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The “Health Pyramid” Suggests Expanded Medicare and Medical IRAs
Knowing that one’s overall health depends heavily on “Blue Zone” habits, engineers, vaccines, and lay workers, I’ve tried to come up with a healthcare system that puts doctors in their proper place and frees most of us from the expensive bean-counters siphoning off much of the healthcare dollar. Partly inspired by the acronyms in “House of God”, here are my observations and proposed solutions.
Behold my new “Healthcare Pyramid”. Note that the fattest part includes those that live a clean life of neighborly good diet and exercise, next the purveyors of clean air, water, and environment (engineers that run water/wastewater plants, design catalytic converters, etc) while next step are healthcare workers and nurses (the people that address epidemics and do most of the work in a given health institution, like birthing babies and addressing the front-lines of illness). They are followed by medical researchers and scientists (who make the ever-growing lists of vaccines and antibiotics that prevent disease), and at the tippy-top, the 10% that are medical doctors, and 5% the insidious accountants and lawyers that take a too-large cut of your medical dollar. Interestingly, the doctors, lawyers, and accountants (collectively called things like managed healthcare) have little to do with your health outcome, yet make about 90% of the money. Meanwhile, to use “House of God” language, Doctors are besieged by “GOMERs” (Get-Out-of-My-Exam-Room chronic hypochondriacs) using “SWAGs” (Scientific-Wild-Assed-Guesses) along with TURFing (Punting a patient to another dept) and BUFFing (A TURF that bounces back).
Currently a healthy person (Blue Zone Expedient Patient, or BZEP), hears from a doctor and HMO a “Tell them What they Already Know” (eat right, exercise, don’t smoke, get a vaccination, which I call TWAK) and lines them up for the Futile and Expensive End of Life Treatment (FEELT), all for about $20k per family per year (much of which goes to subsidize Poor Unhealthy People who Can’t Afford Medical, or PUPCAMs). We healthy ones may need to concede a rise in Medicare tax (2.5% to 3%) for a “Medicare Option” that would absorb Obamacare and cover about 50% of PUPCAMs and other Americans. But the other 50% (who are BZEPs tired of TWAK and see through FEELT) would be much better served by employer-paid $4000/yr…
