Professor: Kyusuk Chung
HSCI 314
April 26, 2013 Cost Conundrum & Escape Fire Our Healthcare system is clearly business based according to the article “Cost Conundrum” and on the movie “Escape Fire”. In the movie it had an impacting story of an older lady who had heart problems where she went to a doctor and they were going to charge her thousands of dollars were later she went to a different doctor and they charged her a couple hundred dollars for t he same procedure. I couldn’t believe that in a different office she would get the same procedure done for a lot cheaper than in the other doctor’s office. Also, it surprised me how the medical staff are giving all these medications to our soldiers were they are clearly abusing the medication and taking much more than they should. I was really happy to see that later the soldier who was overdosing on medications decided to stop and later tried a different form of medication of acupuncture. Although overdosing on medication is a problem in our country it is not the biggest one in our healthcare. Our healthcare system is the one that is collapsing. Our healthcare system is not like it was many years ago, our healthcare system is market based and doctors don’t focus on quality care on their patients and rather view them as dollar signs. In the article “Cost Conundrum” it states that McAllen is one of the most expensive healthcare markets in the country, many are unsure why it spends more per capita but it states that because the people there are obese and have cardiovascular diseases and fall under the poverty line. In the article it states “the way to practice medicine has changed completely before it was about how to do a good job, now it’s about how much will you benefit”. I clearly agree to this statement because I have gone through this experience with my father. He was diagnosed with diabetes at a late stage in which it caused a retina detachment on his left eye. When he was diagnosed I would