Sicko? The Truth About the US Healthcare System
Cynthia Kline knew exactly what was happening to her when she suffered a heart attack at her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She took the time to call an ambulance, popped some nitroglycerin tablets she had been prescribed in anticipation of just such an emergency, and waited for help to arrive.
On paper, everything should have gone fine. Unlike tens of millions of Americans, she had health insurance coverage. The ambulance team arrived promptly. The hospital where she had been receiving treatment for her cardiac problems, a private teaching facility affiliated with the Harvard Medical School, was just a few minutes away.
The problem was, the casualty department at the hospital, Mount Auburn, was full to overflowing. And it turned her away. The ambulance took her to another nearby hospital but the treatment she needed, an emergency catheterization, was not available there. A flurry of phone calls to other medical facilities in the Boston area came up empty. With a few hours, Cynthia Kline was dead.
She died in an American city with one of the highest concentration of top-flight medical specialists in the world. And it happened largely because of America’s broken health care system - one where 50 million people are entirely without insurance coverage and tens of millions more struggle to have the treatment they need approved. As a result, medical problems go unattended until they reach crisis point. Patients then rush to hospital casualty departments, where by law they cannot be turned away, overwhelming the system entirely. Everyone - doctors and patients, politicians on both the left and the right - agrees this is an insane way to run a health system.
When Elizabeth Hilsabeck gave birth to premature twins in Austin, Texas, she encountered another kind of insanity. Again, she was insured — through her husband, who had a good job in banking. But the twins were born when she was barely six months pregnant, and the boy, Parker, developed cerebral palsy. The doctors recommended physical therapy to build up muscle strength and give the boy a fighting chance of learning to walk, but her managed health provider refused to cover it.
The crazy bureaucratic logic was that the policy covered only “rehabilitative” therapy - in other words, teaching a patient a physical skill that has been lost. Since Parker had never walked, the therapy was in essence teaching him a new skill and therefore did not qualify. The Hilsabecks railed, protested, won some small reprieves, but ended up selling their home and moving into a trailer to cover their costs. Elizabeth’s husband, Steven, considered taking a new, better-paying job, but chose not to after making careful inquiries about the health insurance coverage. “When is he getting over the cerebral palsy?” a prospective new insurance company representative breezily asked the Hilsabecks. When Elizabeth explained he would never get over it, she was told she was on her own.
Everyone in America has a health-care horror story or knows someone who does. Mostly they are stories of grinding bureaucratic frustration, of phone calls and officials letters and problems with their credit rating, or of people ignoring a slowly deteriorating medical condition because they are afraid that an expensive battery of tests will lead to a course of treatment that could quickly become unaffordable.
Even when things don’t go horribly wrong, it is a matter of surviving by the skin of one’s teeth.
In Montana, Melissa Anderson can’t find affordable insurance because she is self-employed - an increasingly common affliction. When her son Kasey came down with epilepsy two years ago, she was saved only by a recently introduced child health insurance programme specifically tailored to people who aren’t poor but can’t afford to pay monster medical bills. She herself remains uninsured for anything short of major care needs.
Over the past 15 years, the stories have become less about poor people without the economic means to access the system - although that remains a vast, unsolved problem - and more about the kind of people who have every expectation they will be taken care of. Middle-class people, people with jobs that carry health benefits or - as the problem worsens - people with the sorts of jobs that used to carry robust health benefits which are now more rudimentary and risk their being cut off for a variety of reasons.
This is the morass that Michael Moore has chosen to explore in his latest documentary, Sicko, which goes on release later this month. Moore spends much of the film demonstrating that there is nothing inevitable or necessary about a system that enriches insurance companies and drug manufacturers but shortchanges absolutely everyone else. His searching documentary looks at health care in France, Britain, Canada, and even Cuba - still regarded as a model system for the Third World.
Moore has his share of ghoulishly awful stories. The film kicks off with an uninsured carpenter who has to decide whether to spend $12,000 (£6,000) reattaching his severed ring finger or $60,000 to reattach his severed middle finger. Later on, Moore focuses on a hospital worker whose husband needed a bone marrow transplant to save him from a rare disease. The couple’s insurance company refused to cover the transplant because it regarded the treatment as “experimental”. The husband died.
Many more stories are collected in a newly published book called Sick: The Untold Story of America’s Health Care Crisis, by Jonathan Cohn. A woman in California called Nelene Fox died of breast cancer after she, too, was turned down for a bone marrow transplant by her insurance company. In Georgia, a family whose infant son went into cardiac arrest were forced to take him to a hospital 45 miles away on their insurance carrier’s orders. He survived, but suffered permanent disabilities that more prompt treatment might have averted. In New York, an infant called Bryan Jones - whose case was trumpeted all over the local media at the time - died of a heart defect that went undetected because his insurance company kicked him and his mother out of hospital 24 hours after his birth, too soon to carry out the tests that might have spotted the problem.
America’s health system offers a tremendous paradox. In medical technology and in the scientific understanding of disease, it is second-to-none. Since doctors are better paid than anywhere else in the world, the country attracts the best of the best. And yet many, if not most, Americans are unable to reap the advantages of this. In fact, as The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has argued, the very proliferation of research and high-tech equipment is part of the reason for the imbalance in coverage between the privileged few and the increasingly underserved masses. “[The system] compensates for higher spending on insiders, in party, by consigning more people to outsider status –robbing Peter of basic care in order to pay for Paul’s state-of-the-art treatment,” Krugman wrote recently. “Thus we have the cruel paradox that medical progress is bad for many Americans’ health.”
Having the system run by for-profit insurance companies turns out to be inefficient and expensive as well as dehumanising. America spends more than twice as much per capita on health care as France, and almost two and a half times as much as Britain. And yet it falls down in almost every key indicator of public health, starting, perhaps, most shockingly, with infant mortality, which is 36 per cent higher than in Britain.
A recent survey by the management consulting company McKinsey estimated the excess bureaucratic costs of managing private insurance policies - scouting for business, processing claims, and hiring “denial management specialists” to tell people why their ailment is not covered by their policy - at about $98bn a year. That, on its own, is significantly more than the $77bn McKinsey calculates it would cost to cover every uninsured American. If the government negotiated bulk purchasing rates for drugs, rather than allowing the pharmaceutical companies to set their own extortionate rates, that would save another $66bn.
Astonishingly, there hasn’t been a serious debate about health care in the United States since Bill Clinton, with considerable input from his wife Hillary, tried and failed to overhaul the system in 1994. That, though, may be about to change as the 2008 presidential race heats up. Everyone acknowledges the system is broken. Everyone recognizes that 50 million uninsured - including almost 10 million children - is unacceptable in a civilized society.
Even the old, classically American free-market argument - that “socialized” medicine is somehow the first step on a slippery slope towards godless communism - doesn’t hold water, because in the absence of a functioning private insurance regime the government ends up picking up about 50 per cent of the overall costs for treatment anyway. The indigent rely on a government program called Medicaid. The elderly have a government program called Medicare. And perhaps the most efficient part of the whole system is the Veterans’ Administration, a sort of NHS for former servicemen.
Rather like London and Paris in the 19th century, where the authorities belatedly paid attention to outbreaks of cholera once the disease started affecting the rich and middle classes, so the American health crisis may be coming to a head because of the kinds of people who are suffering from its injustices.
Corporate chief executives, for a start, are gagging under the ever-increasing costs of providing coverage to their employees. Starbucks now spends more on health care than it does on coffee beans. Company health costs, as a whole, are at about the same level as corporate profits. In a globalized world where US businesses are competing with low-wage countries such as India and China, that is rapidly becoming unacceptable.
That explains, perhaps, why the chief executive of Wal-Mart, Lee Scott, has made common cause with America’s leading service sector union - more commonly a bitter critic of Wal-Mart’s labour practices - in calling for a government-run universal health care system by 2012. It’s going to be a tough battle. The insurance and pharmaceutical industries bankroll the campaigns of dozens of congressmen and have so far been brutally efficient in protecting their own interests. The Clintons were defeated in 1994 in part because of the power of the industry lobbies. Doing better this time will take singular political courage.
In the meantime, we will hear ever more crazy stories like the one told by Marijon Binder, a former nun in Chicago who ended up being sued by a Catholic hospital for $11,000 because her two-night stay for a heart scare was not considered a worthy charity case. Binder, who works as a live-in companion to a disabled old woman, wrote on all her admission forms that she had no insurance and, in her telling at least, was reassured the hospital would take care of her anyway.
After a year and a monstrous bureaucratic fight that went nowhere, a civil judge promptly absolved her of responsibility for her bill - a lucky outcome, for sure. Binder said: “The whole experience was very demeaning. It made me feel very guilty; it made me feel like a criminal.” She is, though, alive and solvent. Not everyone in this system catches the same break.
© 2007 Independent News and Media Limited
Next to the Iraqi war and undoing all the civil liberties mischief of the Bush adminstration, this is the single most important issue in the upcoming election.
Why anyone would argue that private business ought to run the health care system after seeing the evidence of what the American system has become is beyond credulity.
Single payer, government run, and indexed to inflation is a good starting point for any health care plan. Massachuttsetts and california who give the health insurance industry a monopoly on administration stinks.
“denial management specialists” WTF? So insurance money is being funneled into a class of individuals trained in telling patients to go to hell, rather than heal them. Must be a high paying job due to the personal sacrifice of the total humanity of the profession.
This article has it dead on — the actual insane logic of the US system leads to escalating costs, at the cost of basic care. While other countries also face their own internal crises, the US model is an absolute disaster.
Unfortunately, you also have self-interested professional bodies vouching for it by supporting its most privileged specialist members, at the detriment of the public.
Insanity all ways around.
Excellent article — a good one to e-mail to friends.
The real punchline is that there are viable alternatives. Every other industrialized nation considers health care a right, not a privilege.
Britain has the most efficient system, genuine socialized medicine, where the doctors are government employees.
But Canada also has a viable system, and one more Americans would accept, namely a single payer system where the doctors and hospitals are private, but the government acts as the single insurer.
I’ve talked with many Canadians, and most really like their system. Most people don’t realize that the US health insurance industry paid a pr firm to smear the Canadian system, finding the few Canadians who didn’t like their system and trumpeting their complaints.
One of the lies about the Canadian system is that you can’t choose your own doctor. The reality is that it’s here in the US that you can’t — unless you’re fabulously wealthy. In Canada, your health care card is good for any doctor and any hospital. Another lie has to do with inordinate waits for procedures. But, as shown above, even insured people may not get life-saving treatment here in the US, something that would never happen in Canada.
I talked with one Canadian whose mother worked for the Canadian government health care office. She said that Americans illegally crossing the border into Canada to get treatment was their number one source of fraud!
Did you know that there are single payer bills both in Congress and in the California senate (I’m not sure about other states)?
The Congresional bill is HR676, authored by John Conyers. See http://www.house.gov/conyers/news_hr676_2.htm.
The California bill is SB840, authored by Sheila Kuehl. See http://www.dist23.casen.govoffice.com/index.asp?Type=B_BASIC&SEC={E8682787-AE26-46B2-8252-E528F9D0145E}
U.S. healthcare is the Chicago Cubs of the world’s healthcare system - all that money and it still can’t buy a winner. (No offense to any Cubs fans reading this.)
I live in Switzerland. I pay about $2000 a year for coverage with a $1500 deductible. The best system is neighbouring France. There is one form that all doctors use. Most are on line. If I use a French doctor I pay cash about $25. If I were French I would pay about 20% of that. The payment of the rest would be in the doctor’s account within days. The same at the pharmacy…same form. Little tags on the boxes of pills are put onto the form for my record. Same payment system.
If there is any problem, is that doctors need to be slightly better paid per person. 20 Euros is nothing.
Waiting??? Maybe 45 minutes in the office. Any emergency…treated quickly.
I priced out what my mother pays for medicine in the States which is abot $600 a month. The same medication bought in France would cost about $125.
Give me the land of the non freedom fries anyday.
Kucinich is the only presidential candidate who has pledged to implement a universal single-payer health plan for Americans. The media is resolutely ignoring him.
Obama and Edwards are each advocating a different form of for-profit mandatory coverage that keeps the insurance corpos happy. They’re getting lots of press for their ’serious’, ‘innovative’ approaches.
The American people, by a large majority, want a single-payer, not-for-profit health program. But the press smears as ‘politically unrealistic’ any candidate (or film maker) who advocates what the people are demanding.
Hope Moore’s movie will do some good for Kucinich, the only candidate who has been plugging for what America needs, both at home and abroad, with confidence, resolute integrity and complete disregard for corporate backwash.
Peach McD in Durham NC
can we say medical industrial complex?! How much did it cost to have a baby 60 years ago? and today?, I don’t even know anymore but lots. Why isn’t mothers milk the best thing for a newborn, and what’s with this circumcision thing(the most commonly performed surgery in the U.S. and a form of institutionalized child molestation at birth) and another thing to pay for that isn’t necessary. The medical establishment in the U.S. is about fear and victimization. The system preys on fears that are unfounded in the healthy, prodding the healthy into spending money on that which they don’t need while victimizing the sick by denying that which is needed, especially when it comes to preventative care. Let’s start by viewing life as something positive, from the beginning. Stop fixing things that don’t need fixing and get on the things that do. This is the problem in a for profit system, healthy people are more profitable to treat, so find something inconsequential to treat that is profitable while ignoring the truly needy. Also don’t expect a presidential candidate to be able to do anything unless the congress is changed too. Until all the lobbyists are out of washington nothing will change.
It’s a kinder gentler fascism. But fascism just the same.
I’m a health care refugee. I moved to Canada from the US, largely because both of us were self-employed, choosing to live simply, getting older, and unable to sink nearly a third of our meager income into health insurance.
The great thing about the Canadian system is not only that it is very affordable — we pay under $100 a month for the two of us — but that the low-income support is independent of assets. This is a subtle, but important distinction: in the US, we got married and Carol lost her VA benefits because I owned a house. In the US, you are expected to sell your house to pay your medical bills!
In Canada, if you become unemployed or otherwise unable to pay even the reasonable insurance cost, qualifying for public assistance only considers your income, not your assets. You won’t get your house taken away if you get cancer.
I’m not one to advocate using public assistance. But in the US, the “safety net” is something with big rocks attached that they put you in before shoving you off the side of the boat.
The majority of M.D.’s support the system because it supports their individual franchise -
the system is designed to foster and attract highly-motivated individuals — and generally, the motivation is money –
under those circumstances, it’s rational that medicine is a monopolistic system based on exclusion —
over time, this underlying attitude is reflected in all types of policy — marijuana, for instance, is excluded as a medicine while much more radical and invasive pharmaceuticals are promoted by physicians –
in essence, fraud is always the subtext –what interest would the medical establishment have in allowing the “cherries” of hi-tech medical procedure go to the general population? –
no….the same as with people who own a baseball team, they get to set the ticket prices and do so based on market conditions — the market keeps a majority of doctors wealthy — the majority of doctors thus feel it would equal surrender to support upsetting the market –
funny, they generally all seem friendly when you meet with them about your toenail fungus
The US health care system is so obviously wrong, appaling, sick and cruel and it creates only profit for a couple of industry sectors (or a few thousand people), while everybody else suffers from it. I really wonder, why there have not been campaigns powerful enough to change it. There should be an outcry from the citizens of the US, but there is none. Everybody but a few seem to be accustomed to it, it’s like learning to live with a disability until you don’t really notice it anymore. US citizen are brainwashed by a corporate ideology.
In addition, people in the US might be too proud to recognize, that in many areas, other countries, especially European ones, have much more advanced and modern social and political systems. There should be a citizen-driven and NGO-supported public information drive to make Americans understand, how they are badly treated, sucked dry and left alone by the private health care industry. Go out to the people and show them how other systems work: Better, cheaper, more efficient and less costly. As long as the broad public believes that a state-run health care system is against progress, against free market and in fact a Communistic approach, nothing much will change.
In a modern society health care is government-run, while most other industry sectors are not. It’s about the kind of mix, not about a radical approach. Radical capitalism is as bad as radical Communism and both have proven to be wrong.
So come up with ideas on how to change the situation and get active on it. You can start educating your family and neighbours, you can ask NGOs to take on the case more strongly, you can highlight health care industry contributions to politicians in a much more targeted manner.
There are so many great communication initiatives that have been created in the US to counter the privately-owned mass media brainwashing. Use them all. It is great to live in a world where health problems are of no financial concern and where you know that whatever you have, the health care system is taking care for it and does not charge more than the regular payments (which are considerably lower than in the US for comparable salaries).
capitalism has proven itself an absolute genius at distributing unnecessary items to the greatest possible number of people, but an absolute idiot at the equitable distribution of necessities such as food, health care, housing and education. some things are simply not fit subjects for commodification.
Wouldn’t moving to a single payer, universal health care system benefit the individual physician? They wouldn’t have to worry about negotiating with every for-profit insurance corporation regarding which procedures are covered.
Universal, not-for-profit health care is the way to go as I subscribe to the principle that health/sick care is a right and not a privilege. I don’t think that the government should run the program, but should be the sole payee.
Does anyone have references for clear models that elaborate on how such a system works? I’d like to do some further reading on this.
In another recent article on Common dreams, it was discussed how Big Pharma are suing Indian manufacturers for various reasons, but mainly to jack the prices of Medidcines manufactured in India and Profit from it as well. Till they get their way, taking a trip to India for Excellent Health Care is still cheaper than paying your bill here.
In some cases after Insurance.
For cases of emergency, of course, it is not possible. And the establishments that provide emergent care are the most weighed down, because nothing else is working.
I have AIDS. I’m on Medicare in the US. I pay $93 for medicare, plus another $69 for the Humana Medicare advantage plan. This is supposed to pay the costs that Medicare doesn’t pay. Madicare only pays 80% of costs. The patient must pay the other 20%, up to an unlimited amount. The advantage plan negotiates payments with providers, but the patient can still end up owing the provider an amount not paid by the advantage plan. The private insurers decide what gets paid for under their advantage plans. Therefore, the government-run Medicare system is being privatized by stealth.
So, I pay almost $2000 ayear in premiums, and still have to pay for hospital stays, excess provider costs and copayments!!! My medications run $35000 a year! Without a federal ADAP plan which covers AIDS drugs, I would not be able to afford them, and would die.
Canada is among the best systems in the world, with amazing coverage for 100% of its citizens. Let’s hope it stays that way, and doesn’t succumb to the right wing political power that wants to eliminate it. The US spits out its senior citizens once they are no longer productive members of society. It sucks their assets dry, and forces them to sell their home to pay medical bills they cannot afford. And they call this the best country in the world in which to live????LOL No way. National health insurance, removed from for-profit control, is the only answer.
The main reasons that the Bush Gang has not budged on the insurance issue are:
1. Insurance companies and Big Pharma have given them big bucks not to.
2. They need to keep folks in fear–and one sure way of doing it is making sure that a big percentage of those folks do not have health insurance.
The health care system is no better than most other American systems - like the electoral system, and the so called departments of Jusice & Defense.
They’re ALL rotten to the core -
They’re all for the benefit of the rich,
NOT the people.
Kucinich is the only honest person running who has a good grasp of the situation. Our hideously corrupt establishment keeps him marginalized because he would turn everything around so that the system actually served
“we the people”.
That’s too radical for our F’d up establishment.
The establishment likes things exactly the way they are now.
They won’t budge, unless we demand it.
===
Cheers to Michael Moore & his co-workers for their great contributions to mankind!
healthcare is obvio a big deal, but it’s a piece of the larger issue of social inequality.
http://www.counterpunch.org/rosenthal05252007.html
oh, and for a really sick joke, check out both the washington post’s and new york times’ reviews of “sicko.” hundreds of thousands of people can die in US healthcare every year, but WaPo and the NYT will stick it to Cuba!
Democratic candidates continue to promulgate the expansion of the current health insurance model as the nation’s solution to excessive costs and inadequate access.
It is disappointing that so many Democratic candidates continue to pander to insurance interests and fail to educate the public. There is no more corrupt or short-sighted proposal conceivable than to address healthcare cost and quality challenges through the failed financial model in place. It will be prohibitively expensive and subject to the same manipulation Americans experience daily when they are in need of healthcare services.
A rational universal healthcare system requires disabling the corruption, fraud, waste, abuse, and inequities inherent in the insurance-based model. Allowing the private, for-profit insurance sector to slash benefits, increase deductibles and copays, and offer what amounts to unaffordable catastrophic insurance plans is ludicrous.
Kerry’s healthcare public policy advisors and/or political consultants clearly failed him in proposing a complex, incremental plan. The 2008 Presidential Democratic candidates, other than Kucinich, are making the same mistake.
If Obama, Biden, or Edwards are to raise their image and talk sense to voters, they must become bolder. Bolder means educating people in the depth and scope of the greed and corruption in the current non-system and proposing a federally-funded single payer universal healthcare alternative. Hillary is already too committed to an insurance-based model, which she embraced after being burned by the industry in 1993-94.
While Mr. Gumbel’s article above makes a compelling argument for a single payer universal healthcare system, the politics of structuring it in the United States are far more complex and outrageous than he knows. It is doubtful that we will have a single payer universal healthcare system until we have publicly-financed elections.
If you think that Medicare Part D is a grub-fest for the pharmaceutical companies and HMOs … if you think that the surge in Iraq Civil War is a waste of lives, money and time and a profit-driver for the defense industry … an expanded insurance-based healthcare non-system will be far more painful and expensive.
“I live in Switzerland. I pay about $2000 a year for coverage with a $1500 deductible.”
Actually, the Swiss health system is the second most expensive in the developed world, even though it is still about twice the per person cost of the American system.
Obama, Clinton, and Edwards all want to make health insurance mandatory, and call that “universal health care”
Kucinich has the only real plan. The others have a Repugnican’s wet dream.
great article
here is more eye opening info about our health system your gonna love this……………..
http://www.newstarget.com/pharmaceuticals.html
www.newstarget.com
http://www.sickpills.com
http://www.truthinwellness.com/news.php
http://www.mercola.com/2005/jun/23/fda_drugs.htm
www.wddty.com
www.pnc.com
YES, single-payer, universal healthcare. No denial of coverage for “previously-existing conditions.” Yes, coverage of semi-annual doctors visits to catch potential major problems before they get out of control. No denial of coverage for ANY condition or its treatment. Yes, free treatment of all who need it in emergency situations. WE CAN DO THIS!
“The film kicks off with an uninsured carpenter who has to decide whether to spend $12,000 (£6,000) reattaching his severed ring finger or $60,000 to reattach his severed middle finger.”
No human being should be placed in such an agonizing position. Shame on the U.S. healthcare system. Although carpentry is an artistic and well thought-of trade, many carpenters are not treated respectfully by employers — by being paid a livable wage with health insurance and sick days. For example, in Florida there are few union jobs for carpenters (an anti-union state) and most available jobs don’t pay enough to live decently — nor do they provide health coverage and sick days.
What is sick in this country is the mafia-minded insurance industry whose off-the-top profit taking is inserted between the patient and the provider. Managed care is really denied care. When health care is a for-profit proposition with the middle man being insurance companies, we shouldn’t be surprised that profits are squeezed out of the process in any way possible. The easiest way to a healthy bottom line is to take premiums and deny care.
While the Canadian system of single payer is not as functional as it could be, I am glad to be a Canadian and have it. I choose my own doctor and there is very little not covered by it (things like med reports for jobs or doctor’s notes for work, cosmetic surgery, etc.). If there is an emergency, like anywhere else in the world it stinks for the waits if you are not bleeding to death or in the midst of cardiac arrest.
The last time I was obliged to pay my own medicare portion because it was not covered by my employer, it was about $50 a month. Those who make minimum wage are covered in our system, as is a large portion of any prescription drugs needed, if not all the cost.
The system works reasonably well with the usual glitches that can be frustrating, but I would not trade it for the American system of medical insurance which appears to be a nightmare for one who has only known the single payer version (public insurance). Americans should have this right to health care without having to go broke to be diagnosed early and treated back to health. It goes without saying that it is a basic human right. Fight for your right, it is worth the effort.
When I was in family practice in rural TN,a patient told me the story of people being admitted to Heaven from all walks of life.Finally one person admitted they worked as Risk manager in a HMO ;the heavenly gatekeeper requested an explanation and on learning the details said “well, guess you can be admitted to Heaven…
But you can only stay two days.”
That’s what they do and you just have to live with it.
These jokes are siilar to the Hungarian jokes about the communist system after 1956.
People who are trapped just need humor to relieve their distress even if it is gallows humour.
Sadly, it appears some folks are unaware of ’systems’ logic. How do you maintain good order and discipline? Who should care for whom and why? If care is a right. . who provides it? Who pays for it? Is it not possible. . our system thrives because of other systems? (Some people prefer to pay as they go, others to pay for a basic set of services. . some don’t like paying for kids immunizations if they choose not to have kids.) Who makes these decisions? In a learned society. . we “assume”. . educated folks make these decisions. Yes. . our health care system has problems. . and yes we have some wonderful innovations. . no it is not available to all. . . . the car wasn’t either when it first came out!! (Who thinks it should be? Who pays for experimentation to perfect a new idea. . . these same folks who write scathing articles or comments without understanding or being a part of a system for a time?) Granted. . as I have been. . I admit it is not perfect. WE AS A PEOPLE CAN SOLVE THIS. . GET HEALTHY. . SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO PAY SOMEONE TO ‘FIX’ YOU. If we consider our eating habits and exercize. . . perhaps. . we can get healthy and make informed choices to be perhaps insured appropriately. Most. . . . programs or systems. . are an attempt to place a set of standards and a set of controls to manage human behavior and hopefully control disease outbreaks. (I even submit. . what a lot of early religion tried to do. If you didn’t commit adultery or have promiscuous sex. . you prevented STDs. If you ate kosher food for example. . you prevented food poisoning. Most early religious practices. . were to promote community health.)
Our system. . needs help. . however. . I would like to see more comments about solutions. . . and if we want health care. . what type? Should a healthy diet be a pre-requisite before I treat you? If you don’t lose weight, quit smoking. . can I opt to charge you more for the time I spend that prevents me from seeing someone who might take some advice to heart?
Just some comments. . as this forum. . is a good way to encourage discussion. I submit. . lets find solutions instead of continuing to point fingers and write scathing articles. Most of us in health care entered to help others. Someone had to pay our way through school. . and we work to pay those loans/debts back. We also are required to be credentialed. . the state protects the public or tries. Again. . most folks in health care are there to help. . yes. . parts are broken. .
Is it time to resurrect community hospitals that feed into centalized hospitals with specialists and consider looking at other transport systems? (However. . again this will be experimental at first and not open to all. . before some get up in arms . . )
When we find something that works. . . perhaps the info should be shared. . . however. . then we defeat capitalism. . . and our ability to copy right. . or to patent. Ah. . . life. . it is glorious. .
As Maya Angelou says. . to survive is excellent. . to thrive glorious. (I hope I have that right. . or close in intent anyway.)
Here is to freedom of speech.
c.
This US system is just here for the money and always has been from the horse and buggy days. Dang Quacks!
I’m a carpenter and I do most work people don’t dream of doing themselves. In Hawaii I’m rich and sought after, in Florida I cant get a day off. People treat you like shit if you dont wear “clean” Armani! (Dang I gotta fix that quick! OOPS! another stain!) I hear you can’t get healthcare in florida cuz they send all the old folks to the cleaners and then send them to a specialist for being only dehydrated AFTER putting them on anti-depressants or the most powerful antibiotics they can think of. Floridas healthcare is the worst in the country. with a capital P I have family there. The whole state is a big retirement hospital. The doctors prove it!
I’m self employed and I cut a tendon, on my free time, oops, right in the middle of my pad, second digit, middle finger. If I didn’t have the cash available at the time I’d have stains on my chop saw! 6g’s There is no choice and no time to talk, just do it! If I lost it in the dust bin, the hospital would have sealed it for me, then, and I could have paid later. As it was, I went to Emergency and the doc said he “thinks” my tendon is fine but he cant see it, (because he had a date for lunch, I overheard the prick in the hall on the way in). He found the bone fine, no damage. Remember, pad side! He sewed me up and told me to check with my primary care doctor in a week. A week is too late for a severed tendon to sit. I won’t tell you about the surgery just how mad my Doc was, I had seen him since I was a kid, he knows something about diet, a good doc. Northwest Hospital Seattle Wa. Don’t go there!!!
So I walked into Virginia Mason, Seattle, WA. to see my grandma who just had a stroke the day before and I walk into the bathroom to find an full 1 inch of sewage on the floor due to a badly designed “hospital grade” toilet with a bad seal! WTF! wall mount! HOW CAN YOU NOT NOTICE AN INCH OF WATER, YELLOW, STINKY WATER ON THE FLOOR OF A HOSPITAL!!!She cought MRSA there and went into a comma. We moved her the next day! ASAP! (I didn’t know hospital maintenance didn’t/don’t clean their tools after fixing toilets either! I started in Building Maintenance, CLEANING! I could have killed them all.) Some of the finest institutions around! HMPF!
I do however trust my acupuncturist.
If you ruin it at the top, the bottom will be ruined too. How can you care if the institution you work for doesn’t care and won’t let you care, trains you to think in “patient” terms not “person” terms. We need a revamp bad. If “Sicko” is what you need, its now there for you, you are blind. This has been going on too long to not notice.
I’d share some political action stuff with you but I don’t have anything in my hands yet for the stuff going on in Washington state. In time, I s’pose.
JH said, “Managed care is really denied care.”
I could not agree more. I have been on a managed care program through my employer for 10 years now and I only really began needing to use it in the past year with recurring knee problems caused by an old car accident several decades ago now.
I’ve needed extensive physical therapy, but I am only allowed so many visits per calendar year and they aren’t ever enough to fix the problems I am having. On top of that, I have a co-pay per visit plus any other extras like X-rays, MRI’s and braces fall under my “deductible”, meaning that I have to pay for those things out-of-pocket.
And they aren’t cheap, either. I also have, as a result of said accident, a shorter left leg than my right leg, forcing me to wear a large lift on my left shoe, which isn’t covered by insurance even though they list “Prosthetics and Orthotics” under their preferred provider list. I chose one from that list to do a lift on my left shoe and still ended up having to pay for it. I asked our company insurance rep at a staff meeting about that and he said that such things are not covered by our insurance, even though they are medically necessary….go figure.
Why we in this country can’t have a single payer, universal health care system is beyond me. Most of the presidential candidates are saying that such a thing is unfeasible, but I refuse to believe it. We somehow “lost” $12 billion in newly printed, shrink wrapped dollars, 363 tons of bills, that were flown to Baghdad and subsequently disappeared without a trace and no one has been held to account for it. That right there could have gone a long way toward paying for a single payer health care system.
I urge every reader to ask your Congressional Representative to support H.R. 676, the “United States National Health Insurance Act” being sponsored by Reps. John Conyers and Dennis Kucinich. We need this bill to create a single payer universal health care system for this country and to save American jobs which are going overseas because health care costs are choking American companies to death.
SUPPORT H.R. 676!!!!
“When is he getting over the cerpvral palsy?”
Yes, of course. Why be shocked? Private companies are not in the business of handing out free money to sick people. If a society intends to care for its ill, including those with no hope of ever paying back the amount, then it must be done by collective action, which means government.
Thanks cbeth.
Beautifully written.
When you consider that our economic system helps those who already have more than enough get even more, by screwing those who barely have enough - then you see that ours is simply not a humane economic system.
We can and will create an economic system that is fair, that serves everyone, except for the insanely greedy elitists, who need to get their insanely greedy asses kicked out of our way, anyway.
——————-
“Contrary to its claims, capitalism’s relationship to democracy and the market economy is much the same as the relationship of a cancer to the body whose life energies it expropriates. Cancer is a pathology that occurs when an otherwise healthy cell forgets that it is a part of the body and begins to pursue its own unlimited growth without regard to the consequences for the whole. The growth of the cancerous cells deprives the healthy cells of nourishment and ultimately kills both the body and itself. Capitalism does much the same to the societies it
infests.”
David C. Korten, the author of the international
best-seller When Corporations Rule the World;
http://www.pcdf.org/
I would be careful in terms of CANADA if I were YOU. I live in Quebec, lived long enough here, and know that that system here is very screwed up, and that the false Liberal PM Jean Charest is NO friend of social health care, but friend of corporatism, and so on. You will surely find better health care examples elswewhere in Canada, Quebec sure could not be difficul to beat in Canada. However, and on another hand, when people say that they communicate with friends, or whatever, in Canada and that these people claim that the health care system is good here, I’d suggest to perform some really critical evaluation on this, FIRST; before believing it. It’s very easy to say one thing, while reality is a whole other matter.
A lot of people give opinions on matters that these people are actually and very ignorant about.
I have read, in Canadian news, that not only is Quebec suffering in its health care system, but also Ontario, and these are the two most populated provinces of the country. Both are natural resource “gold mines”, but don’t benefit but overall little from their own resources; and privatization is on the march, progressing.
When someone tells you that the health care system is good, then think of asking, f.e.:
*) When is the last time you needed to use the system?
*) What problem was that for? (Was it a serious, impairing, or deadly condition, or something minor?)
*) How many people do you know who had very serious need of the system and who obtained medical care in prompt or prompt enough manner, vs those who were in such need but didn’t receive the care or received it only after very LONG wait?
*) Please provide me with the names of those people and a means of contacting them, such as, ideally, telephone numbers, or at least mail or e-mail addresses, so that I can contact them myself to verify. What, not willing to do that, you say? Then your words are EMPTY, worthless; and I now know all I need to know about YOU!
After all, I could tell you that the health care system in Quebec is great, for the last time I used it, back in the mid-1980s, it was very, very fine, indeed. If I neglect to tell you that I haven’t used the system in 20+ years however, then you might think that my words mean that the present situation is great, and it’s FAR from, below that. Plenty of people have died here waiting to get medical care, because their care could not be scheduled fast enough; well, either could not be, or simply was not. Either way, you have the NOT. But don’t rely on my experiences, for hospital is the last place I go and will go; I would not go there except in real emergency, and even then might say to heck with it, to heck with the batards, i.e., bastards.
Hospital idiots will give you stitches when all you need to do is to apply some hydrogen peroxide and a simple bandage, for crying out loud. I’ll stick with the latter. I guess they figure that it’s a way to be able to bill the govt; but I’ll take care of myself as much as I can, FIRST. And it’s the way to live today, for the hospitals are OVERFILLED here now; overflowing, literally. I’ll take care of my problems while letting people in far greater, real need get the help they are in need of. And MDs and nurses often don’t want to work in Quebec, for it’s a VERY cheap govt, employer, the worst in Canada; I believe the very worst anyway, but if not, then … adjacent.
Pathological LIAR Jean Charest and his administration help to ensure path to corporatism, etc. Tries to sound like Mr Nice Guy when interviewed, etc, but is very easily discernable as a nothing but pathological liar. I guess it’s to be expected; he’s of the RCC. (I am too, but a whole different strain; extremely different, totally juxt-opposites.)
“Trick” is to learn what we can do for ourselves, and it’s not difficult but simple learning. We can do plenty, just needing to learn; and it is all quite simple. Complexity is not the issue; it’s just having access to the knowledge, know-how that is the issue.
In Quebec, people who are wealthy enough can get great health care here, through priviate services. Not available to MOST people of this province though!
These are examples of questions to ask and when getting answers, to then verify those answers against what can be or is learned through other sources.
DO NOT think or pretend to think and claim that Canadians are honest people; they are war criminals, right along with the US, UK, NATO, and so on. I have an awful lot of difficulty in trusting war criminals on anything more significant than insigificant matters, such as what they ate for breakfast, f.e. I’m sure that they’ll at least usually be truthful about such insignificant matters. Any people who side with the present Cdn govt is a war criminal people, and anyone of that category CANNOT be trusted on anything important. Heh, they’re hellbent criminals and of the worst kind.
You want to trust such sick people? Go ahead. I certainly WON’T. If you can refrain from being a hellbent war criminal, then your words, even when occasionally truthful, are WORTHLESS, imo.
The Canadian praisers here should double-check, but, and again, Quebec is the worst of the bad for health care in Canada today, and most Americans probably know Canadians in other provinces, so it’s very possible that the information is at least somewhat true. I read that Ontario is heading downhill, though, and the NAU surely isn’t going to bring better. NAFTA certainly did not, and the NAU is just a super-NAFTA.
Jean Charest is corporatist, fascist, …, pathological liar, but I have to say that he’s not the first. He’s just making the bad situation that already existed all the worse; and that, of course, is not only unwelcome, let’s say.
Be CAREFUL when inquiring in Ca. If you inquire with people here who are well off, then expect a “NO problems” reply. Question the people who REALLY know! “Friends” means nothing; Ceasar, Jesus, and …, were all betrayed by “friends”. You always have to keep careful watch, and I certainly don’t mind people watching me; else I would not be integral, which is bad. Ideally, we want to always be vigilant, which means to always be “on the watch”.
Anyway, I’d be interested in knowing where Ca is doing so well in terms of health care. I don’t presently know of anywhere in Ca that is not suffering, but there probably are some provinces or places.
When and if the NAU is finally officialised in 2010, WATCH OUT. The three countries will be ever more losing, flushing their sovereignties, and then … what?!?! I don’t know what, but it’s most certainly not going to be good. NO, no good is intended in that process; NONE.
What looks good today may become nightmare tomorrow.
Does anyone have references for clear models that elaborate on how such a system works? I’d like to do some further reading on this.
Yes from a northern neighbour , google Government of Canada , Health Care Act or Province of Saskatchewan Ministry of Health or the website of any of the ten provinces and territories. Sask. set the ball rolling in the fifties and everybody else followed.
When youève finished that then check out Sweden,Finland,England…I hear Holland is the best although still second maybe to Cuba.Thereès an novel idea : write and ask Americaès bosom-buddy,Fidel Castro Ruz how to set-up an enviable health-care system.
“The term inalienable rights (or unalienable rights) refers to a set of human rights that are in some sense fundamental, are not awarded by human power, and cannot be surrendered. They are by definition, rights retained by the people. Inalienable rights may be defined as natural rights or human rights, but natural rights are not required by definition to be inalienable.” WIKIpedia
Free Universal Healthcare is an inalienable right.
Viva La Revolución
Corrections:
*) “You want to trust such sick people? Go ahead. I certainly WON’T. If you can refrain from being a hellbent war criminal, then your words, even when occasionally truthful, are WORTHLESS, imo.You want to trust such sick people? Go ahead. I certainly WON’T. If you can refrain from being a hellbent war criminal, then your words, even when occasionally truthful, are WORTHLESS, imo.”
Corrected: “You … I certainly WON’T. If you [cannot] refrain from being a hellbent war criminal, …. …”.
‘cannot’ or ‘can’t', but not ‘can’.
*)”You always have to keep careful watch, and I certainly don’t mind people watching me; else I would not be integral, which is bad.”
Being integral is not bad, it’s good, while being the opposite, not being integral, is bad. It should already be clear, but this note will ensure that I don’t leave myself mis-understood or -interpetratable. Iow, if we wish to watch others, then we have to accept to be also watched; and if we don’t accept this condition, then we have a personal problem to resolve.
(The only problem is when we’re watched by idiots; and based on news reports up here, this is a common theme, much too common. And this is not always related to integrity, for some of these fools are integral en masse, just that they are stupidly and wrongly so. F.e., idiots who report on a guy just because he’s cultivating pot, marijuana. IDIOTS; the state is FAR more criminal, and the poor guy is just trying to earn a living; benignly, or else beneficially! Beneficially it really all works out to be, if IDIOTS shut up; but no, no, the idiots have to turn innocents in to police state bs victims. Great. “Lovely” day. There goes another INNOCENT on the way to the slammer. And these integrally stupid fools never wake up to reality. Great, “lovely” day. Damn idiots.)
I worked in the U.S.A for one solid year(an excellent time I must say, hats’ off to the beautiful people of Santa Clara, California.) My non-experience with the health care system was limited to a large Manila envelope from my employer which was stuffed with tons of information and pages and pages of multiple choice question boxes about all kinds of crap which made my head hurt. Confusing as all get out, and I’m a systems analyst! I threw the whole works under the bed and never looked at it again until I cleaned up the apartment prior to moving back home to Canada. Thankfully I never had cause to visit a doctor!
Kucinich?
Why doesn’t someone tell him to ditch the Democratic Party? He has NO chance to get their nomination.
Ameriscam Dreams
Bygones be bygones. The point is our North American systems of thinking degrades each other and our ability to think with a positive outcome. We can all notice in ourselves its not what we think its ‘how’ we think. This is all one little part of ourselves that we have turned into some shitty legal document to protect ourselves and screw the “other” party. English is different all over the US, but the language of the legal system is read only by the policing party,i.e. make it what you will. A corrupt state anywhere. Some things you have to work hard for. Try correctness! Screw all the “Visibility Analogies” of our two party system, they are just put there to blind us, so we will only see their “picture painting” analogies as truth. An analogy is just that, anal ogy. whats for real? Our “Health” - “Care”?? I got a do it your self book from my insurance provider once, Group Health!
WE will overthrow! (musical tune)
WE will overthrow! (musical tune)
WE will overthrow! (musical tune)
RIGHT NOW!
sorry a little bit a humor
P.S. Amarichasm Dreams- Dreams without a bottom.
I still like Jess’ blog on hillary clitton the best! F*** This SH**!
Thats “a little bit ‘a’ humor!”
Health care reform is first and foremost a political matter. Since this is no big revelation, the question remains: how can citizens really make it happen?
Maybe by re-cognizing a few obvious realities, first.
Ayn Rand-inspired Neocons and sold-out Democrats in Congress have squashed sensible national health care reform for years (for ‘ideological’ reasons, mostly), and will continue to do so unless enough citizen political power is recaptured by average Americans. Directly or via electing new congresspersons.
National mainstream news media, which are also controlled by the same philosphical gaggle of Social Darwinists who now dominate congress, continue to theatrically wring their editorial hands about ‘the unfortunate health care crisis.’
But all of this condescending editorial hand-wringing and official non-action by present powers-that-be is simply a calculated distraction intended to maintain the status-quo:
a status-quo that guarantees egregious profits for the med/pharma industry precisely by denying affordable heath care to the vast moajority of citizens (both insured and un-insured.)
Crucial to health care reform, and all other progressive social legislation, is that America’s mainstream new media ownership needs to be restored to human-scale busniess ownerships, via FCC regulation (by the next Demo congress, one hopes.)
So that: media ownerships more-fairly reflect and publicize normal ‘people concerns’ at local levels across the country, instead of just the opinions of mega corporate profiteering advocates.
Until some measure of regulatory reform of news media ownership regs occurs, vis-a-vis congress, national discussion/action on health care crucial can’t develop the needed ‘live’ critical mass of citizen consciousness required for change.
Cyberspace forums like this are important, definitely. But, alone, cyberspace political opining and commiserating remains too atomized, too fleeting to create the tactical-focus that mass movements need to organize-by, in order to compel change from an entrenched and now, rotten, corporate-driven/elitist system.
Here in cyberspace, yes, we can begin to raise progressive consciousness. But then that consciousness always needs to be taken by each of us, in some individual way, to flesh-and-blood encounters with the corrupted and/or de-sensitized human beings who currently hold power.
Citizen energy to reform of health care, media ownership, campaign financing, foreign policy, etc., can start in cyberspace. But none of it will mean much if that energy stays here alone — just agitating clusters of screen-pixeled electrons.
Many of the letters, here, are powerful.
Still, if they’re to do any good, such letters/phone calls finally need to be conveyed directly to your congressperson with the full force of your emotions.
Given the outrageous hijacking of governance and decent security our present congresspersons have allowed, not much less than this ‘live’ approach stands a chance of getting these lawmakers to listen.
JA/Missoula, MT
Question to readers: What if Jesus came back and started healing everybody. Lets say He visited a hospital and with His touch cured everyone, one by one. And then proceded to the next hospital. How would they dispose of Him?
There is a way to take this matter into our own hands.
Check out the Ithaca NY Health Fund/Health Alliance. Among many other benefits, it offers a clinic, free to all. [Mission statement:
Our mission is to provide access to healthcare based on need, not on ability to pay, where the talent and generosity of our healthcare community come together to provide mainstream medical services, Complementary Alternative Medicine and Social Advocacy to establish healthcare as a human right and not a privilege.]
There are guidelines on how to start your own community health care system. It works! http://www.ithacahealth.org. We also have our own currency system: Ithaca Hours- http://www.ithacahours.com
Any wonder Ithaca has been voted ‘the most enlightened small town in America’?
Jazzara: You nailed it. The discussion and options are totally marginalized by those who control profit and FRAME the “debate.” Our whole system has become “managed care,” an Orwellian nightmare of political/economic pay-per-view.
My family is all too familiar with “Denial Management Specialists.” In the course of getting treatment for a work-related shoulder industry, my husband found his self-insured employer had hired a firm to manage the claims. Management meant denying *every single claim received,* regardless of merit, right until denying it further would haul them into court. Then they would pony up the money — but how many ill and injured who were contracturally entitled to health care gave up before that?
The Union involved was supposedly looking into a class-action suit but I haven’t heard any more about that in the last year. I have not seen Unions being remarkably effective overall these last decades. The young spuds seem to have no idea why they are members of a Union, yet we are in times when the need for them should be apparent. Baffling.
I’m 60 years old and planning to retire in 2 years after 22 years working in a school system. I have a tax shelter that I’ve been putting $100 a month into for nearly all of my working years, so I now have nearly $30,000 in it. It would be more, but I lost some of the interest in the stock market failure several years ago, and it has just really recovered from that fiasco. I figured out that after I pay the deferred taxes, I will have just about the amount that I’d have if I’d just put the money in a drawer somewhere. So much for private investment retirement funds.
At least the money was saved instead of spent and will take care of my insurance until I can get medicare. So for the better part of 20 years, I have saved every month just to get approximately 2 years of insurance, which, according to a friend who recently retired, will be about $800 a month for me and my husband. I am very fortunate compared to many of this country’s elderly because I will also have the option of paying for these two years of insurance with my unused sick days. I should have enough to do so, and therefore can save the money in my tax shelter. But I will then lose the extra retirement I’d have received if I took the payment for my unused days rather than using them for insurance. I’ll have to research to find out which is the best way to do it.
For me, the extra money will not make the difference between barely surviving and living decently, but this is not true for far too many Americans. And, of course, I resent having worked for so long at this job (with others before it) and finding myself with a pension of maybe $22,000 per year along with social security. Because I grow all my own vegetables and my house is paid off, I can live on this amount without hardship. However, a truly serious illness or tragedy of any kind would be likely to put me in a state of poverty.
My 84 year old mother had what seemed like plenty of money to live on. She gets social security and had substantial savings making what should have been enough interest to live on. But her teeth needed thousands of dollars of work, she had breast cancer and some other health problems, and her insurance did not cover any of the dental work or her glasses or her pharmacopia of prescriptions. Fortunately, my son lives with her and takes care of her, and she is not in danger of losing her home. But her finances are diminishing every day.
I read recently that most Americans live just one crisis away from poverty or homelessness. The middle class is becoming extinct, and the cost of health care is a very important contributing factor.
I heard a story about an elderly man who decided that the only way to receive the health care he needed was to commit a crime. That way he would be cared for by the prison’s hospital and staff. I think it would be interesting if every elderly American who has no or little insurance would do the same (whether or not this story is true). Imagine thousands of little old white-haired men and women standing outside elementary schools smoking marijuana or holding up convenience stores or exposing themselves to teenagers or openly growing illegal substances! Our prisons could be filled with these felons getting health care for the rest of their lives at government expense. Just joking, in case Big Brother is reading! But the image is pretty inviting anyhow.
Kucinich is my choice for president, but, due to many factors including the media’s insistence on it, he has little chance of being nominated. Too bad for all of us.
Over 20 years ago, during a college field trip, a few students were talking about the problems with health care. I blamed the doctors and was corrected when another student stated that the insurance companies were the cause of the problems. He went on to explain that medical insurance allows hospitals and doctors to raise their prices for medical services, without insurance hospitals and doctors would have to price their services based on what people could afford.
This makes perfect sense when you look at our economic system. Houses are overpriced and unaffordable for most because of mortgage bankers. Cars are overpriced because of bank loans and car manufacturers offering their own financing. If you take away the financial institutions and current practices (lending and insurance) then the fabric of our economic system would have to change. The most notable change would be the cost of goods and services.
Remove medical insurance and the medical industry would have to change in order to stay in business. Prescription drugs would finally be reasonable in America. Large hospitals would fail and be replaced by smaller less costly hospitals and doctors would open up more family practices. People would become doctors because they cared about people, not because they could make a lot of money. I know a nurse that makes $64 an hour, he would make far less if medical insurance did not exist and probably be doing something else.
You can not expect congress to make changes when they have their own medical plan that is separate and better than anything we could possibly afford, and yes we the tax payers are paying for it.
I have not had health insurance for 7 years, I refuse to pay for medical insurance. Your health is your responsibility. People say to me “you eat really healthy”, I reply, “is there any other way?”
Take care of yourself, no one else is going to.
Hey Lee-Ann: Great plot for a script? At the least it should be on Saturday Night Live? Now that it’s placed in this forum, does it automatically become public domain? I’d love to see Mel Brooks DO this theme! What a satire on available health care options in this rich nation and oh so FREE land of the brave.
In america a good wounded vet., good insurance covered person, a good sick poor person and an old retired person should just die and not be a burden on society. Caring for people is humbug, Little Timmy should just shut-up and rot in hell. Welcome to Pottersville USA. Mr. Potter now works in the insurance industry. Michael Moore is now Clarence the angel and Mr. Smith is you and I standing on brdge rail looking at the water (of the medical and insurance industry). A reverse barometer IS if the Repuplican Party is against something it will be good for the USA. IE - out of Iraq, don’t invading Iran, Don’t jail Libby, unions are needed, what 9th ward?, global warming? and peace on earth.
O
|\\ __O
_|_| \ \
The insurance industry to the poor and sick in the USA
A priest arrives at the pearly gate behind a Managed Care Specialist. He watches as angels escorts the specialist in a grand parade up a mountain to shining palace.
A single angel then escorts the priest down into a valley crowded with deshevled cottages with dirt floors and an outhouse out back.
And welcomes him to heaven.
The priest complains that “I spent my whole life extolling the greatnes of God and this dump is my reward?!”
The angel then explains that Heaven’s living quarters are assigned by population prirorities and “We have a lot of priests here.”
Moore shows in his film the Cuban Health Care System.
The Cubans provide guaranteed, universal, quality health care to all their people.
How come that a supposedly brutal dictator provides its people guaranteed health care, while in the land of the brave and the free we have almost 50 million people without any health insurance ?
I wonder what would happen if the USA manages to force in Cuba a transition to our so called free market and democracy. Are the Cubans expected to dump their health care system and adopt ours ?
SEE THE CBS 60 MINUTES DOCUMENTARY EXPOSING THE DRUG COMPANIES and THEIR INFLUENCE IN CONGRESS.
http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=2635796n
Healthcare-NOW and its National Network for Single Payer is planning 900 more events during the next few months.
You can organize one of them in YOUR TOWN:
info@healthcare-now.org
www.healthcare-now.org
http://kucinich.us/issues/universalhealth.php
CALL CONGRESS Free 1-866-338-1015 Do it NOW!
www.citizensforhr676.org
Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) has reintroduced H.R. 676 in the new Democratically-controlled Congress.
How about checking with a friend who trusts you (because nobody is supposed to talk about these things) in the insurance business and see what they tell you about car and health insurance and the impact that ILLEGAL immigration has on them.
I would like to make a point about Presidential Candidates and their position. Lets say Kuchinich did become president (which would be great if he does become President). He can scream from the roof tops for Universal Health Care. But if Congress (and there many silent partners/contributors to campaigns)is not ready to work together to make this happen it is not going to happen.
Here in Oregon there is a push by some of the legislatures to create a Oregon Universal . There is a lot of work to do (it is about 5 years away from becoming reality) - but it is happening. Maybe we need to get the States to push forward and maybe the Capital will wake up.
FoonTheElder wrote: “… the Swiss health system is the second most expensive in the developed world, even though it is still about twice the per person cost of the American system.”
I don’t think this is correct, but it may be a typing mistake: Switzerland costs $3,222 per capita, whereas the US costs $4,631.
To critics of the American health care system, Shangri-La is not a fantasy but a shimmering reality, though it goes by another name: Canada. Any debate on health care eventually arrives at the point where one participant says, “We should have what Canadians have. Free care, universal access and low cost — who could ask for more?”
Well, plenty of people could ask for more — starting with the Supreme Court of Canada. Last week, ruling on a challenge to the health care in the province of Quebec, the court sent a clear message south: Don’t believe the hype.
The program, said the court, has such serious flaws that it is violating constitutional rights and must be fundamentally changed. And the flaws, far from being unique to Quebec, are part of the basic structure of Canada’s health care policy.
No one doubts that the American model has serious defects, particularly rising costs and lack of access to medical insurance. But anyone who thinks the Canadians have come up with a magical solution is doomed to disappointment.
The dirty secret of the system is that universal access is no guarantee of treatment. Sick Canadians spend months and even years on waiting lists for surgery and other procedures. In 1993, the average wait to see a specialist after getting a doctor’s referral was nine weeks. Since then, according to the Fraser Institute of Vancouver, it’s increased to 18 weeks.
The typical patient needing orthopedic surgery has time to get pregnant and deliver a baby before being called. The Supreme Court cited the testimony of one orthopedic surgeon that 95 percent of patients in Canada waited over a year for knee replacements — with many of them in limbo for two years.
In some cases, the delay lasts longer than the person enduring it. Or as the Supreme Court put it: “Patients die as a result of waiting lists for public health care.”
Not only does the government subject its citizens to painful and even fatal delays in the public system, it bars them from seeking alternatives in the private market. You see, it’s illegal for private insurers to pay for services covered by the public system.
That policy is what forced the Supreme Court to order changes. “The prohibition on obtaining private health insurance,” it declared, “is not constitutional where the public system fails to deliver reasonable services.”
The program has created a gap between supply and demand that is wider than Hudson Bay. Its failings, however, go beyond that. The single-payer approach, for example, is often held up as the only way to simultaneously control costs and deliver quality care. In fact, Canada has somehow managed to do neither.
After adjusting for the age of the population, the Fraser Institute compared 27 countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development that guarantee universal access to health care. By some mysterious alchemy, Canada has proportionately fewer physicians than most of these nations but spends more on health care than any except Iceland.
It would be a dubious feat to control costs only by depriving people of treatment. But to forcibly deprive people of treatment while letting costs surge is no achievement at all.
Admirers of our good neighbor to the north say the United States pours money into all sorts of fancy equipment but doesn’t get better results by such measures as life expectancy. But life expectancy is affected by multiple factors, including education, crime rates and diet — with health care playing only a modest role. In those areas where modern medicine can make a big difference, the United States does very well.
Take breast cancer. In Britain, which is famous for its socialized system, close to half of all victims die of the disease, according to a recent Cato Institute study by John Goodman, head of the National Center for Policy Analysis. In Germany and France, almost one-third do. In Canada, the figure is 28 percent — and here, it’s 25 percent. Our mortality rate for prostate cancer is 67 percent lower than Britain’s and 24 percent lower than Canada’s.
The usual story we hear is that the health care system next door provides first-rate care to all, at low cost. The realities — dangerous delays, bloated expenditures and mediocre results — are not so appealing. American liberals may not welcome evidence that the single-payer model works far better in theory than in practice. But for that, they can blame Canada.
The Canadian Supreme Court’s Chaoulli decision was made in June 2005, and applies, at the moment, only to the province of Quebec, as healthcare delivery is a provincial responsibility. At issue was the fact that patients in Quebec - as in the rest of Canada - were being denied timely treatment by our so-called universal, government-run, single-payer health monopoly, yet (in this ‘twilight-zone’-worthy, but sadly quite real scenario) the government also banned patients from any recourse to buy their own private insurance to ameliorate our state-run monopoly’s negligence. The Chaoulli decision is commonly summarized as showing that ‘Access to a healthcare waiting list, is not actual access to healthcare’. The philosophic/political zeitgeist of our brand of slick socialized medicare is that we’re promised a virtual reality. There is no consumer choice for us in healthcare; the government taxes us and then decides how to ration the care. Our healthcare is not “free” (as some bizarrely believe) - yet the government of Ontario in 2004 added a highly-unpopular “health premium” (fancy leftist lingo for “another tax”) AND simultaneously cut previously-covered health coverage services! (And no, for the paranoid Dems out there, this was not some right-wing-government that cut medicare in Canada, it was the Liberal government of Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty). Now they are denying cancer treatments to patients, deeming it “experimental” or “not approved”, so patients are self-funding and going to the States because THERE IS NO-WHERE ELSE! We can only dream of having had the chance to buy health insurance. Michael Moore fans out there who think that your HMO’s are bad should try dealing with the only payer in the country for your healthcare: the non-competitive government bureaucracy. Oh, yes, we’re “covered” in Canada, all right - but many of us are forced to go to the U.S. for service! Yes, we can “choose our doctors” -that is, if we can find one first. Recent press stats claim that Ontario, with a population of 12 million, is desperately short about 2,500 doctors. “Universality” in Canada is a feel-good promise of rhetoric, that is until you hear about all the Canadians forced to flee to the States for treatment which ours fails to provide (the Alberta Jepp quadruplets having been born in the States being a recent high-profile example, but there are countless others). Michael Moore’s praises about Canada in his mockumentary ‘Sicko’, should be taken with a grain of salt: they are manipulative, and misrepresent the reality of what 40 years of socialist medicare has done to us. Don’t be fooled into believing that Canada’s ‘fool’s gold’ of a system is some kind of medical Nirvana. Our Chaoulli decision is a foreshadowing of what, state by state, Americans will have to go through in about 20 years if you adopt a state-run, single payer monopoly system, as your much-ballyhoed dreams of “universality” eventually, and predictably, fail to deliver as well. In Canada, province by province, there are now Chaoulli-type constitutional Supreme Court challenges slowly winding their way through the system. If you believe Michael Moore that your U.S. system is so terrible, then it’s an also an inconvenient truth to admit that Canadians are running to the States to obtain treatment. It’s convenient for the left in both of our countries to insultingly dismiss this phenomenon as “anecdotal”, because it doesn’t jive with their rose-coloured aspirations.
Don’t envy Canada: emulate us at your own risk. Many Canadians are thankful the U.S. system was there when we needed it.
it sounds like neither the countries with the socialised/nationalised healthcare nor the countries with the privatised have it 100% right. i think it’s probable we can learn lessons from each other.
nontheless, i would agree with the earlier statement that there are certain issues where a money-making ethos does not deliver the best service and i would agree that health is one of them.
it can’t be right for people to have to sell their homes to get treatment or to lose loved ones when the knowledge exists to save them