American Healthcare and All You Can Eat Buffet

Healthcare is an issue on everyone's mind these days. Our politicians are talking about it, Americans are complaining about it, Non-Americans are ridiculing it, large overweight media personalities are creating funny documentaries about it. It suffices to say that Healthcare is a topic on everyone's mind.



The issue is in how Healthcare should be managed. The ones who are on the spot, the supposed Healthcare experts generally admit there is a problem. Then you've got the sick and wounded masses who are complaining there isn't enough, that services are inadequate, that profits grossly outweigh deliverables, and that other systems are thriving while ours is dying. While spending an afternoon helping a friend get the doctors, I thought of a good analogy. Americans love a buffet!

So on one end of the spectrum you have public healthcare. These are the systems found in Canada and many parts of Europe. On the other end you have private healthcare providers. America is generally run this way, although private practices have generally died out in the last 50 years. So we have something in between, what I will call The Healthcare Buffet.

In the Healthcare Buffet, you pay one price and take all you want. American's cannot pass a deal like that up, its just too too sweet! But this is not only what Americans value, it is what they are blind to. What is the experience of a buffet like? The food is usually un-nutricious, but perhaps tasty on a very superficial level, the kind of food that makes you want to eat more and more. But you're never satisfied. Finally you stop gorging yourself when your so full you think you're going to keel over. Wow what a great deal.

You look around the buffet dining hall at the other people at the buffet. They are all overweight, the kind of people who never think about what they are putting down their gullet- they are just concerned with how much they can stuff down their throats. They are foolish careless people who are destroying their own digestive systems in the name of eating. This is the type of person that a Buffet attracts.

Meanwhile you consider your other lunch options. There was the fancy gourmet place, you hear the food is good but prices are high. Then there was the company cafeteria, food is terrible but you don't have to pay at all! Hmm... what a dilemma.

This is our Healthcare dilemma. We currently have a buffet. A buffet that attracts the most irresponsible people whose only desire is to consume as much as possible. As supplies run low, the product gets 'greasier' and cheaper. Pretty soon its not a lunch at all, its just a big stomach ache. Much of the problem lies in the problems Americans have with dealing with the sick. It is considered to be unethical to treat a sick person differently than a healthy person. Its a good ethical principle, but its not a good economic principle. It breeds a lack of responsibility. Those who pay in are either clueless healthy young people who haven't discovered any other options (like our lunchgoer above) or unhealthy people who have lost their health due to either misfortune or , even more likely, abuse.




We need to breed the type of Healthcare consumer who is responsible for their own health. Not people who use thousands of dollars in diabetes medication and then drink a gallon of Coca-Cola. Not people who smoke their entire lives and then get lung cancer. Not the type of people who call the ambulance when they stub their toe.

We do want people who are interested in preserving their health, because it is the kind of commodity that is much harder to buy back once you've sold it.