"Allowing retailers to make money off of sick people is wrong."
Last week I got my annual influenza vaccine, as I have done for years. This year was different, though, in one significant way: the process was painless.
In past years, consistent with American medical orthodoxy, I made an appointment with my physician’s office (usually for around 3:45 AM), showed up ten minutes early, filled out some paperwork, waited at least thirty minutes past my appointment time, then was summoned into a room by the intern of the nurse’s assistant’s secretary, where I waited some more and was eventually administered the injection (or, in one year, the mist, because the Medical Community decided to ration the injection for old people, and ended up destroying thousands of unused doses). My insurance usually didn’t cover shots, so I then paid my $70 and left. The whole process usually took about two hours or so, taken out of the life of a highly productive member of society.
This year, however, I learned that my neighborhood Safeway was offering flu shots at the pharmacy on a walk-in basis on certain days and times throughout the flu season. After work I stopped by Safeway at around 8:30 PM, walked back to the pharmacy counter, asked for the flu shot, presented my $30, waited approximately two minutes, was given the shot, and left. Total time saved: one hour, fifty minutes. Total money saved: $40. Never setting foot in the godforsaken doctor’s office: priceless.
I’ve recently read that WalMart is trying to extend this awesome model to in-store limited-care clinics providing basic healthcare for the 80% cases, leaving the remaining 20% (cancer, Black Plague, etc) to The Physicians. CVS is getting in on the act too, and in Boston at least, is meeting some resistance from the perpetually-outraged mayor, Thomas Menino. Menino doesn’t write for The Onion, but as you will see, he should:
Limited service medical clinics run by merchants in for-profit corporations will seriously compromise quality of care and hygiene. Allowing retailers to make money off of sick people is wrong.
Try replacing ‘limited service medical clinics’ and ‘retailers’ with the word ‘hospitals’, which reflects the current status quo, and see if the absurdity of that statement becomes clear. There are plenty of private hospitals in Massachusetts, many in Boston, and yet Menino doesn’t seem the slightest bit concerned that these captors of the means of healthcare production are making money off of sick people. So what’s the difference? My guess is medical orthodoxy and a hefty financial stake in Old Economy healthcare.
Sadly, Menino isn’t alone in his distaste for capitalist solutions to healthcare problems. Much like environmentalists who are convinced that increased carbon emissions will destroy life as we know it and yet insist that nuclear power is not an acceptable solution, the medical establishment is very threatened by the potential availability of basic healthcare on a walk-in basis with–gasp–little or no supervision by our last remaining priestly class, The Medical Doctors. It appears the battle lines are being drawn:
It looks like full-scale war is on the way. Arguing that they could endanger patients, particularly children, some attendees at the AMA’s annual conference are demanding the group ask for a ban on retail clinics. Unless the AMA intervenes, “in five years, the chairs [at the AMA] meeting will be filled with representatives from Walgreens, Wal-Mart” and other retailers, one physician told the assembly. At minimum, speakers told the AMA assembly, the group should demand states and the federal government push for retail clinic regulations. If this talk is any indication, the AMA may soon be throwing its tremendous lobbying muscle behind retail clinic-related regulation. The thing is, when it comes to retail clinics the AMA isn’t the only one with clout. (I don’t think Wal-Mart, which plans to add 2,000 retail clinics to its stores in coming years, is going to take AMA opposition lying down.) On the other hand, physicians’ concerns–both competitive and clinical–aren’t going to go away, either. It will be interesting to see which side gives up ground first.
There you have it. The organization that represents The Medical Doctors is worried that this latest bit of capitalist foolishness will endanger patients, especially children. You care about children, don’t you? We need to ban these clinics, or at least regulate them so they suck as much as doctor’s offices. Otherwise, God and The Medical Doctors only know what will become of our precious children.
In all honesty, I don’t blame Big Medicine for being spooked. They have a pretty sweet deal, and this democratization of healthcare is the first real threat they’ve faced in my lifetime. After my experience at Safeway, I will do everything I can to get what little medical care I need from a walk-in clinic at CVS or WalMart. I don’t get sick enough to warrant medical attention very often, but even for me that decision represents a loss of at least a few hundred dollars of revenue for my doctor’s office. Multiply that out by a few million, then add in the much higher profit margins for parents of sick kids and the chronically ill, and you can see what all the fuss is about. What, you thought your friendly neighborhood medical practice was taking money from sick people for the good of mankind?
What’s shameful here is the extent to which Big Medicine is willing to go to preserve their monopoly. They go on and on about skyrocketing healthcare costs (btw, remind me again what determines how much you pay for healthcare? It can’t all be the evil drug companies’ fault…), lack of health insurance, and the suffering of the poor and the young, insisting the only solution is government-run (or at least government-funded) healthcare and its associated rationing and mediocrity, then turn around and do all they can to vilify the first real private-sector solution to rising healthcare costs to ever come to market. Not content with abusing their bizarrely religious hold over the American psyche, Big Med invokes the tired “for the children” rhetoric to undermine a capitalist effort to make it easier for children and their parents to get basic medical care cheaply and without taking a ton of time off of work. For shame.
For now, at least, the good news is you can decide for yourself. There are doctor’s offices aplenty, emergency rooms, the occasional free clinic, and walk-in clinics at WalMarts and CVSs around the country. Maybe your runny nose really is different. Maybe it’s serious enough that only A Doctor can tell you to go home and drink lots of fluids. Maybe the attention of your physician really is better spent swabbing your mouth for a strep. culture rather than caring for a patient with a truly serious medical condition. I’m pretty sure nothing I have is that serious, and God willing I’ll never need the unique talents of a Medical Doctor. Until I do, I’m sure as hell not going to hang around in a disease-incubating waiting room and fork over hundreds of dollars when I can walk in and out of CVS for a third of the price.
Tags: healthcare, Migrated from Drupal, politics