Your assessment of the state of the healthcare industry is accurate! Insurance premiums are outrageous and doctors reimbursements are continually declining.
I think too often doctors prescribe a medication when the natural body can fight off the infection. The bacteria and viruses seem to only be getting stronger and more resistant to the antibiotics/antiviral medications.
There have been a few new technologies that have come out recently that a simple blood test can say which medications work best with your body. That way the physician can prescribe the most effective medication for your illness while not having to try a different one to see if it will work.
I hope you get better soon!
Thank you! Yeah, I've been worried about the "super bug" issue with the decreasing effectiveness of antibiotics. I was encouraged when the blood test showed bacteria it was and the doctor picked one specific antibiotic over another based on it's effectiveness in my area for that bacteria. Unfortunately, I'm still coughing here and there, so we'll see how effective it ultimately ends up being. If it wasn't the right thing to knock it out, and it spreads from me to someone else, will they get a muted, antibiotic immune version? Or maybe that's what I got to begin with? These are interesting questions and I feel like we're mostly still stumbling around in the dark when it comes to medical knowledge, but we're way further along than we once were. I get excited listening to people like Ray Kurzweil talk about nano-technology and medicine. That could get really interesting.