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Healthcare
We have a severe problem with health care delivery.  Although there has been an enormous struggle to discover a solution, answers have not been found, largely because people have been looking in the wrong places.  

If we reexamined the antiquated educational requirements currently needed to practice medicine, we could have a plentiful supply of creative, compassionate, and reasonably priced physicians.  PPO's, socialized medicine, rationing treatment, or legalistic approaches have not worked because they have not addressed the fundamental obstacle.  We have gone in circles with these kinds of proposals and made virtually no progress.

Once the root cause of the current medical system's ineffectiveness is thoroughly examined, the outlook for the future becomes extremely favorable.  The real issue is not money, but rather our mindset.  Since our society appears to be stymied, it follows that some fundamental assumptions about the way our systems are organized must be questioned.  We tend to hold to certain beliefs very rigidly, and dismiss new ideas that contradict them impulsively. 

Most pre-medical education is irrelevant.  The M.D. degree requires twelve years of higher education, most of which has little value to the future practicing physician.  In many schools, the educational pattern is memorize, pass the test, and forget. The pressures encountered by medical students are mentally damaging, and waste many valuable years.  By the time the doctor graduates, he has forgotten most of what he has learned. 
 
Traditional institutional education is rigid and non-creative, directed toward learning information that is mostly irrelevant and of little practical value.  Replacing the current structure with a system that focuses on live patients and allows ample time for the student to devise creative solutions via internet information resources, technical support, and a worldwide communication network would greatly improve the quality of healthcare.

Patient Centered Learning
The solution is to permit alternatives to rigid institutions, utilize free internet programs, and have medical students assist practicing physicians by assisting practicing physicians in taking patient histories. These students would offer valuable, free services to doctors.  At the same time, they would have a vivid learning experience by spending several hours each day interacting with actual patients.  Today, in order to become a doctor, one has to go to a medical school, which is a four-year program costing hundreds of thousands of dollars.

According to one survey, for every dollar that the medical student pays, there are four dollars that come from other sources of funding. Most people don't realize that 90% or more of the M.D. faculty members are volunteers.  They aren't paid.  This is incredible to contemplate.  The real heart, the essence, of medical school is provided free of charge.  It is the institution itself - the rigidity - that is so expensive.