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Let’s Get America’s Health Out of the ER
It's time for a constructive debate about health care that hinges on facts instead of fear.
Let's have no more circus-type antics in our town halls or perpetuating silly myths about how "big government wants to kill grandma." Or warnings that "Non-American, Hitler-emulating President Obama has a communist agenda to take away our Medicare." Let's instead take a mature look at some hard truths about the major economic crisis our nation now faces: an unsustainable, costly and ineffective for-profit health care system.
For those frantic tea-baggers, fearfully believing that health care reform will destroy our terrific industry-run system, here's a reality check: What we have now gives us a World Health Organization ranking of a shameful 37th in quality healthcare systems worldwide. An astonishing 60% of all personal bankruptcies are due to medical bills.
We currently spend six to seven percent more of our GDP (about $1 trillion) more than other advanced democracies who rank considerably higher on the quality scale and to leave nearly 50 million of our citizens without any health coverage at all.
According to the National Coalition on Health Care, at least 1.5 million people lose their homes annually due to high health care costs, and that number is rising.
A new U.S. study recently showed that many Americans are forced to go without needed meals and medicine due to the burden of high medical costs.
Studies estimate that one-third of all adult Americans with chronic illnesses, in need of health care, can't afford it.
Here's a news flash, folks: Insurance company profits stand between you and your doctor, and your health care is rationed. And guess what else? Taxpayers already pay for the uninsured, undocumented, and others. Because we have failed to pass universal health care in this country, we already pay about $1,100 per family to cover the uninsured.
As a nation, we are in the emergency room in desperate need for someone to stop the bleeding.
President Barack Obama must lead on this issue, and Congress needs to come up with sane legislation that will: 1) Provide universal, affordable quality health care; 2) make the patient's health, not private industry's profit margins, the top priority; and 3) keep costs down to an affordable and sustainable level.
Thankfully Obama did "call out" some of the myths about death panels and decimating Medicare. Also worthy of praise was the elevating of our national dialogue to once again our moral character and our humane duty to fellow human beings, notwithstanding the lack of concern for the health of persons without citizenship.
Unfortunately, as Obama appears to be wavering on a public as an important piece of health care reform, we're now seeing the Senate follow suit. Instead of a robust public plan that could genuinely have the muscle to insure all in our country and force the for-profit private health industry to drive down their costs to compete, we're being offered a weak and ineffective regional "co-op option." Sadly, such regional co-ops will be too small and their bargaining power too weak to accomplish critical cost reduction in the private insurance realm, and will suffer a sure death due to becoming the dumping ground for all of the private industry's rejects.
Had our country started the debate with the facts, honestly examining a "single payer" option and various health care systems of countries that do it far better than we do, we might be in a better place.
Instead, we remain, as a nation, in the ER with no plan to stop the bleeding.
This article was distributed by Minuteman Media.
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17 Comments so far
Show AllPerfect point. That's what I say to people who say we can't afford a public option. We are failing to count the cost of all those who currently use the emergency room for their health care.
"Thankfully Obama did call out some of the myths about death panels...".
Give me a break. If Obama had started the discussion at single-payer rather than letting the US Congress, insurance and drug companies start the discussion, Obama would not have had to go on the defensive at the 11th hour and address myths while introducing a nebulous public option as the best we could hope for and reminding us that even that marginal compromise was unlikely to emerge.
The proposed health care 'reform' bill: Tax credits for individuals making < 22K, 22-44K, 44-88K--88K and beyond, required to BUY INSURANCE with no credit offered. All uninsured will be required to PURCHASE INSURANCE. Depending on income and credits it will cost anywhere from a 10-16% of gross income. The penalties for NOT PURCHASING INSURANCE will be anywhere from $1500-$3200 (relating to the Latest bill being proposed). The extent of 'coverage' has yet to be ironed out, including deductibles and co-pays and/or limitations thereof.
Wow, this is a corporate bill if there ever was one! Just what we need, another mandated insurance bill, like auto insurance. This will create an even bigger mess than the one we have now, making things far worse in the long run. Seems to me that it will ADD more useless paperwork as well. Additionally, Americans will have their most intimate info collected in a central data base. And do you trust them with it?
The sad thing that so many people refuse to see is that we are trying to support an industry in a free market model that simply does not work in that type of model. Any industry that grows at a rate several times the rate of inflation is unsustainable. It is very, very simple math. Anybody without the blinders of "everything has to be free market" dogma can clearly see it.
Lets compare automobiles to health insurance policies. Over the last 30 years cars have gotten safer, pollute less, and get better gas mileage. They also have a ton of new features that no one even thought of putting in a car 30 years ago. They have done all that while keeping cars affordable to the middle class.
Compare that to health insurance. Over the last 30 years premiums have skyrocketed, while the benefits paid out have gotten worse. People now have to pay thousands of dollars in co-pays, deductibles, have to worry about being dropped when they get sick, or not being able to get insurance because of pre existing conditions. Fewer of the middle class can even afford these new crappy policies.
Now if the auto industry followed the health insurance model you would now be buying a car from a manufacture but it would not come with an interior or windows. You would have to pay for those as separate out of pocket expenses. And oh yea, it would cost you 5 times as much as your last car did, that actually came with an interior and windows.
Forcing people to buy insurance under the current model is simply a bail out to keep the current mess going for a few more years. It's just kicking the can down the road, period. Anybody that can't see that needs to take their blinders off. The health insurance industry needs a radical change, by either going to NOT for profit HEAVILY regulated private insurance companies, or Medicare for all, which will also need a lot of unnecessary fat cut out of it. Both models have been shown to be successful in other countries.
If you remember long ago we had privately run fire departments. You bought a tag from them and put it on your house. If your house caught fire and you had one of those tags on it the fire department would put out the fire. If it didn't they would let it burn down. The problem with that, aside from being a pretty heartless policy, was that entire neighborhoods could also burn down.
So it was decided fire departments should be a government service, and I think most reasonable people would agree that it worked out pretty well for the common good of the average citizen. Think of where we would be at if we followed the private health insurance model, where publicly traded, for profit, private fire companies provided that service, while trying to deal with the pressure that Wall Street would put on them for high, ever increasing profits?
Please don't start saying it's government regulations causing Health Insurance to be so expensive. Remember, cars are safer, get better gas milage, and pollute less because they were regulated to do so by the government.
I really don't know how much simpler and clearer this argument can be made. I really don't. I simply cant understand why so many people can't see what is so obvious.
"Thankfully Obama did "call out" some of the myths about death panels and decimating Medicare. "
Any politician will pull silly stunts like that in speeches. Death panels are already in full force thanks to Big Pharma/Insurance and there's no intention of putting the breaks on them. As for decimating Medicare, it's still there. It's just that some tricks are probably being put in place to still defund Medicare but slowly and from different angles. They know that seniors are not so easy to mess around with and that they know when they are getting robbed and will fight back pretty quick.
The irony is that my Republican congressman is suddenly doing the case making for seniors on Medicare and he was the same one who said "personal accounts" for SS were ok, that seniors won't fret about the retirement age going up a year or two, and that despite some of his discomforts with Dubya's prescription drug bill seniors will fly !
I don't think Obama or for that matter most pols in Washington care about getting Medicare out of the red but allowing it to bleed so that people will say "get rid of it" !
The tax payer should own the hospital and all that's in it!
All the facilities and supplies in the hospital are bought through GSA contracts where the manufacturers maintain their products according to the contract.
NO CHARGE for using any of the facilities or supplies there in, for any person! Any local family practitioner can send patients to the local hospital for tests with out charge.
Each community is responsible for finding it's own administration and staff to run these facilities.
This would allow medical people to concentrate on practicing medicine and doing the job they went to school for. It should also allow them to make more money!
Some good ideas here. Worth developing further.
Single Payer was never on the table in the Obama White House or Congress because they are not accountable to us-- they are trying to appear that they are but we all know who their real masters are. Obama saying that he wanted to hear all sides while turning his back on Single Payer is perhaps the most blatant hypocrisy but not the only one. When it was scored in 03 Single Payer passed Obama's prime criteria--it was deficit neutral. It has yet to receive a scoring by this Congress or this White House. Obviously deficit neutrality is not the most important criteria-- allowing insurance companies to keep their profits.. that's what is really most important-- to this Congress and to this President. After they get their cut we can talk about "reform." and what is left for the rest of us.
Do you want to see a private insurance company death panel? Check out this link:
http://www.debbiesstaffing.com/Worldlink/main.aspx?action=
SearchOpportunitiesDetail&mode=initial&id=73814&index=8
It's a stinking "Medical Claims Denial Specialist" They actually have a job where that is all that someone does is deny claims. How sick is that! That would have to take a toll on anyone with a conscience.
I always thought that a job like that would be just a part of someone's other responsibilities, not their main one.
11.39 an hour job & great benefits if you don't have to co-pay! Don't you love living in a depressed state?
Just think of the power you can wield. Think of the money your are saving your boss!
The ONLY plan on the table is "The Insurance Company Protection Bill". I'm glad I voted for Nader.
Death panels ? What a curious idea.
Let's see. The last century is known as the bloodiest in human history. At least 250 million human beings were killed often in the most cruel ways. Just since 1945 the US has killed around 25 million human beings. Makes you proud doesn't it ?
Sadly it wasn't the insurance companies or your neighbor down the street, or the thugs on the street corner that did the killing, but governments....even ours.
Would you rather have a doctor paid by an insurance company cutting on you or perhaps....the Speaker of the House?
Your choice.
are you for real? yes, our government sent our military to kill but it is the insurance companies who are denying medical care or pricing people out of the doctors' offices....
Where does medical care come from? God ? Mother Earth ? Should I pay my own bills or should I have the government force you to pay for it ? Governments do two things...they steal from some to give to others (with a handling charge of 50%) and they kill people.
Of course bootsie is for real. These insurance companies should die because, when faced with the outrageous medical costs the monopoly was engineering, they decided to take it out on their customers rather than demand the FDA stop banning low cost, effective treatments. They also could have done research to demonstrate the effectiveness of those that are not banned (they're not banned because the research has not been done so they are no threat to the monopoly; once the research is done, then they are banned). But they are not the cause of the problem. The cause is outrageous costs run up by the medical monopoly--hospitals, AMA, Big Pharma, medical supplies.
The gov't has also contributed to the problem. Small businesses were not allowed to pool resources to get better rates. HMOs are a gov't creation. My chiropractor used to charge $5 less if you paid cash. The state regulators made her stop: "It wasn't fair to insurance companies". And the FDA has committed crimes against the people under every President no matter what party. Also, many gov't run systems around the world are starting to have problems due to these same forces.
As far as I can tell, the only way to break this monopoly and cut back insurance company income is to stop the FDA and for insurance to have large deductibles and everyone has Medical Savings Accounts, including Medicare and Medicaid recipients. Medicaid recipients would be given their accounts and it would be their decision how to spend it. Costs would start to plummet. Paying cash for primary care and having access to information and currently banned treatments would do it. Then we can talk about public options. There are medical practices that have gone to all cash. Their prices have dropped 30-50% and their incomes have stayed the same or gone up.
If we don't break the monopoly we will never get any useful health care. The medical monopoly is a fraud. The latest? All that prostate screening which resulted in untold numbers of pills popped and surgeries performed did not improve outcomes. And, if you're over 65, the best statistical outcome results from doing nothing! Start researching natural medicine, functional medicine, or nutritional
medicine for some eyeopeners. Google "FDA bans pyridoxamine"
Choice, perhaps, but not the one you present, and not an either|or.
Just because militaries kill does not mean that businesses do not.
Let's get Grassley (IA) and Baucus (MT) out of the Senate.
Among many others, these two are among the most petrified, self-interested, ignorant, and calcified—and the most obstructionist on the matter of health insurance reform.