account, helping physicians streamline their financial operations. As a result, they can avoid errors, reduce administrative burdens, and improve cash flow. Accurate Billing and Cash Flow Management One of the key challenges doctors face is managing billing and cash flow. With a constant flow of patients and complex insurance claims, maintaining an accurate record of all transactions is essential. Bookkeeping services ensure that billing is handled efficiently, minimizing delays in receiving payments. This service also helps manage insurance claims, reducing errors that could lead to delayed reimbursements. By keeping track of revenue and expenses, bookkeepers ensure that doctors maintain a healthy cash flow. Tax Compliance and Planning Doctors often qualify for specific tax deductions related to medical equipment, staff salaries, and office expenses. However, navigating the complexities of healthcare tax regulations can be difficult. Bookkeeping services help doctors stay compliant by keeping their financial records organized and accurate, making it easier to file taxes and take advantage of available deductions. Additionally, bookkeepers can assist in planning for tax obligations throughout the year, ensuring that there are no surprises during tax season. Financial Reporting for Growth Bookkeeping services also provide doctors with valuable financial reports that offer insights into their practice’s performance. By analyzing income, expenses, and cash flow trends, doctors can make more informed decisions about expanding services, hiring staff, or investing in new equipment. These reports give a clear picture of the financial health of the practice, enabling better long-term planning. In conclusion, specialized bookkeeping services for doctors are essential for maintaining accurate financial records, ensuring tax compliance, and improving cash flow. By outsourcing bookkeeping tasks, doctors can focus more on patient care while gaining peace of mind that their financials are in order.

Consider, for example, the landmark 2004 study that followed several hundred patients treated with one of three popular antidepressants: Zoloft, Paxil, or Prozac. Among those who took the drugs as prescribed, only 23% were depression-free after six months of treatment. (As you might expect, patients who failed to take their meds did even worse.) And all three medications yielded roughly the same dismal results. A fluke result, perhaps? It’s actually pretty typical. The recovery rate with antidepressants in similar studies usually falls somewhere between 20% and 35%. Clinical researchers at forty-one treatment sites across the country have just completed the largest real-world study of antidepressants ever conducted, and the results fit the same overall pattern. This multimillion dollar project, sponsored by the National Institutes of Mental Health, followed about three thousand depressed patients who initially took the drug citalopram (marketed under the trade name Celexa) for about twelve weeks. By the end of that short-term treatment period, only 28% of study patients had fully recovered. The study’s 28% response rate might even be an overestimate of the medication’s true effectiveness, because patients received higher drug doses and had more frequent doctor’s visits than people do in everyday clinical practice. (In real life, insurance companies sharply restrict the frequency of “med check” follow-up appointments). Remarkably, the study’s authors—a veritable All-Star team of clinical researchers—noted that the observed 28% recovery rate was about what they had expected to see based on comparable studies. That’s right: They weren’t surprised to find that the majority of study patients failed to recover on an antidepressant. In the study’s published write-up, the researchers also raised a provocative question: What percentage of their patients might have recovered if they had received a sugar pill—a placebo—instead of the medication? Could it possibly have been as high as 28%?

The Importance of an Accountant for Doctors Managing the financial side of a medical practice can be challenging for doctors who already have demanding schedules. This is why having a specialized accountant is essential for doctors. A qualified accountant can help doctors efficiently manage their financial records, optimize tax strategies, and ensure the overall financial health of the practice, allowing physicians to concentrate on patient care. Unique Financial Challenges for Doctors Doctors face unique financial challenges that are specific to the healthcare industry. These include managing income from multiple sources, handling billing systems for patient care, dealing with insurance reimbursements, and navigating complex healthcare regulations. Additionally, doctors often need to invest in high-cost medical equipment and balance personal and business financial planning. Without professional guidance, these financial aspects can become overwhelming. Accountants with expertise in the medical field understand these complexities and can offer valuable support. The Role of an Accountant in a Medical Practice A specialized accountant for doctors provides services that go beyond traditional bookkeeping. They help with financial planning, ensuring that the practice’s income and expenses are balanced effectively. Additionally, they manage payroll, tax filing, and compliance with healthcare regulations. Furthermore, an accountant can provide strategic advice on reducing costs and optimizing cash flow, making the practice more efficient and profitable. Doctors also benefit from tax planning services, ensuring that deductions specific to healthcare professionals are maximized while keeping the practice compliant with tax laws. Benefits of Hiring a Specialized Accountant By hiring an accountant who specializes in working with doctors, medical professionals can streamline their financial operations and reduce the risk of costly errors. This partnership allows doctors to focus on patient care, knowing that the financial side of their practice is being handled efficiently. Moreover, an accountant can provide financial insights that help doctors plan for the future, such as retirement planning or business expansion. Conclusion In conclusion, a specialized accountant is invaluable for doctors who want to ensure the financial success of their practice. With expertise in the unique financial challenges doctors face, accountants provide essential services that allow medical professionals to focus on their patients while maintaining a healthy financial standing.

The Importance of an Accountant for Medical Professionals Medical professionals, including doctors, specialists, and surgeons, often face the challenge of managing both patient care and the financial aspects of their practices. An accountant who specializes in working with medical professionals can alleviate much of this burden. By offering financial expertise tailored to the healthcare industry, accountants help medical professionals maintain the financial health of their practices while ensuring compliance with tax laws and regulations. Unique Financial Challenges in Healthcare Medical professionals face distinct financial challenges that other industries may not encounter. These include managing patient billing, insurance reimbursements, and government payments. Additionally, healthcare professionals often have to handle large expenses for medical equipment and office operations while ensuring they maintain a steady cash flow. With fluctuating income and the need to comply with healthcare regulations, financial management can become complex. A specialized accountant for medical professionals understands these nuances and provides essential support to navigate these challenges effectively. Key Roles of an Accountant for Medical Professionals An accountant plays a critical role in managing the financial side of a medical practice. They assist with bookkeeping, ensuring that all financial records are accurate and up-to-date. Furthermore, they handle tax planning and filing, making sure that healthcare-specific deductions are maximized while ensuring compliance with tax laws. Additionally, accountants offer strategic advice on managing overhead costs, optimizing cash flow, and planning for future financial goals, such as retirement or expanding the practice. Benefits of Hiring a Healthcare-Specific Accountant The benefits of hiring a specialized accountant for medical professionals are numerous. By entrusting financial management to a professional, medical practitioners can focus more on patient care. Specialized accountants understand the unique aspects of healthcare finance, offering tailored solutions that enhance profitability and reduce financial risks. Moreover, they provide peace of mind by ensuring all financial matters are handled efficiently and in compliance with the law. Conclusion In conclusion, medical professionals benefit significantly from hiring an accountant who specializes in healthcare finance. With their expertise, accountants help ensure the smooth operation of the practice while providing strategic financial planning. This allows medical professionals to focus on their primary responsibility—caring for their patients—while maintaining a financially sound practice.

I was recently reminded of one possible reason that so many therapists are so insistent on arriving at a clinical diagnosis, and, not surprisingly, it’s directly related to problems with the health care system in America. A licensed professional counselor who has worked in the mental health field for many years wrote to say that even though she grew up in a family who strongly believe in the paranormal and in their own psychic gifts, “working with [psychic] kids is definitely a challenge in a pure clinical practice since this is not something you can bill insurance for.” Her point is very valid. Medical and mental health professionals must provide a clinical—and billable—diagnosis in order to receive payment from insurance companies. It is frightening to imagine how many children have been misdiagnosed, mislabeled, and mistreated because of the need to satisfy insurance guidelines!

Clem Whitaker and Leone Baxter, who ran a California company called Campaigns, Inc., the first political consulting firm in the history of the world.9 They’d opened shop in 1933, chiefly running political campaigns for Republican candidates. For a long time, they’d taken only California clients. But beginning in 1949, they’d engaged in a national campaign, and they’d won: retained by the American Medical Association, they’d defeated a national health insurance plan proposed by the Democratic president, Harry S. Truman

Netherlands, which has a restrictive immigration policy compared to the United States. Most European nations, including the Netherlands, after all, have universal health insurance coverage, which makes drug treatment and psychiatric treatment more available, and the Dutch government subsidizes more housing. Finally, the Netherlands’ big success was with heroin, which has effective pharmacological substitutes, methadone and Suboxone, not with meth, which lacks anything similar. But there may be fewer obstacles than appear. The Netherlands has a private health-care insurance system similar to that of the United States and covered the people who needed health care in ways similar to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, which significantly expanded access to drug treatment, including medically assisted treatment, in the United States.4 San Francisco subsidizes a significant quantity of housing, as we have seen. While California is larger than the Netherlands, the population of Amsterdam (872,000) is nearly identical to San Francisco’s (882,000).5 And while California’s population and geographic area are larger and more difficult to manage than those of the Netherlands, California also has significantly greater wealth and resources, constituting in 2019 the fifth-largest economy in the world.6 And the approach to breaking up open drug scenes, treating addiction, and providing psychiatric care is fundamentally the same whether in five European cities, Philadelphia, New York, or Phoenix.

Persons not receiving psychotherapy are roughly twice as likely as those who are to visit a physician for no clear-cut medical reason.

Gather six to 12 months of checking, savings, and credit card statements, and break your income and expenses down into categories and then line items. I have suggested some here, but add your own as needed. Check to see if your bank or credit card company provides reporting that categorizes charges or lets you assign categories—your work may already be almost done for you: •Income—paychecks, interest, dividends, rents, royalties, business income, pension, social security, child support, spousal support •Housing—mortgage/rent, property taxes, HOA dues, insurance •Utilities—gas, electric, propane, phone, TV/Internet, trash, water/sewer •Food—groceries, dining out •Auto—car payments, gasoline, repairs, insurance •Medical—health insurance, doctor/dentist visits, prescriptions, physical therapy •Entertainment—travel, concerts/shows, sports •Clothing—personal purchases, dry cleaning, uniforms •Personal care—hair/nails, gym/yoga, vitamins/supplements •Miscellaneous—gifts, pets, donations •Children—education, activities, school lunches, childcare You can use a spreadsheet or pen and paper to take note of income and expenses as you go through statements, then calculate a monthly average for each item.

Once I realized I was old enough to die, I decided that I was also old enough not to incur any more suffering, annoyance, or boredom in the pursuit of a longer life.” No more annual exams, cancer screenings, mammograms, and any other measure “expected of a responsible person with health insurance….Not only do I reject the torment of a medicalized death, but I refuse to accept a medicalized life.

Nurses work in a pitiless system. We in the United States don’t have a unified approach to maximizing people’s health and well-being. We mostly have a for-profit medical industry focused on illness and conditions and, then, on potential billable cures and fixes. Health care workers generally do their very best to provide good care, but our “system” is often at cross-purposes with that effort. Nurses in particular, whose discipline is not medicine, are trying to work in a medical industry that was not built to make the most of their expertise or, really, even to recognize it. The fee-for-service model dictates that physicians—mainly the ones billing patients’ insurance companies—are the revenue generators. Nursing is just as important to people’s outcomes, but the fees for nursing are generally lumped in with hospital room and board—meaning that nursing is seen by hospitals as an expense, like meals or supplies.

the head of innovation of an international French insurance company. I was supporting a HealthTech start-up providing remote chats with GPs in South Asian emerging countries. As data is the new oil, the start-up was also capturing analytics in the process on key trends for main pathologies. Patients in those countries miss affordable access to medical consultations. Equally, insurance companies miss useful data of the healthcare market and the patient requirements. People in this part of the world cannot pay for yearly insurances with large coverage but they could afford some level of insurance addressing specific diseases, pregnancy or partial coverage for their children. Hence insurance companies are keen to better understand this population and tap into a huge market. As the win/win was obvious the founder of the start-up had engaged with several insurance companies in view of developing an open innovation program. I was following up the engagement bringing the professional experience of working with a major healthcare innovative company in the US. The conversation started very well with an innovation manager genuinely supportive of integrating start-up creativity in the enterprise. Knowing the corporate world, I was not surprised to uncover two obstacles:

Finally, as I’ve emphasized, there is the level of conscious public policy. A Soviet official issuing a planning document, or an American politician calling for job creation, might not be entirely aware of the likely effects of their action. Still, once a situation is created, even as an unintended side effect, politicians can be expected to size up the larger political implications of that situation when they make up their minds what—if anything—to do about it. Does this mean that members of the political class might actually collude in the maintenance of useless employment? If that seems a daring claim, even conspiracy talk, consider the following quote, from an interview with then US president Barack Obama about some of the reasons why he bucked the preferences of the electorate and insisted on maintaining a private, for-profit health insurance system in America: “I don’t think in ideological terms. I never have,” Obama said, continuing on the health care theme. “Everybody who supports single-payer health care says, ‘Look at all this money we would be saving from insurance and paperwork.’ That represents one million, two million, three million jobs [filled by] people who are working at Blue Cross Blue Shield or Kaiser or other places. What are we doing with them? Where are we employing them?”9 I would encourage the reader to reflect on this passage because it might be considered a smoking gun. What is the president saying here? He acknowledges that millions of jobs in medical insurance companies like Kaiser or Blue Cross are unnecessary. He even acknowledges that a socialized health system would be more efficient than the current market-based system, since it would reduce unnecessary paperwork and reduplication of effort by dozens of competing private firms. But he’s also saying it would be undesirable for that very reason. One motive, he insists, for maintaining the existing market-based system is precisely its inefficiency, since it is better to maintain those millions of basically useless office jobs than to cast about trying to find something else for the paper pushers to do.10 So here is the most powerful man in the world at the time publicly reflecting on his signature legislative achievement—and he is insisting that a major factor in the form that legislature took is the preservation of bullshit jobs.

Every American should be able to expect certain standards, freedoms, benefits, and opportunities form a twenty-first-century health system. If they are willing to participate and be responsible, they will gain: •Improved health; •Longer lives with a much better quality of life; •A more convenient, understandable and personalized experience -- all at a lower cost; •Access to the best course of treatment for their particular illness and their unique characteristics; •A system that fosters and encourages innovation, competition, and better outcomes for patients; •A system that truly values the impact that medical innovation has on patients and their caregivers as well as on society as a whole; •A government that facilitates and accelerates extraordinary opportunities to improve health and health care; •Continuous but unobtrusive 24/7 monitoring of their general health, chronic conditions, and acute health problems; •Access to the most modern medical knowledge and breakthroughs, including the most advanced technologies, therapies and drugs, unimpeded by government-imposed price controls or rationing; •The chance to increase their personal knowledge by learning from a transparent system of information about their diagnosis, costs and alternative solutions; •A continuously improving, competitive, patient-focused medical world in which new therapies, new technologies, and new drugs are introduced as rapidly and safely as possible -- and not a day later; •Greater price and market competition, innovation and smarter health care spending; •A system of financing that includes insurance, government, charities, and self-funding that ensures access to health and health care for every American at the lowest possible cost without allowing financing and short-term budgetary considerations to distort and weaken the delivery of care; •Genuine insurance to facilitate access to dramatically better care, rather than the current system, which is myopically focused on monthly or annual payments; •A health system in which third parties and government bureaucrats do not impede the best course of treatment that doctors and their patients decide on; •A health system in which seniors, veterans, or others under government health programs receive the same quality of care as their children in private markt systems. Big reforms are required to transform today’s expensive, obsolete health bureaucracy into a system that conforms to these principles.

From that position he pushed for national medical insurance, which the medical profession then advocated, and in 1916 he became president of the American Medical Association. In his presidential address he declared, “There are unmistakable signs that health insurance will constitute the next great step in social legislation.

Insurance takes care of only injuries not emotions.

Cost-effectiveness analyses can be undertaken from a number of different perspectives. The choice of the study perspective is an important methodological decision because it determines which costs and effects to count and how to value them. The appropriate perspective depends on the objective of the study, the context, and the relevant decision makers. As indicated above, we recommend that analysts conduct Reference Case analyses from both the healthcare sector and societal perspectives (Recommendations 2–5). Other perspectives may, however, be relevant for specific decision makers. To illustrate, we briefly consider four perspectives potentially relevant to the analysis of health interventions: the payer perspective, the healthcare sector Reference Case perspective, the healthcare sector with time cost perspective, and the societal Reference Case perspective. Although we note two additional perspectives here, the remainder of this book will focus on the healthcare sector and societal Reference Case perspectives. The payer perspective includes the consequences that a specific payer considers relevant. This perspective will be more or less narrow depending on whether the payer is private or public. For a US private commercial payer (insurer), for example, costs might include reimbursement for medical care paid for by the insurer and consequences for patients covered by the insurer.

My secret pet peeve is my frustration first for all those that fought for our freedom to come back and receive full health insurance but no actual health care and second that unlike the old days pre Obama care when I bought all of Savvy Turtle employees full medical, dental and eye care and handed it to them as a bonus each month to include paying for mine where I could go get what I need and skip the nothing burger red tape of government to post Obama care where all that is nonexistent

It is common to be refused medical treatment in the USA because your health insurance plan does not cover it.

Perhaps less pernicious but still worrisome is reliance on “wellness” programs, which most medium to large employers in the United States have, despite the fact that, overall, they have not been validated to promote health outcomes. Typically, a wellness program combines step counting, weight and blood pressure readings, and cholesterol lab tests, as well as some incentive for employees to participate (such as a surcharge on an employee’s contribution to the cost of insurance). But wellness is poorly defined, and the cost effectiveness of such strategies has been seriously questioned.50 One way such programs could be improved, however, is through the use of virtual medical coaches, which could gather and make use of far more granular and deeper information about each individual.

While Roosevelt ultimately lost the 1912 election, his party’s progressive ideals planted a seed that accessible and affordable medical care might be viewed as a right more than a privilege. It wasn’t long, however, before doctors and southern politicians vocally opposed any type of government involvement in healthcare, branding it as a form of bolshevism. After FDR imposed a nationwide wage freeze meant to stem inflation during World War II, many companies began offering private health insurance and pension benefits as a way to compete for the limited number of workers not deployed overseas. Once the war ended, this employer-based system continued, in no small part because labor unions liked the arrangement, since it enabled them to use the more generous benefit packages negotiated under collective bargaining agreements as a selling point to recruit new members. The downside was that it left those unions unmotivated to push for government-sponsored health programs that might help everybody else.

US hospitals may be excellent, but there must be something profoundly wrong with our health care system if we fall near the bottom of the heap among developed nations on life expectancy, infant mortality, maternal mortality, self-reported health, obesity, drug overdoses, suicide, homicides, disability rates, traffic deaths, almost any indicator you can think of. Lack of access to medical care deserves much of the blame, but even educated, insured, well-off Americans are less healthy than their peers in other rich nations

What American Healthcare Can Learn from Italy: Three Lessons It’s easy. First, learn to live like Italians. Eat their famous Mediterranean diet, drink alcohol regularly but in moderation, use feet instead of cars, stop packing pistols and dropping drugs. Second, flatten out the class structure. Shrink the gap between high and low incomes, raise pensions and minimum wages to subsistence level, fix the tax structure to favor the ninety-nine percent. And why not redistribute lifestyle too? Give working stiffs the same freedom to have kids (maternity leave), convalesce (sick leave), and relax (proper vacations) as the rich. Finally, give everybody access to health care. Not just insurance, but actual doctors, medications, and hospitals. As I write, the future of the Affordable Care Act is uncertain, but surely the country will not fall into the abyss that came before. Once they’ve had a taste of what it’s like not to be one heart attack away from bankruptcy, Americans won’t turn back the clock. Even what is lately being called Medicare for All, considered to be on the fringe left a decade ago and slammed as “socialized medicine,” is now supported by a majority of Americans, according to some polls. In practice, there’s little hope for Italian lessons one and two—the United States is making only baby steps toward improving its lifestyle, and its income inequality is worse every year. But the third lesson is more feasible. Like Italy, we can provide universal access to treatment and medications with minimal point-of-service payments and with prices kept down by government negotiation. Financial arrangements could be single-payer like Medicare or use private insurance companies as intermediaries like Switzerland, without copying the full Italian model of doctors on government salaries. Despite the death by a thousand cuts currently being inflicted on the Affordable Care Act, I am convinced that Americans will no longer stand for leaving vast numbers of the population uninsured, or denying medical coverage to people whose only sin is to be sick. The health care genie can’t be put back in the bottle.

Greg Abbott was a great track star in high school, having never lost a race, but in 1984 a tree fell on him while he was jogging through the wealthy enclave of Houston’s River Oaks, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. He had just graduated from law school and had no health insurance. Fortunately, he won a $9 million judgment from the homeowner whose tree had fallen, and from the tree company that had inspected the tree and failed to recommend its removal. Later, as a member of the Texas Supreme Court, and then as attorney general, Abbott supported measures that capped pain-and-suffering damages in medical malpractice cases at $250,000.

the case of Nelene Fox. Fox was from Temecula, California, and was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer in 1991, when she was thirty-eight years old. Surgery and conventional chemotherapy failed, and the cancer spread to her bone marrow. The disease was terminal. Doctors at the University of Southern California offered her a radical but seemingly promising new treatment—high-dose chemotherapy with bone marrow transplantation. To Fox, it was her one chance of cure. Her insurer, Health Net, denied her request for coverage of the costs, arguing that it was an experimental treatment whose benefits were unproven and that it was therefore excluded under the terms of her policy. The insurer pressed her to get a second opinion from an Independent medical center. Fox refused—who were they to tell her to get another opinion? Her life was at stake. Raising $212,000 through charitable donations, she paid the costs of therapy herself, but it was delayed. She died eight months after the treatment. Her husband sued Health Net for bad faith, breach of contract, intentional infliction of emotional damage, and punitive damages and won. The jury awarded her estate $89 million. The HMO executives were branded killers. Ten states enacted laws requiring insurers to pay for bone marrow transplantation for breast cancer. Never mind that Health Net was right. Research ultimately showed the treatment to have no benefit for breast cancer patients and to actually worsen their lives. But the jury verdict shook the American insurance industry. Raising questions about doctors’ and patients’ treatment decisions in terminal illness was judged political suicide.

There are thirty-seven million people in the United States without any form of medical insurance. Every other leading industrial nation in the world—Germany, Italy, France, Japan, England, Canada, and all the others—supplies health care to all its citizens, at a fraction of what the world’s richest country spends for inadequate health care. It’s our national shame.

The medical profession excels at fixing broken bones but fails miserably at fixing general sickness.

was very broke. Not poor, never poor. Privileged and downwardly mobile. Like many of my peers, I could afford to work in publishing because I had a safety net. I had graduated college debt-free, by no accomplishment of my own: my parents and grandparents had saved for my tuition since I was a blur on the sonogram. I had no dependents. I had secret, minor credit-card debt, but I did not want to ask for help. Borrowing money to make rent, or pay off a medical bill, or even, in a fit of misguided aspiration, buy my own wrap dress, always felt like a multifront failure. I was ashamed that I couldn’t support myself, and ashamed that my generous, forgiving parents were effectively subsidizing a successful literary agency. I had one year left on their health insurance. The situation was not sustainable. I was not sustainable.

The rising cost of medical care has also been important; most employees receive health insurance as part of their overall compensation, and most research shows that increases in premiums ultimately come out of wages.16 Indeed, average wages have tended to do badly when health-care costs are rising most rapidly and to do better when health-care costs are rising more slowly.

You and I protect our own with insurance policies and medical aid that’s available at our fingertips. But when it comes to taking care of the health of the nation, we tend to do it more in thought and less in deed. Vision cannot be a substitute for action.

Critics of capitalism often decry the “greed” that animates successful entrepreneurs. The real problem, however, is not the amount of money made by people at the top; it is the systematic suppression of people at the bottom. The real-life equivalent of the Monopoly player who has to mortgage all his money-making assets to pay his debts is the hand-to-mouth day laborer who, unable to pay his car insurance, loses his car and, unable to drive to his job, is unable to pay his rent. The villain here is not necessarily the avarice of the banker who loaned this poor fellow his money in the first place. It is the unstable dynamic of a system that mercilessly drives some people down to the bottom through a succession of cascading misfortunes. To experience the board game version of this kind of misery vortex in Monopoly is to appreciate the advantages of the welfare state, which, when it is functioning properly, does not just take money from rich people and give it to poor people. It also softens the iterative feedback dynamics within the system so as to ensure that minor nudges—a lost job, a criminal conviction, a divorce, a medical setback—do not create feedback effects that ultimately produce a full-blown personal catastrophe. Job training, public health care, a humane justice system, community housing and support for single mothers are examples of programs that can achieve that effect.

Hospitals cannot continue to hemorrhage. For the country as a whole, medical insurance premiums include a surcharge that pays for treating the uninsured. However, if the proportion of uninsured indigent patients exceeds a certain figure, a hospital has no choice but to close. In California alone, the heavy cost of free medicine for foreigners forced no fewer than 60 hospitals to shut down between 1993 and 2003; many others were on the verge of collapse. From 1994 to 2004, the number of hospital emergency rooms in the country as a whole dropped by more than 12 percent. In May 2010, Miami’s health care system was so strapped, it was considering closing two of its five public hospitals. This would mean laying off 4,487 employees and the loss of 581 acute-care beds. Experts explained that treating uninsured patients had stretched the system to the breaking point. Houston is a good example of a city whose hospitals are barely making ends meet. In the nation as a whole, about 15 percent of the population has no medical insurance, but Texas, with its large population of Hispanics, has the highest percentage at 24 percent. In Houston, the figure is 30 percent. The safety net cannot accommodate so many people who cannot pay. “Does this mean rationing?” asks Kenenth Mattox, chief of staff at Ben Taub General Hospital. “You bet it does.” There is such a crush at Houston’s emergency rooms that ambulances often wait for one or two hours before they can even unload patients. The record wait is six hours. Twenty percent of the time, hospitals end up sending patients to other hospitals, and some have died after being diverted. Politicians and businessmen pull strings so friends can cut in line. Americans who fall sick in Mexico do not get free treatment. The State Department warns that Mexican doctors routinely refuse to treat foreign patients unless paid in advance, and that they often charge Americans for services not rendered.

Laying off millions of USA employees causes them to lose their health insurance, leading to medical bills of tens of thousands of dollars for those unlucky enough to contract the serious symptoms of COVID-19.

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Solution #1. ELIMINATE PAYOFFS IN CLINICS TO PROMOTE VACCINATIONS. It should be illegal for doctors to accept bonuses or other incentives from insurance or pharmaceutical companies for vaccinating patients. This practice is clearly a conflict of interest. When you take your child to a doctor, you want them to focus on your child and their health, and not on a yearend bonus some other company is paying to push vaccines. These bonuses/kickbacks provide a monetary incentive to the doctor and their office not related to the patient’s health, which is clearly a conflict of interest, and should be illegal. Without this bonus/kickback in their minds, perhaps the doctors can get back in the business of simply taking care of their patients, answering their questions, and providing them with better overall healthcare. If the pediatric office has no money dangling over them in the form of bonuses/kickbacks, then there should be no incentive to bar entrance to any family who wants to receive healthcare, unless the office is so full that they cannot accommodate new patients. This taking away of the bonus/kickback money will remove prejudice and bias against those who do not want to follow the recommended vaccine schedule, or who question the safety of the vaccines. And thereby, all patients will receive equal healthcare service under the law without bias. After all, isn’t this, shouldn’t this be the goal?

Pediatric offices are receiving money from Big Pharma, insurance companies, and/or the government to promote vaccinations. (Chapter 3 and 4 – Solution #1). This is a blatant conflict of interest. This corruption has gone too far. If you decide you don’t want any vaccines for your child, or you decide to stop the vaccines due to a post vaccine reaction or illness you suspect may be due to the vaccines given, then the pediatric office may kick you out or turn you away from their practice. (Chapter 3 and 4 - Solution #2). This is unconscionable. But it is happening somewhere every day in our country. This is wrong. These offices should be there for their patients. They should not rule over us. Pediatric offices are businesses. As businesses, they should not be able to discriminate against people due to their personal beliefs and choices.

My aim for this archaeological project is twofold. Contrary to what many think, diagnoses are helpful but by no means necessary for the work of psychotherapy. They are crucial if one is to prescribe medication or bill an insurance provider, of course, but they don't play nearly as large of a role in two people talking to one another. When a client comes to me and tells me that they have bipolar disorder, depression, or the like, I file it away as necessary data. However, that categorization is far less interesting or meaningful to me than exploring what gives their life purpose and how they could better live into their values. To paraphrase the British psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, the business of therapy is really just two people playing together. I have found that the fear of diagnosis, what it might mean to be labeled as "depressed" or "anxious," much less "psychotic," prevents many people from consulting a therapist when they need help. A label that isn't all that useful to my work serves as an impediment to those in need. Perhaps it's time to rethink the utility of those labels, or at least how we relate to them. Once I know the person sitting in front of me has schizophrenia, the focus becomes fixed on treating their hallucinations and delusions, on helping them best integrate into society. We thus exempt ourselves from considering everything that came before they entered our office. What if it was possible to both acknowledge their suffering while also condemning the injustices and inequalities that have helped lead them here? That is the task that I have set for myself in the following pages.