AETNA & American Healthways publically admit: "Medical care in US sucks..

(an amazing report...should be read by anyone who might ever end up needing healthcare in America....which is EVERYONE)...


http://dc.indymedia.org/newswire/display_any/119356

AETNA and American Healthways publically admit: "Medical care in US sucks bigtime!"
by Mario L. Klein
13 Mar 2005


HARD NEWS - Two of the US's largest insurers, dis-serving over 47 million patient-customers, are openly discussing the extremely dysfunctional state of medical care in the US.


WASHINGTON DC - On March 11, 2005 at a public news conference, American Healthways Inc's Robert Stone described medical care in the US as: "A growing, ever-changing labyrinth where best-science, standards and best intentions are trapped or lost; where endpoints receive mixed or dissipated signals, and the end-user experience is compromised to the extent of being nearly ineffectual."
Sponsoring these remarks, the Alliance to Improve Medicare (AIM) is a coalition of 30 major industry groups spanning medicine, insurance, and business, including: Blue Cross, Mayo Foundation, NFIB, USCC, PhRMA, and the Federation of American Hospitals. Further, Robert Stone, a co-founder and Senior VP of American Healthways, explained that in the US medical system:
"data gets trapped or delayed"
"best practices get lost"
"population approach gets muddled"
"fragmentation occurs"
"individualized attention is impractical"
"results are compromised"
"frustration mounts"
"costs rise"
"costs become the prime focus"
"differentiation becomes blurred"
"everyone comes to expect the worst"

As a result, the US healthcare system kills 98,000 people every year via documented medical errors. These untimely deaths are only one symptom of a systemic US healthcare crisis, inflicting avoidable suffering upon millions of Americans. In these United States, the Hippocratic Oath has been breached.

AETNA's Russ Krakhauer MD added that the number of "avoidable catastrophic situations are amazing, and the barriers are legion" in the US healthcare system. US doctors and pharmacists are driven to spend the absolute minimum time on each patient, and don't cooperate nor communicate with each other. Take for example the impact of poly-pharmacy conditions, which occur when undetected drug interactions cause serious damage, such as coma, aneurism, blindness, or death.



AETNA's Russ Krakhauer MD



American Healthways Inc's Robert Stone




Galen Institute's Greg Scandlen

I have nothing to say about that appalling statistic except:

1. This is an industry figure, so even if you approach it skeptically, it's still a very high number; and

2. The guy for the Galen Institute looks like the star of that Fox show "House."

"documented" medical error level.....