14. The 2025 United States Health Care Contract ꟷ An Implicit Understanding
- T Michael White MD FACP
- Oct 26
- 4 min read
ABC-STEEEP
Affordable Basic Compassionate
Safe Timely Efficient Effective Equitable
Patient-Centered Care
Letters to the File
T Michael White MD FACP
******
14. The 2025 United States Health Care Contract ꟷ An Implicit Understanding
“Implicit: implied or understood though not directly expressed.”
American Heritage Dictionary
The WhiteHouse on the Belleair Bluff
Monday, October 27, 2025
Dr. Mike,
A letter to the file…
Dr. Mike, the above contract (12. The 2025 United States Health Care Contract) is sobering. On its own, it covers most bases. That said, for additional clarification, please flesh out some not entirely obvious, implicit messages for all to see:
Living in this wonderful land of ours, we are each free to pursue happiness as we each choose to define it. Go forth and prosper.
Health care is on the list of potential happiness considerations. Other considerations populate the list: career, education, excitement, food, housing, peace, relationships, wealth, etc. To each his own.
If/when significant, sophisticated health care is required, it will be expensive. As circumstances allow, the wise may take steps to prepare for such a circumstance:
Recognize your health care is your (and no one else’s) lifetime responsibility.
Maximize your natural health. Actively address diet, exercise, habits, immunizations, cancer prevention, etc.
Procure and maintain health care insurance.
Employer-sponsored health care may prove of great assistance. A caveat ꟷ maintaining employer-sponsored health care may significantly influence personal life (career, geography, relationships) decision making.
Be involved in your health care. Work at it. Make it a part-time job.
Become an educated health care consumer. Know as much about purchasing health care as you do about the purchase of a home or automobile.
Save (for a probable inevitable) health care rainy day that will likely require significant expenditure of your personal savings.
Get your very personal health care desires and wishes in order. For example, at the end of life, what will be more important to you ꟷ a few more futile days in ICU or preserving your progeny’s inheritance?
Insist that our government ensures that all charges for service (clinicians, hospitals, pharmacies, etc.) are directed towards care and not towards bureaucracy, profit and/or fraud and abuse.
Insist that charges for services are clear and that all (individuals, insurance companies and Medicare) are charged the same fees.
As a young physician in your own private practice, you perceived that health care was an unalienable right. In flu season, you would stay late and see all comers. Your fees were modest. Most could pay. Some could not. None went to collections. Despite massive educational debt, you comfortably made ends meet.
Today, few physicians own or control their practice. They clinically see patients. Others, steps removed from compassionate care, now make and impose the fiscal rules.
In general, when health care requirements become complex, despite insurance, fiscal rules will have the individual spend down towards insolvency ꟷ the sicker you are, the less you will be insured.
In retrospect Dr. Mike, you have had it all wrong. You perceived our fine United States to be virtuous, kind and decent. You believed our country would strive to ensure no kid would go to bed hungry or suffer through the night with an unaddressed fever and earache. Your beliefs, though admirable, have been in error. While our fine country encourages aspiring to the pursuit of happiness, it makes no guarantees.
Dr. Mike, fore-warned now, you for one, are fore-armed. As you advocate for necessary change ꟷ for ABC-STEEEP ꟷ your explicit understanding of the 2025 United States Health Care Contract powerfully enhances your efforts. Your task is clearly twofold: 1) propagate an understanding that the citizens of a fine, decent country have a duty to care for each other; and, 2) advance affordable, basic health care as United States Treasury funded infrastructure that is formulated to enhance and maintain our national economy, security and unity. (590 words)
Respectfully submitted with fondest personal regards,
Dr. Mike
You may leave an anonymous comment without username and email ꟷ please do. Please share your wisdom, insights and perceptions (your reality) about what I have right, wrong and/or omitted. I will be delighted to hear from you as this draft and subsequent chapters will be significantly enhanced.
Dr. Mike
Letters to the File
Introduction to ABC-STEEEP ꟷ Letters to the File
About Dr. Mike
My Perfect Health Care ꟷ An Uncomfortable Paradox
From the Watershed into Universal Access to ABCSTEEEP
Privilege = Responsibility ꟷ Sounding Our National Health Care Alarm
Quality United States Health Care Defined ꟷ ABCSTEEEP
United States Health Care ꟷ Sounding a Three-Alarm Fire
Health Care ꟷ Recruiting Devine Intervention
Health Care as a Right ꟷ The Fundamental American Misperception
See, Say and Do Something: The Doctor Is In ꟷ $0.00
Health Care ꟷ The Wolf Is (and Has Been) at Our Door
The 2025 United States Health Care Contract
Triskaidekaphobia
14. The 2025 United States Health Care Contract ꟷ An Implicit Understanding
(more to follow)
As always very insightful, impartial, and thought-provoking. Keep up the fire to overcome the state of apathy we are in. Inaction is an action that enables misguided, dis-informed and ill-intended leaders.