Healthcare System in the US

President Obama set about addressing the needs of the healthcare system in the US with the Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010. In 2016, Obama wrote, that the main purpose of the ACA was to address the long-standing challenges facing the US healthcare system related to access, affordability, and quality of care (525). Obama might have meant well with the ACA, but the problems in the healthcare system in the US go beyond the challenges related to access, affordability, and quality of care. They go to the very heart of healthcare in the USthe issue that plagues the healthcare system at its essence, core, and foundation: that problem is a problem of treating people rather than preventing illness; it is a problem of putting profits before people, ultimately. And that problem is made all the worse by the fact that the US government subsidizes the system: it has enabled a healthcare monopoly, which focuses on treatments, prescriptions, diagnoses, and so on to ensure an ever-revolving door of patients and profits for the healthcare industry. It is a system that has been set up precisely for the purpose of profiting from what it calls health care but what in reality is nothing more than a constant treating of people with drugs and tests, as Glasziou et al. explain in their article, Too Much Medicine, Too Little Care. If the health care system genuinely cared about peoples health, the hospitals would go out of business because people would be healthy. All it takes is a little preventive carewhich the ACA was supposed to promote, but in effect simply got more patients in the door to receive treatments paid for by the US government.

In Goldhills opinion, the healthcare system is simply broken and needs to be completely deconstructed. It is a system that is so overbloated by subsidies from the government that it can no longer think or see straight. It is a system focused too much on profits. On the surface it appears to be concerned with health, as hospitals have the latest and greatest technology for diagnosing illness, and pharmaceutical companies are constantly investing in and producing new drugs. Yet people in America are sicker than ever. Goldhill comes to the conclusion that the problem of health is not one that the healthcare system is actually designed to fixrather it is a problem the system is designed to prolong and exploit. And as a result, nutrition, exercise, education, emotional security, our natural environment, and public safety may now be more important than care in producing further advances in longevity and quality of life (Goldhill).

I agree with Goldhills conclusion: everything that a human being needs to be healthy can readily be obtained through health literacy, education, information; through proper dieting, i.e., eating healthy foods, organic foods, less sugar, less pre-packaged American junk food; through exercising and abstaining from unhealthy activities. This is the essence of preventive medicine and even of natural medicinebut the healthcare system is not interested in these types of approaches to health; the system is set up to see every person as a potential source of profitand to get that profit out, the person must be put through a series of constant tests, screenings, consultations, drug therapies, and so on. If anyone has ever watched a pregnant mother go through the endless rounds of testing and check-ups, more testing and more check-ups, in the months leading up to the birth of the baby one knows exactly what I am talking about. Some women have figured this out and skip the whole health check-up rigmarole altogether and birth at home without ever needing to see a nurse or physician! Yet, as a society, were taught that every pregnant woman needs to go see an OB and undergo stressful check-ups and consultations, have half a dozen ultrasounds to make sure the baby is still in there, schedule the cesarean because natural births are just too painful, and get the epidural (which adds on another few thousand dollars to the billI hope no one...…access because access does not cut into the bottom line the way preventive health would.

According to Obama, the ACA also was meant to ensure affordability of care and quality of carebut those terms are completely relative and misleading. What he really meant was that the government will make it a law that everyone must buy health insurance so that the healthcare monopolists do not have to lower their prices or be transparent about how they price things; the lobbies, after all, have made sure that the government will not insist upon an end to price gouging and, on the contrary, have ensured that the government will continue to subsidize care. But is it really quality care as Obama argued? How can it be called quality care when so many have explained how harmful it actually is? From Lichtenfeld to Goldhill to Glasziou et al.to name just a fewthey all show and explain that the problem of the healthcare system is not that access is wanting, or that costs are too high (since the government will always subsidize), or that quality is too low. The problem is that the system is not focusing on careperiod. It is focused on profits, but of course it pays lip service to all the issues that Obama touted in his 2016 article: the system promotes the idea of increasing access to care, of making health care more affordable, and of ensuring quality of care.

The only thing the system wont ever mention is why it does not providepreventive health to all its patients all the time. The reason for that is simple: preventive health would put the industry out of business and collapse the system. The system is there to protect the industry; it is there to serve the industry and the monopolists who benefit from putting profits before people. In that system there is no place for preventive medicine or natural medicine; there is only room for testing, screening, treating, and anything else that can be used to justify a big bill at…