In several articles, I highlighted personal experiences that left me with the understanding that our medical system is not to be trusted. Even now, we are having to put my Father-in-law through a prolonged, painful rehabilitation and wound care to help heal wounds that occurred while in the care of a rehab facility.
The other day, I was listening to a YouTube video from Dr. Dhand - https://www.youtube.com/@drsuneeldhand in which he explained that the USA has great emergency treatment technology available, but once a person requires more routine and long-term treatment, there is a great decrease in quality of care. He was trained in the UK and operates in the USA as an internal medicine doctor. His medical course recently convinced him that the medical system is primarily set up more on a monetary basis than a medical needs basis.
From our own experience, we found out that the system is based on what is called "case management" which means that there is someone in an office that is distributing the funds that pay for the treatments. They have a set of criteria they use to determine what they think the need is and then authorize payment accordingly. They are not at the bedside and do not have a clear view of what needs to be done. If the course of treatment does not perform within the time limits they set, then the funding is pulled.
At the same time, similar office decision-makers determine how many staff are required to adequately perform the prescribed treatment schedule. It does not matter whether there are enough staff to provide basic care that may not even be part of the prescribed treatment schedule. In our case, all that was needed to prevent the severe wounds that occurred was to be turned every 2 hours. Since there was not enough staff to make this happen, the wounds began and deepened until we finally took him home.
So, why am I relating this experience to you? I believe that we can either begin to educate ourselves on how we can address our own medical needs and become masters of our health, or we can turn our care over to this system and become slaves of the system. As a nurse, I cannot tell you how many times a patient would tell me to just give them a shot or a pill and make the pain go away. They were not interested in engaging in their care and learning how to prevent their problem in the first place.
The last 3 years should have shown us that we cannot trust the medical system. This includes the FDA, which is supposed to provide rigorous oversite to determine the safety of drugs that are coming to the market. The CDC is supposed to be the safe guide to determine the best approach to infectious disease control. Our hospital systems and doctors are supposed to counsel each patient to determine the best medical approach for each person based on their current health demands and available treatments and medications. Our government is supposed to uphold the Constitution and the laws of this land to ensure civil rights and freedom of choice for each individual.
All of these trusted institutions failed at so many levels. Basic human rights were not protected. Mandatory policies were put in place with no consideration of individual rights to choose how they wanted to address their medical challenges.