Everybody is talking about reforming medical care system in the US. So, I'll put in my two pence.
Why are we having such a problem in the first place?
* The primary desire of many patients is getting as much as possible for as little as possible, most of the time without having clear idea of what they need and why.
As to the healthcare plan carriers, I'm afraid I must claim insufficient understanding of what the possible options to change the situation are, but I have a feeling it includes some form of public coverage, not because it will be a great quality coverage, but because its executives will presumably be less preoccupied with making profit, which may reduce costs and increase competition. Maybe I am just naïve.
Inexpensive alternatives are always suppressed and expensive ones are touted. For example, most of drug medicine can be done with drugs available from Walmart for $4 a month. Yet, we are encouraged to prescribe alternatives costing $100 a month. Herbal, nutritional and homeopathic alternatives are publicly laughed at, though in many cases they would be much cheaper and more efficacious. Life style modifications are always mentioned to maintain political correctness, but not supported, so they almost never work. The most promoted treatment modalities are always those that will net the pharmaceutical industry the most profit.
Now to doctors. Many (not all) always want to do whatever brings them most money. Expensive high-tech procedures are preferred, even when better and cheaper alternatives are available. Of course, some procedures and tests are necessary, but probably less than half of what is being done. For example, many orthopedic surgeries are done at great expense, though their results are not as good as some innovative forms of physical therapy and chiropractic costing an order of magnitude less. Expensive unnecessary tests are carried out all the time: MRIs, EMGs, CTs, etc. Many of them don't change management of the patient, so why do them? Somebody is making a buck… Of course, if the doctors in the trenches, especially the primary care ones, did not have some ways of making money in addition to just seeing patients, most of them would not be able to survive. There is just not that much money in seeing patients, especially on welfare plans or Medicare. So we improvise… unfortunately not always in an entirely ethical manner. One of my colleagues once told me: "You want to do what? Ethical medicine?! Forget it, it no longer exists!" Sad!!!
And the patients!.. Unfortunately, most of them are a bunch of people knowing only enough to be dangerous. They hear something somewhere (like some deceptive advertising), and they think they need it. The truth is they don't have a clear understanding what that thing will really do for them. Of course, you can't blame them… Much better educated people are working on manipulating their thinking day in and day out. You can't expect everybody to just start researching everything for themselves and distrusting everything they hear. But this is exactly what needs to happen. You can't trust anybody! Read all above and you'll understand why!