6. It has somewhat specific demands. Patricia Salber, contributor to the blog Care and Cost, asks the most popular question of all: how does Occupy Wall Street relate to healthcare? “Well, right now, it doesn’t,” she argued. “But it should. Healthcare, in the U.S.,  at least, seems to serve everyone but the people who need it. For profit segments of the industry are by and large doing just about fine. Insurers are raking in record profits – in part because utilization is down, many think, because of the recession. Doctors, primary care excepted, are probably mostly in the 1 percent or, if not, in the 5 percent.  Device companies, drug companies, and other healthcare services companies are making oodles of money. But patients – the 99 percent – well, they are paying more, getting less, and waiting longer.  Why the heck aren’t they mad as hell?” She outlines four points that need to change within the industry: 

• We need universal coverage – get everyone in the insurance pool so we eliminate cost-shifting related to the un- or underinsured.
• We need to get serious about waste.  It is not OK to have our collective dollars spent on care with limited benefits (e.g., hip replacements in people with advanced Alzheimers disease or liver transplants for an alcoholic who is still drinking).
• We need to lean our delivery systems to make them more efficient and more affordable.
• We need to much more rapidly incorporate the new technologies into everyday medical practices – why do we still have to make an appointment, drive, park, and wait for a 15-minute office visit? Technology is available now to transform many physical office visits into low cost, convenient virtual ones.

Finally, in this short video, Carmen Gonzalez, a clinical trial patient recruitment strategist affiliated with OccupyHealthcare.net, discusses the disparities in our current healthcare system.

Follow Michelle McNickle on Twitter @Michelle_writes.