Its Simply Stacked Against You

In general the Health Care industry has every advantage possible when it come to dealing with individual patients.  They are big, they deal with important and complex issues which are vitally important to the patients, and they do it all the time while each patient does most of it just once.

It is a stacked deck and while you can try to do your homework and try to even the odds a bit, its not like most other things where you know, for example, that you plan to buy a car, its more like your car died and you need one today.

When you get subjected to a real health emergency you are faced with decisions and details that are difficult to deal with, especially since it is of vital interest to you and you really don't know what they are telling you.

Obviously some things like routine physicals and minor illnesses are easy to deal with, but when you go in for a sore throat that won't go away and get subjected to a series of tests and referrals that ultimately tell you that you have a serious illness and need surgery followed by post surgery treatments, you are pretty much in a no win situation.

You can get a second opinion, or try to deal with the situation via non traditional means, but the vast majority of us simply do what they tell you to do.

I should also point out that up to this point health care was probably just something that you didn't think about much except to complain about how much it cost or how expensive it was.

However, when faced with a serious illness, the expensive really kicks into play and that insurance you paid for becomes a real bargain, assuming you can actually keep it.

This is why Government has a role to play in health care and why most civilized countries take the responsibility to make sure all residents have access to health care without worrying about the cost.

Faced with a life threatening illness, cost becomes no issue, until in fact you can't pay anymore.

Universal insurance makes all of us pay a bit more so that the truly sick don't have to sell their homes or go into financial ruin trying to stay alive. 

The United States is fairly unique in not guaranteeing health care to its residents and its likely we are getting ready to in fact make health care less available and affordable while returning about $800 billion dollars to wealthy people who of course have great coverage.

The answer is of course, don't get sick.