Saturday, August 15, 2009

Single payer? How about Massively multipayer online health care?

People here in 'Merica are upset because it is being proposed that their tax dollars be used to pay for all of our health care instead of our tax dollars being used to pay for Medicare (for the old) and Medicaid (for the poor.) The government would pay the bills if you chose the government option and that's called 'single-payer' as I understand it. I'm all for it, but there are other options not being considered.
My proposal is MMORHC...like World of Warcraft, only with +15 fun. All doctors' offices would have a webcam in them. The patient would come into the small examination room and briefly explain their health concern, like the interviews they do of people before they go on one of those court TV shows like Judge Judy. The doctor would come in, consult with the patient and list some options for care from the basic to the extremely invasive and nearly absurd. The viewing audience would vote WITH THEIR MONEY on which option the patient receives! It's brilliant! No matter which option the audience chooses, the care would be doctor-approved and already paid for. Paypal was invented for this, I tell you. This would usher in the entertain-o-surgical era, doctors would have to take acting lessons (or actors would have to take doctoring lessons...I'm not sure which would be more prevalent,) and nurses would have to put a little pep in their step to boost ratings.
There are a few problems with the idea. Privacy would be extremely curtailed and as soon as the words "300 pound tumor" were uttered by any doctor anywhere, all online voting participants would flock to that site instantly leaving less sensational patients with no audience...good luck to you if you've got the swine flu. The good news is that, with everyone in the world participating, the idea of health insurance would be obsolete, not just in the USA, but everywhere! All procedures would be paid for and people could vote more than once for some crazy, almost unnecessary procedure which would ultimately cost the patient nothing.