Call to Reform

Whatever did we do before commercial for medications?
I really don’t know how the average patient survived without knowing that drugs exist for such sad abnormalities as loss of eyelashes.
I also don’t know how we ever guided our providers into prescribing without these commercials telling us what to ask for. These certainly couldn’t be part of a massive marketing scheme by a corporation to a consumer to raise profits.
Then again, that’s exactly what a commercial is, isn’t it?
But if it wasn’t for these commercial bombarding My Big Fat Greek Wedding on TBS then I wouldn’t have ever remembered how differently, and more cost effectively, emergency rooms function over seas.
Yes, European emergency rooms are different in a variety of ways.
My personal favorite difference, they aren’t overcrowded and dirty.
My, my, I don’t know why anyone would be looking to be treated in a quiet, clean environment. I just don’t know how those people in Europe can stand being whisked into a private room without having to hang around others coughing, hacking, and bleeding in chairs that who-know, who-has-had-what, sat in before.
Somehow they do, then when treated in the Emergency Department, they are often treated with “protocols” for certain maladies.
We do this in the United States too.
If you come in with chest pain, a “surgical” abdomen, or respiratory failure there are specifics steps taken as “best practice” that are moderately universal among industrialized countries.
What differs is that in The United States different companies all own the medications.
A single patient in a US ER will receive multiple medications for a protocol.
In European ERs, that same patient receives only one drug containing the entire protocol.
Makes sense doesn’t it? It would make administering medications more efficient. It would prevent medication errors.
Why doesn’t this happen?
Well, in the United States each different company has to get their piece of the profit from their medication.
Europe doesn’t quite have the classic capitalistic structure. Their not allowing big business to get in the pockets of the patients.
They have, at some point, established this is WRONG, so they have been able to focus on best practices.
For health care reform, we’re not only going to have to look outside the box, but outside the States. The option is not “socialized” or “government” run care. It’s not a debate between our nations healthcare and any other single nation in the world.
It can be modeled to take the best aspects from all other countries and created to be the best in the world.
It can be America’s saving grace to again have the most innovative science, research, and health care in the world.
We all just need to agree it has to be done.