Category Archives: Path to Healthcare cost containment

Stone Age Medicine to Modern Medicine

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August 14, 2014 reprint 11/12/18

The state of our medical practices in the west and most specifically in the US downright primitive.  Our methods of caring for illness and diseases is sadly inefficient and in some cases woefully ineffective.  This is a collective observation.  That’s the bad news.

The good news is we are just about to enter into a new far more effective and light-years better delivery system.  I’ll explain this in a moment.  However, first, there is some more bad news. Doctors role in medicine is going to change.  Pharmaceutical companies will lose its gravy train of people on lifelong regiments of pill popping based on dubious science and FDA rubber stamping.  Hospitals will change its role of the primary healthcare provider to exclusively emergency services, surgery, and advanced health care and rehabilitation.

The medical landscape of today is going to change forever.  The weight of huge overhead cost, monuments to ineffectiveness and inefficiencies hiding behind false promises and preying on a culture of trust and hope is killing the same people they are trying to help by sucking them financially dry.

Before I continue, I don’t hate doctors.  They are doing their best in a business that is burying them in paperwork, loading them down with procedures and practices that are fundamentally flawed.  They are being preyed on by the system that is trying to rein in costs, without making changes to the system that does not get results consistently and whose vested interest is to keep their jobs.

The whole picture is hung upside down.  It is not a system that needs a financial fix, ie, more money, it needs a new process.  The patient is the customer. The customer has a problem that needs fixing.  There are answers that work, and there are procedures to get there.

Yes, the system is involved.  That complexity can be embraced in a systematic way. Technology regularly deals with complexity. It is that complexity that will solve the equation of what is wrong with the patient.

Instead of discussing variable integer equations, its time a cut to the chase, by way of illustration.

A database of stored anonymously as reference files to include the individual’s genome analyzed sequence blood test result will be compared against the genome library and cross-referenced with symptoms and treatments that are successful.  In this way at the treatment success improves dramatically.  For situations that are outlying the universe the genome library, a body system on a chip will be the test platform.

When a patient complains of a problem

There are a set of variables. Determine the variables of a given problem, and the solution exists.

#revisit diagnostic healthcare #heathcare costs #Heathcare 

#revisit diagnostic healthcare #heathcare costs #Heathcare alternative #healthcare cost controls

Making Money Off of Healthcare

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Almost a billion dollars in profit in the past ninety days for a health insurance provider? If Trump wants to fix the healthcare industry he needs to take the profit out of writing healthcare insurance. It is morally reprehensible to make money on people who fear of not being able to pay for their medical care and have no choice but to buy insurance. The non-stop premium increases with its own self-generating and unbridled cost structure with no correlated to inflation, but a leverage of fear and no choices.

Aetna made 836 million dollars in the 3rd quarter. how do they make that profit? The charge an egregious amount of policies and pay out a pittance. https://news.aetna.com/news-releases/aetna-reports-third-quarter-2017-results/

There is math behind these statements. The number of policies that Aetna writes, the premiums paid and the payout or underwriting profit. If Trump truly wants to solve this problem the companies need to become mutual companies, where the premium holder is the shareholder, and the interest of the premium holder is aligned with the company’s operations. That is to reduce costs to the buyer/the shareholder, whether that mean negotiating prices for drugs, an efficiency of procedure, bulk buying of a lab test, empowering the patient/the shareholder to report abuse, fraud, malpractice, and any other offense that increases the cost of providing healthcare. If there is an underwriting profit, the money is returned to the policyholder in the form of reduced premiums in the successive years.

The next cost containment breakthrough for effective healthcare is to establish best practices. To make the program successful there need to be technical tracking proven results. The program is a 2 way street for savings and feedback through documenting ailments and successful treatment. The genome mapping will be part of the integrated relationship.

In the coming missives, I will discuss the system for best practices, patient and doctor benefit and how to create massive savings.