Have you ever gone online trying to assess health insurance products? There is no universal template that all insurers are required to complete to allow head-to-head product comparison. As such, it takes days to make partial comparisons and you are frequently asked a significant number of personal questions. The whole process is very invasive, challenging and inexpedient. Moreover, you are also obliged to independently determine the veracity and reliability of the claims about services provided by the insurer, a monumental task. However, if you are finally able to get insured, its now time to see a physician.

Health care service delivery by very large regional medical groups and service provider panels developed by insurance companies often results in significant losses of medical practice autonomy by individual clinicians. Primary care physicians are those most significantly affected. Practice content, style, setting and numerous other elements are increasingly so impaired that there is an escalating shortage of physicians in many areas of the country. Physician assistants and nurse practitioners are frequently substituted in these understaffed regions because the cost per provider to the systems and insurers is lower and such fits organizational budgets.

Head to head, when all of these practitioners were undergraduates, you can bet that the women and men now functioning as physicians academically outperformed their nursing and physician assistant peers. However, some of our governments, insurers and medical groups pursuing cost-containment will foist upon us the suggestion that there is comparable quality of knowledge, experience and care to be received via all of these clinicians. Moreover, they will use phrases like “as good as” or “delivered with increased sensitivity” while maintaining or increasing premiums and costs of ongoing services. If you do not demand the products and services for which you pay, don’t be surprised if in the future a “health care assistant” reading a computer algorithm supported by an insurance adjuster’s treatment guideline becomes your medical provider.

Additionally, new pharmacists are graduating from schools around the nation. Depending upon their degrees, Masters or Doctorate in Pharmacy, the students have just completed six to eight years of rigorous scientific training in combined undergraduate and graduate studies. A successful pharmacist needs to be knowledgeable in pharmaceutical biochemistry, physiology, computer science, small business management, and the multiple elements of insurance and health delivery systems. However, as health care delivery system models change and local drug stores become satellites of large chains, a greater number of lesser trained pharmacy technicians are being networked with a single regional pharmacist to lower the cost of product delivery.

So, now that you have fought through the maze of health insurance acquisition, I hope that it pays for a physician and pharmacist. Maybe you need to hire an agent.

Wake up Average Joe, support healthcare reform or it will be just one more thing that the “haves” have and the “have nots” don’t.

If you are attentive to contemporary media you will see and hear very little anger from the public regarding the bailout of Wall Street, the bailout of major banks, the bailout of the mortgage industry, the bailout of the automobile industry, the thousands of Fortune 500 company jobs exported abroad along with jobs cut in the U.S., our leaky U.S. borders, or the ever increasing and massive expenditures on military operations and international disasters.

We are losing jobs and homes daily, our primary school systems are failing, college education is becoming increasingly unaffordable, retirement accounts have been ravaged by unscrupulous and unaccountable investment firms, and over 50 million true citizens cannot afford medical insurance while the medical insurance systems are always profitable. Moreover, the highly ranked personnel in the above listed organizations are doing very well financially.

So, how do media organizations portray you, average Joe? They pretend that you’re more interested in local crime, major sporting events, the moral transgressions of the rich and famous, and new reality series. Additionally, the extreme radical right, supported by the insurance industry, dominates the air time and images as though they represent the majority of Main Street America.

Wake up Average Joe, support healthcare reform or it will be just one more thing that the “haves” have and the “have nots” don’t. Refer back to the introduction above to reconsider where you should actually direct your political and social protest and assertiveness.

Lastly, write to, call and visit your political leaders, but don’t assault them.