The Problems Facing/Caused By Providers

So there are many opinions being tossed around regarding what is the problem with health care, and how one of the biggest problems is the ballooning cost of such.  Many people looking at the rising bills being faced by patients as being unreasonable, and rail against hospitals and physicians for requiring such huge charges.  However, I have heard absolutely no one state any kind of thought as to why patients are facing such charges.

As I said in my "Preface to the Rants", health care is a business.  In fact, everything is a business to a degree.  Men or women of the cloth must satisfy the spiritual needs of his or her congregation (customers) in order for that congregation to choose to attend and offer one's monetary contributions to his or her church (shop his or her business).  If that preacher fails to satisfy the needs of her or his customers, then the church will falter, the congregation will choose to worship elsewhere, and eventually the church will have to shut its doors.

This may be disgusting for you all to consider, but is it not the reality of the world?  Nobody can exist without an income of some kind, be it from the charitable contributions of a church congregation or from the payments of a patient who found healing in the hands of a skilled cardiothoracic surgeon.  A skilled surgeon must spend years upon years within the medical school system, internships, residencies, and fellowships before being able to competently ply her or his craft, racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.  Somehow that surgeon needs to be reimbursed, else there will never be any individuals willing to take on the profession.

Physicians deserve to earn the compensation each receives.  If it were cheaper/easier to become a doctor or too difficult to recover after having gone through it, we would have a spectacular shortage of medical providers until those factors evened out the situation (similar to the way in which supply, demand, and cost all sort itself out within an economic model).