While the Obama administration has been busy trying to take over the nation’s healthcare system through ObamaCare — sparking soaring insurance premiums, exploding federal deficits, serious economic pain, and more problems to come — a leading medical professional has a better idea. In an exclusive video interview, Dr. Alieta Eck, cofounder of the Zarephath Health Center and and former president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, offers her prescription for real solutions to the nation’s healthcare crisis.
According to Dr. Eck, the mandates and the meddling of the federal government on the physician-patient relationship will be a disaster. “Doctors are not going to be able to use their clinical judgment, they’re going to be asked to follow algorithms and structures set up by bureaucrats. Doctors won’t be able to have choices as to what they do for patients, and patients won’t have choices about what doctors they can see.”
Many politicians across the country at all levels, and even some well-meaning citizens, believe that expanding Medicaid and government health-insurance schemes is the way to provide medical care for the poor who cannot afford it on their own. According to Dr. Eck, however, that idea is misguided for more than a few reasons. “The Medicaid system is extremely broken,” she explained. “It is frustrating for both patients and physicians. Patients can’t find doctors who take it, and doctors won’t take it because the regulations and the paperwork are just overwhelming. The Medicaid system seems to be a huge misuse of taxpayer dollars.”
Dr. Eck and others like her — doctors on the front lines treating patients — believe that there is a better way to deal with the problem. The solution, she said, is expanding the number of free clinics set up and run by volunteers, not the government, all across the state, and eventually, the nation. Churches, civic groups, and others could all help to make that vision a reality. “ObamaCare is not the solution, and expanding Medicaid is not the solution. We need common-sense solutions. Our government is already spending way more than it takes in; and this cannot continue, so we believe that the free-clinic approach will be a much better idea.”
Dr. Eck’s solution would be a far less expensive proposition for the states who are being forced to participate in a losing Medicaid expansion.
