Here is an analysis of our medical insurance by Dr. Angelov from Boston, USA (a doctor and a member of Bnei Baruch):

About the modern medical insurance: 35% of the stimulus package intended to jumpstart the US economy is going to the medical industry. That’s because when the crisis began, the insurance rates rose and people began to save money on visits to doctors and medication. As for the unemployed, they have lost health insurance completely. The government is trying to rescue the situation using the same principles that caused the medical industry to go into crisis in the first place: allocating funds to exalt the ego, which is the only cause of the crisis.

What do I mean? The motivation to make more money has become more important than the right relationship between the patient and the doctor. Modern medicine is founded on the profit principle. It’s not about how effective it is, but about how much profit it brings. Therefore, there’s no trust between the doctor and the patient. The patient suspects that the doctor wants to make money off of him rather than cure him, and the doctor is afraid of being sued for malpractice because the patient wants to profit from the doctor’s mistake. Therefore, the very principle of modern medical insurance is based on profit rather than care for the patient. It’s all arranged so people will pay for the insurance, but never actually use it.

And here’s how health insurance used to work in ancient times: About 4000 years ago in China, a healer would make his rounds around the village every morning. A vase was mounted by the entrance to every house. He would reach his hand into the vase and take out a coin. If the coin was there, this meant that everyone in the house was healthy. If there was no coin in the vase, it meant that someone there was sick. So the healer would come inside and treat the sick person to the best of his ability. In this case, the herbs, needles and other medical supplies were paid for by the coin that was not put in the vase.

In his free time, the healer would go into people’s houses to make sure that their diets and lifestyles were healthy. Whoever wouldn’t comply with the rules of the insurance (such as being too lazy to exercise every morning, for example) would be excluded from the healer’s daily rounds.

So, the principle of health insurance was opposite then to what it is today. People paid money to help keep others healthy, and the person who was ill did not have to pay.

My Comment: It’s clear that we have to do everything possible to stop medicine from being a business. Doctors’ first and foremost concern should be for their patients to become healthy, rather than for the patients to remain sick for as long as possible!

In ancient times, people’s egoism was very small, and therefore the health insurance practiced in ancient China was possible in a small village. However, now we are dealing with a global problem and people have an enormous egoism. The only way to create a correct medical system under these circumstances is by correcting people’s egoism, so everyone will want everyone else to be healthy, just like in one family.

The crisis will show us how interdependent we all are. Then we will set up health insurance that will actually benefit humanity.

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