The Cost of Health Care

               

                So, recently we watched the Michael Moore documentary Sicko. This was an enlightening documentary. I have never quite understood the American health care system. Not so much the fact that we pay our doctors or the amount checkup costs.  The things I have never understood was how much medicine cost, the cost for simple procedures such as X-rays and blood draws, and the fact that some people were denied proper treatment because they didn’t have insurance or their insurance simply denied them the care they needed. I find it wrong that we charge high prices for medications. We even charge people for penicillin a drug so easily produced that it was accidentally discovered on bread. That fact that last year my parents paid over $100 dollars for a blood draw and lab work. A blood draw is simple a nurse draws blood, they send it to the lab, a lab tech looks at a sample of the blood under a microscope and tries to determine if there are any identifiable diseases or conditions in the blood. None of this procedure is hard or should cost more than maybe $20. I find it very disturbing that health insurance companies hire doctors to evaluate cases in order to turn people down for the care they need just so the company doesn’t have to pay. Doctors take a Hippocratic Oath part of this oath is that they will not intentionally harm someone and that they will always provide care to people. By purposefully turning down people who need care just so insurance companies don’t have to pay aren’t these doctors breaking their oaths. Shouldn’t these people be punished or even imprisoned. We live in a system of fear. We need to break free.