When discussing the “right” to adequate healthcare, it’s beneficial to first define what sort of right that is. Generally speaking, there are two possibilities: civil rights, or human rights. Civil rights are those granted to all legal members of a certain political state, while human rights are those which can be expected simply by virtue of being alive. The right to vote in an American election, for instance, is a civil right provided to all American citizens. The right not to be murdered, however, is a human right, of which we should all (ideally) have a reasonable expectation.

Healthcare, in our current system, is not a civil right. That is an objective fact, as defined by our Constitution and the legislation currently in place. The question, then, is whether healthcare is a human right. Should all human beings expect that their physical and mental well-being will be provided for? That certainly hasn’t been the case over our evolutionary history. But need we constrain ourselves to that history? It could be argued that the right not to be murdered, almost universally accepted now, was a fairly recent addition to the list of human rights. Other rights that most of us take for granted, including the rights not to be raped, beaten, or enslaved, have only taken hold in last couple of centuries. It’s clear, then, that human rights need not be restricted to those that were inherent to our species 300,000 years ago. Which is good, as such ideas almost certainly didn’t exist at the time.

Our evolution as a species has been both physical and cultural, and there’s no reason that it shouldn’t continue to be so. Amongst all the species on the planet, we’re uniquely suited to choose how we should evolve. At some point, we determined that murder was wrong. We then determined that theft was wrong. Rape, assault, slavery…the list continues. Throughout our history, we’ve shown an ability to come together as a society and decide that certain acts are wrong, and that protection from those acts should be expected by every member of our species, regardless of gender, race, religion, or nationality. In a time of unprecedented abundance, with the power of decades of exponential scientific progress, it seems only reasonable that we add protection from sickness and disease to that list. Having thus defined this human right, what choice would any advanced society have but to make it a civil right, as well?

Contact us to see how Houston Healthcare Initiative seeks to provide this healthcare right to our community, and to find out how you can help.

The Scare of Medical Debt

Many people in the United States accumulate thousands of dollars of medical debt. According to CNBC.com, 137 million Americans struggle with medical bills with 66.5% leading to personal bankruptcy. One of the reasons for medical debt is the lack of transparency of between the consumer and the insurance companies. As stated by Conversation.com, insurance companies control procedure prices, length of hospital stay, home medical care, and the prices of medical items that a patient might need. In order for the consumer to assess the “correct” price of the product, Americans must jump from insurance plan to insurance plan. Most Americans do not have that luxury due to their occupation and their current financial standing.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (or Obamacare) attempted Universal Healthcare by penalizing those who don’t have insurance. The problem with Obamacare is that the plan assumes that Americans simply choose not to have healthcare, not because of financial standing. The penalty  for not obtaining insurance is $695 per adult or 2.5% of household income. However, despite the high cost of the penalty, Obamacare packages still cost more than the penalty. Many Americans choose to pay the penalty over the healthcare packages because having no insurance is still cheaper than having insurance. Therefore, Americans do not reap the reward of any medical insurance despite paying money.

Proposed Healthcare Solutions

A solution to combat rising medical cost is to treat healthcare pricing like a shopping cart. Healthcare Bluebook encourages consumers to analyze healthcare providers and procedures by comparing prices in the consumer’s local area. They call price transparency- “fair price”, which means the normal cost of the procedure in today’s economic environment. The issue, with this site, is that the company doesn’t take into account medical insurance. Many of the “cheap” procedures require the consumer to pay out-of-pocket before the procedure.

Starting January 2021, the Trump administration will require that healthcare providers show their prices so that Americans can pick their providers and procedures like an object in a grocery store. Healthcare providers will then be subjected to the free market, where prices change due to supply and demand. The projected downfall of medical debt is still yet to be researched.

The concept of healthcare policies is like a complicated spider web. Americans must research the problem with medical insurance and vote accordingly in the next election.

Contact us for more information on healthcare pricing transparency and cutting American medical debt.

You have probably heard the term “healthcare provider” being used by insurance companies or on television. It is a broad term that may leave you wondering what a healthcare provider is.

Who Is A Healthcare Provider?

A healthcare provider is a professional or a company that provides you with care. Providers are dedicated to making sure patients are healthy. There are different kinds of providers. One of the more common ones you may meet is a primary care physician. Healthcare providers are divided into six groups:

• Doctors are the primary care providers in the medical field. They can be general practitioners that treat the flu and make first-level diagnosis. Many doctors specialize in a specific field, such as a cardiologist or a dentist.
• Nurses are often associated with hospitals, but there can also be registered nurses at a doctor’s office. Nurses constantly work with patients directly and help with their recovery. They pass patient information to the doctor.
• Pharmacists study chemicals and medicines and are aware of their side effects. They provide you with medicine that has been prescribed by your doctor. They also advise about over-the-counter medicine.
• An Administrative staff plays an important part in a doctor’s office or a hospital. They manage appointments, patient information, and insurance information.
• Technicians are the ones who work in labs. They test blood or urine to analyze what is going on in the patient’s body. Some are responsible for taking x-rays.
• Therapists work on helping patients recover from an injury or illness. They may work on physical areas such as walking or coordination. Three main types of therapists are physical therapists, occupational therapists, and speech therapists.

Provider Networks

Healthcare providers are a part of a provider network. This means that they offer services that are partially or completely covered by your healthcare plan. Not every provider will accept certain insurance companies. It is important to find an in-network provider if possible.

The Houston Healthcare Initiative provides information and tools regarding physical and mental health. To learn more, visit our site and contact us today.

Dark Daily, a newsletter serving clinical labs and pathology groups, recently reported that a Walmart in Calhoun, Georgia has opened the second of the retail giant’s Health Centers. The Health Center offers low-cost doctor visits along with a number of other healthcare services such as lab work and x-rays. The prices for each service are listed at the entrance to the facility. The Walmart Health Centers are providing competition to traditional healthcare providers that they might find difficult to meet, at least for patients who lack health insurance.

For example, the cost of a typical doctor visit is about $106, though for people with insurance that is covered except for about a $25 copay. A Walmart Health Center doctor visit costs $40. The costs of other services are comparably cheaper than their traditional competitors.

Many proposed solutions to expanding access to healthcare for people who are uninsured involve variations of “Medicare for All,” a government-funded and -operated health insurance scheme that would either supplement or replace private insurance depending on which politician proposes it. The Walmart experiment suggests a free-market approach to providing healthcare, using price competition to lower the cost of certain services so that even the uninsured can readily afford them.

A recent article in Reason Magazine suggests that big retail-based healthcare services could provide a new model for private insurance. Instead of carrying insurance that would cover standard healthcare services such as doctor visits, a person might pay for those services out of pocket and carry insurance only for “catastrophic” healthcare services such as surgical procedures and cancer treatments.

Of course, a couple of questions must be asked about such an approach.

First, can traditional healthcare services learn to compete with the Walmart approach? The answer may depend on changes in government regulation that would make that easier.

Finally, how would people paying out-of-pocket for doctor visits be encouraged to go to the doctor for regular checkups? Standard health insurance provides such incentives. People paying out of pocket, even at a reduced price, may decide to forgo such a service if they feel healthy. This might mean that conditions whose symptoms are not immediately apparent would not be discovered until they are more advanced and thus harder to treat.

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