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A Mother Asks President Obama To Be Honest About Healthcare
We need honesty going forward. We need full disclosure of our options. We need courage and clarity. And we cannot have that if this President and this Congress participate is a pre-choreographed dance to reward the big health industry interests at the expense of the rest of us. Simply asking for-profit insurance giants to bid on Medicare Advantage business that is robbing many seniors and disabled folks of access to care they were promised under traditional Medicare is simply a poor attempt at gilding the lily - it is not reform.
During a briefing held in DC on Wednesday, Dr. David Himmelstein of Harvard Medical School (we still think those credentials adequate, do we not?) recounted the shortcomings of the Massachusetts model for health reform. Plan after state plan has cost more than anticipated, covered fewer than the promised universal claims and left states like Massachusetts and those that came before them in the same mess now faced throughout the land with soaring costs, inadequate delivery of what is sold as the financial protection called "health insurance," and with health systems begging for more cash.
Yet it was Dr. Himmelstein's final points that left me shaken. He said he has just treated yet another cancer patient who has decided to decline chemotherapy because he or she cannot afford the co-pays associated with the treatment. Dr. Himmelstein will have no choice but to honor the patient's declination of treatment for what they both know is a curable cancer. My heart breaks just thinking about it. Getting a cancer diagnosis stinks. I know. My cancer ripped open my life. I had to fight like Obama's mother to make sure I kept my job and got care - even though I had insurance. And knowing another cancer patient is deciding to die due to a lack of cash in the state some want us all to model is barbaric. And I didn't fight for this hope for change to remain in a barbaric state of healthcare delivery and financing.
I do not think for one minute that my new President has truly internalized this struggle - nor that of his own mother - as this Massachusetts cancer patient decides to die rather than bankrupt his or her family. Some kill themselves more abruptly. Others live longer but often fight with insurance companies as Obama's mother did. But this person in Massachusetts is hurting - this American citizen is dying a preventable death. And I am at a loss about how President Obama would explain his down payment on reform to this patient or the patient's kids or spouse... especially when it could be fixed.
Then I listened to ABC News tell the story about a McDonalds employee in Arkansas who came to the defense of a female customer being attacked in the restaurant by another man. The abuser shot the McDonalds employee in the chest. And now the McDonalds workers comp insurance company has decided that the employee's medical bills of more than $300,000 should not be covered because the employee was not acting during the normal scope of employment. Huh? Apparently, McDonalds thinks employees who see crimes being committed should first remember that flipping burgers and salting fries are their duties, not defending customers. Again, how very barbaric. But no sign of our President on this one either, no siree.
But, he tells us, he gets it. Really? Either I need to take President Obama at his word that he gets the immediate suffering of the American people and is willing to allow insurance companies to dictate life and death - quite literally - for years longer and become even more powerful dictators of the value of American life or he is just flat lying and he doesn't get it at all. I don't really like either of those possibilities.
If either of these patients - one with cancer in Massachusetts or the other trying to recover from a gunshot wound to the chest in Arkansas - lived in any one of the other industrialized nations on earth, they'd be treated with dignity and get the care they need without going broke. Maybe hero pilot Sully can fly them to another nation that respects human life enough to help? Somehow I think that would be fitting. Sick Americans need a hero long about now - a 10-year plan or a lousy expansion of the defective product known as private health insurance won't cut it.
Making the insurance industry bigger and more powerful through expansions of "coverage" to the millions of uninsured is not the only answer. It isn't even the best answer. And the severity of the crisis demands intellectual and policy design honesty from the get-go. If the American people get three years down the road and have another and deeper mess in healthcare robbing them of health and financial security brought to them by this President and this Congress, it won't matter much who inherited what - especially if this part of the process was tainted by dishonesty and special interest powers.
Lofty rhetoric cannot hide a basic dishonesty of discourse and this President knows it. Doing what's right requires us to fully explore every option available. "Ye Shall Know the Truth and the Truth Shall Set You Free," seems maybe a verse we may want to explore. And this President is not allowing that -- yet. He is tightly controlling who offers opinion and testimony, and only those already friendly to his pre-selected agenda are welcomed.
Let's open next week's summit to all plans and ideas - all we have to fear is - well, we know the finish to that line. If we see all reform ideas explained, studied for their costs (and scored by the Congressional Budget Office), their benefits and evidence of their viability, and we hear testimony from clinical RNs and practicing doctors invited and prized in the same way as the opinions from corporate docs and industry vetted officials and industry friendly voices, then we'll know that our President is serious about honest reform.
So far, many who advocate for the publicly financed, privately delivered option for health reform have been purposely and carefully screened out. That's dishonest and shows a lack of confidence that if all the facts were known clearly by the American people that they would choose the currently preferred political strategy -- to keep the defective product of for-profit health insurance and expand it and truss it up with massive amounts of taxpayer money and package it as healthcare reform. If that is the outcome that has already been promised to the health insurance industry that so heavily invests in this President and his friends, then tell us that up front, skip the expense of the forums and the summits and the exercises in self-congratulatory polls and just tell the patients in Massachusetts and Arkansas that you don't give a damn - you have friends to whom you are beholden above and beyond the citizens of this nation.
On the other hand, if Dr. Himmelstein's cancer patient in Massachusetts deserves at least some of the care afforded another prominent Massachusetts cancer patient - Senator Ted Kennedy - then let's open up the process, be as honest as we can and get to it. Because if we let another 10 years go by, more than a million Americans will die preventable deaths with the life and death decisions administered by those who don't care about any one of us anywhere near as deeply as they care about profits.
Mr. President, fully vet and fully disclose every available option for healthcare reform. Invite all voices into the summit - even a patient or two. To do otherwise would dishonor your mother's struggle and the two patients haunting my thoughts. And as the mother of three sons, I hope I can trust that even political ambition cannot trump a son's love for the woman who gave him life and fought for his welfare even as she fought her own cancer.
- Posted in
59 Comments so far
Show AllBut the US needs to kill more people in Iraq first. We have to wait two more years to make sure we are totally in debt to China before even considering the potential benefits of single payer on the economy.
We have to invade Afghanistan, and hold up dictatorships around the world so that the oil execs will have big profits this year.
So what if a few people die from lack of health care? So what if they can't afford the co pays?
We don't want socialism in the world oil empire.
In 1972 I had full coverage Blue Cross/Blue Shield health care insurance. It cost me $27.00 per quarter. Yes. $27.00 every three months. Now it costs $550.00 per month, half of which I pay. What happened?
d.k.shaw
The insurance companies figured out how to get rich. :D
For starters, how about sending some people over to countries with a good health-care system and learning how they do it so we can apply some of their methods? Are we too proud to learn from other country's successes, or are we still beholden to failed insurance companies we just bailed out?
Good points.
Practically all of the problems we face here, even scientific and technical ones (civil engineering technology here is stone-age compared to Europe or east Asia), have been solved successfully in other couhtries.
But the US resolutely refises to adopt these solutions - because they were developed by "foreigners", and everyone knows everything in the US aboslutely the best, because the US is best in everything!
We even cling to a medieval system of measurement, that in real ways hurts our competetiveness in the world.
So the US proceeds these bizarre wheel re-inventions, each solution fantastically distorted in deference to the abosilute perogitives of corporations.
The setadfast refusal to consider the obvious solution ot healthcare is the distillation of this attitude.
---USAn---
I really do not understand this article.
Why don't these people just go to the Hospital and see a doctor?
That's what we do here in the UK........
(you guys have NO IDEA how glad I am to have immigrated OUT of the USA...well you are mostly progressives....so maybe you do have some idea)
First of all, you do not understand how the system in America works compared to that of the UK where there's at least some semblence of single payer healthcare. Perhaps you could have stayed and helped us defeat the conservatives but I see you went where the wind blew. If you think moving to Europe was the answer, I regret to inform you that rightwing fascism is creeping up there too.
Oh I still VOTE in America and I can assure you that I write letters to congressmen and call them too. I very much care what happens to the USA.
But guess what.
Micheal Moore did Europe such a big favor.
He showed the Europeans just exactly what the US model implied.
Believe it or not, most all talk of privatizing health care has pretty much evaporated.
Moore might not have effected Americans very much, but he sure helped us over here!
And the more that Obama (or anyone) publicly opens the debate and exposes what is going on in the USA (which was pretty well hidden from Europe for a long time) the more that 'debate' is going to vanish.
Oh and also I lived in the USA for more than 1/2 my life (and quite a lot of that in Nebraska by the way...how 'bout them Huskers?) and I'm not young today. So I did have to buy health insurance and I had to deal with those companies clear up through the mid 90's. I even wrote letters to congressmen supporting Hilary's first attempt at serious health-care reform. After the "Harry and Louise" commercials I was not too upset about leaving a nation that was so easily convinced by the most obvious scare-mongering and propaganda. It has taken the scare mongering and propaganda of 911, two wars, and an economic meltdown caused by the 'supply side' and 'low taxes' agenda to wake up just over 50% of America. And they STILL stand no chance of getting real information from a Television that now depends on drug ads for it's survival.
I might not know how bad it has become in the intervening years, but why fault me for employing my brain and ability to predict the future?
I'll work for change in the USA from over here, thank you very much, and when I'm sick I'll just continue to pay my 7% of salary contribution to the National Health Service, go to the doctor, and not worry about it.
Well, of course Moore is appealing in Europe and maybe on the coastal areas and big cities in the USA. However, the day he can stop by in Nebraska and put up a rally is when I think he'll be taken more seriously. If Michael Moore and the like can successfully convince folks such as the disgruntled conservative coworker of mine I described, then I'll be thrilled. Until then, I'm not a getting a good feeling about this.
On Democracy Now this morinig, the pro-Obama plan guest made that argument. Sihgle player only plas ob the "coasts" (presumably places like Chicago or Cleveland are on the "coast" too - coast of the lakes). I a getting tires of this argument.
I regret to inform these people in the interior, but these decadent liberals and sodomites, and blacks, and ethnic minorities of the coasts (especially east coast) that the hoosiers and corn-huskers and cowboys deride for being not "real Americans" are about 90 PERCENT of the US's population. We ARE the real America!
Just the single Pennsylvania County where I live has 70% of the population of Nebraska! It has as many people as all of South Dakota and Wyoming combined - one county - and it's not at all the most populous one in Pennsylvania either.
Yet they have grossly disproportionate power in the senate, in presidential electoral votes, and to a lesser extent, the house or Representatives.
---USAn---
Every poll done clearly indicates in huge pluralities that people are literally dying for single-payer. The two parties however are owned lock stock and barrel by the death care Industry and we can forget about any meaningful reform form either of them. The min. u hear "10 yrs. plan," that's basically a code word for fougetaboutit!
When insurance companies have the nerve to "defend" murderers against the victims, that alone tells you that we live in a sick nation. Unfortunately, out here in my state, most of the die-hard conservatives will parrot the line of Big Insurance about "personal responsibility" and call anyone who is for single payer "unpatriotic". At one point, I came across a disgruntled worker now underemployed who kept complaining about that AR event. I would ask him "So it's patriotic for big insurance companies to rip you and I off but somehow it's 'unpatriotic' for a lawyer to defend people against bad corporations or good sumaritans such as the employee at MacDonalds in AR to defend a customer against an abuser isn't it?" Then he foamed at the mouth and told me "Well, that guy who shot that motherfucker at MacDonalds was defending himself and shooting down bad employees who weren't doing their fucking job !!! If I want my fucking burger, the employee is supposed to shut the fuck up and flip that god damn burger so I can eat and get to work, god damn it !! GOD is punishing that meddlesome employee for trying to cost the company and he fucking deserves it !!! I don't want government-run healthcare ! I want private care because I deserve it and not those lazy welfare queenies or illegal aliens god-damn it !! Corporations are good for you and they're trying to help us out but them god damn motherfucking liberals are getting in the fucking way and boy would I love to shoot them out !! And I hate those god damn trial lawyers who are killing business. I'd love to shoot them out too although I might need another fucking lawyer to defend me !!"
Wow! Yours isn't the only story like this I've heard.
Sounds like Limbaugh-induced rage.
But my response is still the same as what I wrote below......I'll stay here, pay my 7%, and see my doctor whenever i feel bad.
I've heard responses like that, too, and the really disorienting thing is that the people who will talk like this are generally kind and considerate in their relationships with other people -- their families, their coworkers, even random strangers. It's like the "liberals" and "welfare queens" couldn't possibly be anyone they know and love, but must, by definition, be some kind of "Other."
I even have had to point this out to some American left-of-centres as well.
It's the big victory that the right-wing managed to get into the heads of people.
That somehow the poor are 'undeserving' or 'lazy'.
I noticed this on the TV as well. After Katrina it was almost as if they TV press were ALWAYS trying to find the most disgusting stupid person to put on the TV who had lost their home. The message to me was obvious....these people do not deserve your help.
No one ever shows you the plight of the tens of millions who are working 70 hour weeks just to pay the rent and feed their kids...instead we rail on them for not being good parents. No one ever shows you the people who have lost everything, after a lifetime of labor, because of one illness. Instead we rail on them for living an unhealthy lifestyle. When someone loses their home because they got a sub-prime loan that suddenly went to high interest and they couldn't get another one we rail on them for buying a home for their family they couldn't afford.
It's a culture of blaming the victim and justifying the philosophy that everyone else deserves what they get, and it's the BIG problem that Americans need to tackle.
To start we need more facts that I never see. Just how many people have to work 3 jobs? What is the average real work-week for people who do have jobs? Just how much time do people have to be parents in a week? Most people, not the few who really are gaming the system, not the illegal immigrant...these are likely to be a small number of people. Is your tax money really going almost entirely to them? Or is it going to help some corporation increase it's profit margin?
Personally, I would rather that a person who perhaps did actually get a three bedroom house when they could only afford a one bedroom house got some help from my taxes than the CEO of AIG. I honestly think that helping the person with the three bedroom house will help make the society I live in a pleasant one....and that will actually benefit me in the end.
So true.
When I worked downtown, I frequently rode a bus route that passed through my blue-collar middle-class white neighborhood then on to the poorest (and 100% black of course) neighborhood of Homewood-Brushton.
The exhauseed faces of the men and women on that bus forever banished from my mind any notion that the poor don't work hard. They work themselves to death and always have.
---USAn---
Sioux Rose
PHYSICS: Right on about the culture of blame, and other points you wisely raised.
The conservative folks who are normally kind and well-mannered have like most folks been brainwashed into playing the game of destroy first play "hero" second. If they really wanted to help others and be real heros, they wouldn't go out on a limb and support bad policies in the first place. Now, there's true heroism.
JWVerez, your analysis intrigues me. I am always alert to analyses of conservatives' "false consciousness," weirdly represented as bicosciousness by George Lakoff in his recent article on Obama's "Code." I am motivated because my close nuclear family are these kinds of conservatives, who will say the most outrageous things about "liberals," and whose favorite dinner entertainment is "liberal baiting," but when they are confronted with true, immediate human need, they are generous to a fault, welcoming and kind.
I'm not sure how I would apply the game of destroy first and play hero second to my experiences. My family has never had enough economic or political power to destroy anyone, unless you want to generalize to destroying the poor by voting for conservatives who allowed deregulation to create the current financial crisis. My family has been directly impacted, though, by the fiscal policies that are causing pain for everyone else, and they are aware of their own troubles. They are even sensitive to the healthcare crisis because they have had trouble keeping healthcare due to job changes -- and yet they won't advocate for single-payer healthcare. They seem to believe that success and financial stability is just around the corner for them, regardless of the systemic problems that are making it difficult for everyone to succeed.
Ok, here's the clarification. A lot of conservatives, nice and well mannered as they can be, have been brainwashed into thinking that they and not the government should be some kind of "superheros". Let's take Hurricane Katrina for example. Yes, churches are free to provide help and all but when they go too far so as to say that government must not help the people because that would somehow threaten the "power" of churches to save people's lives, they'll do almost anything even if that includes supporting tax cuts for the wealthy and gutting the public infrastructure so as to induce a crisis that they can theoretically take credit for such as the Hurricane Katrina aftermath.
I'm not saying that your family purposely wants to play destroy first, then pretend heroism right after but the macho egotistical madness, as pointed out in your last two sentences, has crippled their thinking. Curing it is certainly no easy task and will take a lot of trial and error so don't give up.
Thank-you Donna.
Your essays are more precious than a hundred professional pundits or policy wonks.
---USAn---
Pres. Obama has really sold ut on this one, and that is all that there is to it. I had hoped to get necessary surgery and get back to work...I dont bother to even listen to what he says about "health care" anymore (it is death care in the uS , if you are poor). I wont beg for it. But, if I fail in offing myself, just let someone try to convict me of attempted suicide.
The Dems can all go to hell.
If President Obama really sold out completely on healthcare, then explain this sir.
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/02/27-3
At least some women will have their lives and health saved and maybe he'll pave the way even more once the general public support for it is heard loud and clear and the typical die-hard conservatives are enlightened out of their individualist madness.
It's going to take the outrage of Ms Smith and millions of others to get single payer into the game, because as she points-out the game is already rigged, just as it was by the Clintons. But it's going to take a lot to get beyond the pathology the federal government has regarding Killing Our Own--a very long standing pathology. And of course the fight for health care rights exposes the failure of the federal government as an institution yet again.
Given Obama's denigration of teachers in his last speech, he likely feels the same about nurses as they too are overworked, under resourced, and have results that while not their fault are unacceptible. Nurses just haven't become the whipping boy for politicos although their union is more radical than the teacher's. IMO, it's going to take a nationwide strike by nurses to get single payer adopted, and they must be supported by the MDs who have seen the light and understand that single payer is the only equitible way forward. As for the insurance executives, they ought to be tarred and feathered, driven off the continent and forced to swim to their tax havens.
re:OCharles--I stand with the moral outrage party.
This is a great quote:
"It's going to take the outrage of Ms Smith and millions of others to get single payer into the game..."
I think incremental change has it's place as an approach to solving some social problems--but not when powerful vested and entrenched interests are arrayed against that change. (As Dr. Himmelstein has pointed out in article below)
Keeping the profit-motive in healthcare won't change our healthcare in any meaningfull way--and it is morally wrong.
So another approach is required for meaningful change--and confronting moral wrong requires moral outrage.
Historically, that's been the only way to motivate people to DEMAND their human rights(be protected)--instead of waiting for or expecting someone or something else to protect them.
It's time to stop waiting and expecting:
"...it's going to take a nationwide strike" to bring our ideals back to life.
http://www.pnhp.org/news/2009/february/himmelstein_responds.php
"In the long term, we're all dead." (Keynes, I think.)
In ten years, a lot of us are dead. Especially without public health care.
Very simple and very partisan: The Green Party stands for single payer, public, universal health care.
The Democratic(?) Party doesn't.
Where do YOU stand?
Oregoncharles
Nebraska Nathan says:"Unfortunately, out here in my state, most of the die-hard conservatives will parrot the line of Big Insurance about "personal responsibility" and call anyone who is for single payer "unpatriotic"."
Maybe that's where the real problem is - not enough support for single-payer healthcare by general public. After all, Obama is not a dictator and won't go against the will of the majority. That's democracy - like it or not.
Venting here is OK. But, instead of preaching to the choir, maybe it would be better if each of us "enlightened" a single person this week, as to why single-payer healthcare is so much better than any other option.
Thank you.
Bea,
Thank you for further proving my point. This is what I have been trying to warn others about. History has shown that labor and credit unions, social security, and the likes didn't come from Washington but started out on local community levels and it wasn't even about money. It is true that even today, it is possible to bring up the issue of why single payer beats privatized care without bringing money into the issue and while there will be die-hard cons still against it because they're money obsessed such as the one I earlier described, we can beat the monied system. We must not allow radio, TV, and the Internet to be used against us as a distraction weapon by the elite but instead use it to promote positive long term growth. We need that kind of growth and so do our young who are our future. The politicians in Washington will listen the more we unite and take on the local and state level offices in addition to the federal offices. In fact, this can apply to just about any issue. For example, protesting the war doesn't start by flying to Washington and getting arrested but by building up support in your local communities and in time teaming up can prove to be a stronger force against a sellout politician than all the money Halliburton can give him or her to be one of its puppets. This is why it currently does not matter who is running the White House and Congress to a large degree. Yes, we'd all love a President Nader but the support he needs to be that president just doesn't exist unlike the support FDR had.
P.S.: Even that one electoral vote Obama won in my state was extremely difficult to get and it wasn't even thought of being swing until 2 weeks before Election Day.
Obama is proposing a $700 billion subsidy to insurance. Television glosses over that by referring to "universal health care" after which most people do not hear the next word: "INSURANCE". We wish we had health care, we wish President Obama really did "get it," but what we have is a continuation and expansion of the disastrous Medicare Bill of a few years back that was a huge subsidy to corporate interests.
We are literally dying. We are being bankrupted and ruined. And the only thing congress can hear or represent is the voices of the corporate interests that pay for their election.
As the great Bob Dylan said, "Let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late."
The Obama proposal for healthcare only makes things worse. It would be better to do nothing. The Right decries "socialized' care, yet embraces welfare payments to corporations to prop up a system that has failed patients. (Caution: taking example to extreme to make the point follows.) If we really don't believe in socialized medicine, then lets stop ALL payments including those to companies and subsidized patients. Let people die outside hospitals if they can't afford care and let hospitals close if they can't make their way on those who can pay. Let us all go suffer and go broke together, and from that perspective decide what the legitimate role of medicine is. I'll go out on a limb here and suggest that it is not to make a few people rich while stepping over the carnage of those who go without care.
I think we have to decide if Health Care is a risk to be shared (an insurance issue) or a service to which people are entitled (a social program). If it's the former, then we need health insurance that is portable and affordable for ALL regardless of where we are employed, where all people are in the risk pool. If it's a social program, then we have to be prepared to let the Government lay down veterinary rules about what is and isn't covered.
Perhaps the best solution would be a blend of both, where the Government provides a basic veterinary level of service and private insurance covers more cosmetic, elective, and extraordinary procedures.
At any rate, tying coverage to an employer is going to become less desirable as more people find themselves outside of the employer provided coverage model that has been dominant since post WWII.
So far, Obama seems to be too to willing to compromise and cobble solutions together. Sometimes it's necessary to dismiss the committee and let wisdom and vision prevail.
dmgreenaz sez: "I think we have to decide if Health Care is a risk to be shared (an insurance issue) or a service to which people are entitled (a social program)."
***
With all due respect, the current construct of "insurance" as a for-profit model does not allow for sharing of risk. The simple fact is, profits are maximized by WITHHOLDING health care, not by providing it.
Exactly.
Pretty soon they may not want to hospitalize you unless your heart has stopped. Don't laugh. It happened to me. Had my heart not gone into syncope (stopped dead for 16 seconds in the ER), I would have been sent home with a stress test scheduled two weeks later. After my wife screamed at a nurse that I needed help, the nurse came down the hall asking if there was a cell phone ringing. It was the heart monitor alarming. You just can't make this stuff up. I had a pace maker implanted two hours later. It's been two years and I'm still okay but I exercise over one hour a day and keep fit because I no longer trust the medical profession. It has sold out to the profit motive.
Obama will go single payer national health as a last resort. Forget the "health care as social program" thing. We live in a barbaric insensitive country.
Another thing that bothers me about Obama's response to our lack of healthcare is the way in which the solution is a non-sequitur to the problem. What is the problem? Healthcare is unaffordable for millions of people. What does Obama propose as the solution? Expand the number of people receiving government subsidy, thus keeping the revenue stream flowing into the system which would otherwise collapse because of lack of paying customers. He also says to spend tens of billions of dollars putting all records into a new electronic boondoogle. Allegedly, this will solve the problem by making healthcare so efficient and error free that healthcare will become universal after a $700 billion transfusion.
Amazing. What will be even more amazing is if people let them get away with this.
Here's a thought. Congress set up a system where a faceless monopoly skims profits out of the system under the guise of Group Purchasing. They can legally demand payment from device manufacturers and providers to hospitals, and they decide who gets to sell and how much they can charge. Yet, just one recent example, they allowed a company called Sierra Pre-Filled to sell syringes of heparin with sediment and debris in them that resulted in the death of several patients. This company had FDA approval, and furthermore must have been approved to be a provider by the Group Purchasing Organization.
If Obama wants to save some money in healthcare, they should find out why companies like this get approved by these monopolies.
A nurses' strike is the best idea I've heard in decades.
But since I'm not a nurse, my strategy (which I also stated here in response to a previous Donna Smith post), is this:
I refuse to participate in the corrupt and ethically bankrupt US health care system. I do not have health insurance, will not purchase health insurance, will resist the attempt by any governmental jurisdiction to mandate that I purchase or accept health insurance, and will refuse to cooperate in any way with any taxing authority that attempts to enforce such a mandate.
If I am injured I will refuse ambulance service, EMT assistance, and hospital admission. I will refuse all consents for any treatment of any kind. I carry a wallet card stating that I refuse consent and refuse to pay for any services rendered in spite of my wishes.
I will gladly pay taxes to support a national health care program, such as that proposed in HR 676, but contend that any discussion of health care reform in which the word "insurance" is uttered is a blatant fraud. The provision of health care and the protection of the public health (the disregard of which is another shameful aspect of the systemic corruption of our system) are not "insurable" risks -- they are essential public services, period.
If there's a nurses' strike, we'll just be told that there's a nursing shortage and they'll bring in nurses from the Phillipines and other countries, giving them much lower wages and few benefits, if any.
Sioux Rose
DR H: I firmly agree with you on principle, that the forced purchase of insurance given how these companies behave (profit over people) is nothing more than legalized theft or institutionalized extortion. US government today is giving Mafia lessons! Or should be.
My state, New Mexico, has "state coverage insurance" for individuals who are self-employed or whose employers don't provide health insurance (although they were overwhelmed with applicants, so now there's a waiting list). We also have a state-run Medical Insurance Pool where individuals who were denied coverage (because of a pre-existing condition) can get insurance... but then the catch is, if you try to use the insurance to treat the very condition that denied you coverage in the first place, you have to wait! Most people aren't aware that there's a 6-month wait required for treatment of "pre-existing conditions" with health insurance- and assume exceptions must be made for conditions as serious as cancer, etc. But the 6-month wait is required even if you need chemo to battle cancer and waiting 6 months might be a death sentence.
Yet those I talk to who are against "socialized medicine" (they won't listen to discussions about universal healthcare) side with insurance companies, insisting they have a right to get the money upfront- and that the healthcare industry is a business; therefore, healthcare is not a "right." They are completely unmoved by the statistic of 18,000 deaths every year and blame rising costs on scapegoats- like illegal immigrants and those on welfare.
I have a cousin in New Mexico, he's even left-leaning, that gave me the arguments you describe. That it was immigrants and illegal aliens who game the system and drive up all the costs. (I hate that term by the way..."aliens" when you've actually immigrated yourself you realise the fictions that are spread by the racists floating around EVERY nation.)
I think I eventually managed to convince him that, indeed, "socialized medicine" is actually NOT the sure road to the communist dictatorship that so many in the USA fear.
I did it by reminding him which countries, year on year, decade on decade, top the UN lists for the most livable, with the happiest people, who have almost full employment and excellent education. Inevitably he admitted that it was the Scandanavian countries that pull this off. The Fins, the Swedes, the Danes....decade after decade...since at least after WWII.
Now the world has changed a great deal since WWII. In fact probably one can argue changed several times.
Yet despite all these changes these countries STILL manage to maintain their place at the top of these lists. They defy all the American rules. They have high taxes, they have a high degree of socialism, everything in Norway or Sweden is expensive even by UK standards (and believe me folks, the UK is expensive compared to mainland Europe...I know because I go to Switzerland and France all the time.)
Yet somehow people are STILL enjoying some of the highest quality of life, decade after decade, in these countries.
Surely there is something to learn here.
In my work I have met and made good friends with many people from all over the world. When I was a pure AMerican (before I moved to Europe) my European friends would often stare at me aghast and just shake their heads when I'd say some things about capitalism, markets, and freedom.
Now that I have lived in Europe for many years I really do understand why they did that. I find myself doing the same thing to my friends I left behind in the USA.
Nebraska Nathan has a good point. We need to try to convince Americans that civilized countries take care of their sick one person at a time. It cannot happen from above. There is a culture that needs to change.
Thank you for your words of truth and wisdom. I've lived the same problem of dealing with misperceptions which are the "accepted consensus". It is frustrating. And we know there are people who get paid to try to make the masses this ignorant. It's all about profit.
A friend in Massachusetts was told by the state that her insurance (she had health insurance) was inadequate and that she must purchase more or pay a fine. Her insurance company told her the additional coverage would cost another $5000 per year. The fine from the Commonwealth of Mass. was about $1000 a yr. She took the fine. So she's out $1000 and getting nothing for it.
Do people in Massachusetts really put up with such a system? People should simply refuse to pay the fine.
---USAn---
Universal health care- NOW. Call it Medicare For All, I don't care. It's obscene that our country does not have Universal Health Care. We're pretty much the only First World country that does not. I'm sick and tired of people who keep saying "But people with socialized medicine have to wait for care! They have to be approved!" Oh, like your insurance company doesn't disallow all kinds of procedures and make you wait? Wake up, America! Health care is a right, not something that should be capitalistic and profit-making.
I really hate to inform you. But having lived in both the USA and Europe....the USA is actually NOT a first-world country.
Oh we certainly talk the talk.
But we do not walk the walk.
In actual fact the USA is a third world nation. Backward in many ways. With one exception...the military machine.
My own opinion is that Japan and Europe outstripped the USA sometime in the 1980's and are not looking back.
New England Journal of Medicine has been running excellent editorials on US healthcare reform, worth reading:
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/360/9/852
(one example, browse the site for others)
"Reform" is the wrong word when applied to our health care problems. We can't reform what doesn't exist. We need to build a whole health care system from the bottom up - and the only one proposed so far is H.R. 676 - single-payer, government funded and privately delivered.
Insurance companies are not in business to deliver health care. They're in business to make a profit, however they can. Having (for-profit) health insurance coverage in no way assures that you will receive health care.
Any proposal which is built around for-profit health insurance and/or employer-supplied insurance is simply an insurance company bailout and will do nothing to promote decent health care for all. It will waste a lot of money, though, providing CEOs with outlandish remuneration, and stockholders with dividends. This needs to be dispensed with.
I lived in Europe for 20 years, and wish the US would try to catch up.
And, those who are concerned about creating another big federal bureaucracy should realize that there are over 1000 U.S military bases outside the U.S. Talk about an outrageous, out-of-control federal bureaucracy!! How about if we trade a whole bunch of military expenses for a non-profit health care program.
apparently we have no trouble at all establishing a new nationwide federal bureaucracy out of thin air in a matter of months: The Dept of Homeland security. And what do we get for all that money and effort? We get to strip at the airport.
Ralph Nader was for a one payer sysem. You people refused to let him in the
National debates. You believed what you were told by the established order that
is run by the corporatists. We are getting what we deserve. Our industrial base
has been transferred to China and we have no work for our sons, daughters, fathers
brothers, husbands. We and our representatives fell forwhat the Bush and Clinton
Families sold us, work harder and faster, you must compete with third world countries. Bubba Clinton pulled in $500 million dollars from Foreign countries
in the past six months. How much did you pull in? We are in a major depression
and no one will tell you. Your leadership in Washington DC is scared to death
that we might mention China. The Chinese are in the Mid-west buying forclosed
properties. While you were asleep the Bankers were robbing their own banks and
now they want us to repair the damage they caused by giving the banks Trillions
of dollars of our money. Is Obama with us or against us?
President Obama is doing his best I believe. We do need to bring back our manufacturing sector asap and government subsidies would help achieve this. The engine for growth in America is jobs, affordable housing, universal healthcare that is 2 tiered, public and private, a safe food supply, and, most of all, hope to see us through the current depression. Most of all, our country needs to sanction those bailed out industries who have demonstrated bad public will and narcissistic greed at the cost of the American people. This is our time and our country and every American needs to unite and see ourselves collaboratively through this extraordinarily difficult human time.
Freddie...GREAT COMMENT. You said what I was planning to say!