8 thoughts on “Why the political debate about health care is insulting to us all”
On CNBC this morning the panel was going to discuss wether or not investing in health insurance stocks is a go or no go. Need I say more.
Yes, I need say more.
Why is it called health insurance? Everyone gets sick and will have to see a doctor. Shouldn’t we simply call it health care.
On Friday my brother-in-law went into a Tucson hospital to have his gall bladder removed. After the surgery, while on his way to recovery, his EKG started going nuts, so they rushed him back to the OR. He was having a heart attack, and he actually died on the table, but they revived him and put a stent into an artery next to his heart. He spent the next couple days in ICU. (Incidentally, he had a previous heart attack maybe a year ago.) Today (Monday) they sent him home. Heart surgery Friday, ICU all week-end, then home on Monday. Want to guess who dictated that decision?
I was impressed to learn (from a PBS special about health care systems around the world) that, in Japan, they give the doctors big bonuses for keeping their patients healthy and successfully managing their patients’ health conditions (such as diabetes, hypertension, etc.). Thus, it behooves your doctor to keep you healthy. In our system it seems to behoove our health care providers (especially the pharmacy industry) to keep us sick. The Japanese system may not be perfect, but over there you can always see a doctor the same day, and you don’t need referrals to go to a specialist. Administrative costs were in the low single digits, where ours are now pushing 30%. (A hospital stay in Japan runs $10 per night for a room with 4 beds, $90 for a private room.)
In all the countries they examined (England, Japan, Taiwan, Switzerland, etc.), they asked if (or how many of) the people in those countries ever declare bankruptcy due to medical bills. Across the board, the answer was an unequivocal, even a resounding: “NO! Never! No one! It would be a scandal!” and so forth. What is the American statistic these days? Medical bills underlie about 60% of all American bankruptcies now, and in about 75% of those cases, the people had health insurance, but were still overwhelmed by the medical debts. (Of course, after that, their credit is trashed for years, so they can’t buy houses or cars, or send their kids to college, etc.) Sometimes it’s only a single medical incident, but it’s crushing families, and robbing them of their futures.
Scandal indeed. Shameful. Absolutely shameful. And yet, the debate rages. Why does the opposition cling to tightly to their position? It is ever so short-sighted not to see the real costs of our health care system–it takes a collective toll on our economy and our society. I get why the insurance and pharmacy lobbies debate it, but the rest of society? Is the propaganda that strong? (BTW, most of those other systems were not Socialistic.)
We could do it. We could take care of everyone. How to pay for it? Well, of course, the appropriate sweeping changes would save more than they would cost, but what if we also stopped spending $1,000,000 a year for EACH soldier we send to Afghanistan? (O.K., O.K., the Pentagon swears it’s only half a million per soldier, not the full million other sources claim it to be.) That’s not going to the soldiers, of course, but rather to the infrastructure required to train, transport, equip, and keep them there. And now they want 40,000 more soldiers. Let’s see…. 40k x 1 million (or even half that) = a nation falling apart at the seams, crumbling from the inside out, in nearly every possible way, and going deeper and deeper into debt every second.
Oh dear, now I really am getting on my soapbox. Forgive me. These are issues very near and dear to my heart, and I get riled so easily.
What part of the health care reform legislation now in the house or senate would have helped your brother?
As I understand it the ‘public option’ part of both bills would REQUIRE everyone to purchase $6000.00 per year insurance under penalty of incarceration for non compliance.
Indigents who make less than $40,000 per year ($80,000 in some versions of the bill) would have their insurance paid for by the government.
Several months ago Obama held a meeting with many heads of the insurance industry and, I believe, made a deal with them about the contents of the ‘reform’ that would be passed. That meeting resulted in the ‘Baucus’ proposal in the senate today. Our politicians, also, won’t be able to resist adding things to the bill like Sen. Landrieu did.
I think the fix is in. All the insurance required by the new law would be more business for the current insurance companies. So payments by the government for insurance for ‘indigents’ would be just U.S. citizen’s tax money flowing straight to the insurance company’s pockets.
I think the best thing to do about ‘health care reform’ is to NOT DO ANYTHING!
Yep, let us simply bury our heads in a bucket of sand you glupak prostak!
I bet you did really well in school, Ephraim.
Ten-year-old Ephraim: “The answer to number eleven is 156.”
Teacher: “No, you don’t have it quite right. Look at your work and try again.”
Ten-year-old Ephraim: “Nope. Oh well.”
(Meanwhile, two classmates die of cancer.)
You and John seem to be saying that bad law is better than no law.
Is that true?
If you like some provisions of the proposed law (as far as anyone knows about it) tell us what they are. Let us judge for ourselves if the positives you and John see overweigh the negatives I see.
Ephraim, if you think I would spend even 30 seconds trying to explain anything about the health care bill to you, you must not have read any of your own comments on this web site.
I recently had a great experience with Presbyterian Health Care here in Albuquerque. I honestly think it should be the national model – in other words, single payer.
I have Pres insurance. I got sick, I went to the Pres Urgent Care Center. From there, they transferred me to the ER. I was in the hospital for a total of 6 days, and I practically had to beg my doctor to send me home, he wanted to make sure everything was fine before letting me go. I went to my Pres primary care doctor a few days later, she had all of my test results, etc., she could just pull them up online in the system. While I was in the hospital, my hospital doctor and my Primary Care physician talked to each other on the phone a few times, and made some plans for my follow up care. I needed further testing, the secretary for my Primary Care doctor called the specialist and made my appointment. It was all incredibly seamless. They all work in the same system, and their goal was the same – getting me well. They didn’t have to worry that they weren’t going to get paid, because they work for the payer.
I don’t think this would work on a national scale, but a network of similar mini-systems might. In any case, I am glad I didn’t have to put up with the insurance company rushing me out the door.
On CNBC this morning the panel was going to discuss wether or not investing in health insurance stocks is a go or no go. Need I say more.
Yes, I need say more.
Why is it called health insurance? Everyone gets sick and will have to see a doctor. Shouldn’t we simply call it health care.
On Friday my brother-in-law went into a Tucson hospital to have his gall bladder removed. After the surgery, while on his way to recovery, his EKG started going nuts, so they rushed him back to the OR. He was having a heart attack, and he actually died on the table, but they revived him and put a stent into an artery next to his heart. He spent the next couple days in ICU. (Incidentally, he had a previous heart attack maybe a year ago.) Today (Monday) they sent him home. Heart surgery Friday, ICU all week-end, then home on Monday. Want to guess who dictated that decision?
I was impressed to learn (from a PBS special about health care systems around the world) that, in Japan, they give the doctors big bonuses for keeping their patients healthy and successfully managing their patients’ health conditions (such as diabetes, hypertension, etc.). Thus, it behooves your doctor to keep you healthy. In our system it seems to behoove our health care providers (especially the pharmacy industry) to keep us sick. The Japanese system may not be perfect, but over there you can always see a doctor the same day, and you don’t need referrals to go to a specialist. Administrative costs were in the low single digits, where ours are now pushing 30%. (A hospital stay in Japan runs $10 per night for a room with 4 beds, $90 for a private room.)
In all the countries they examined (England, Japan, Taiwan, Switzerland, etc.), they asked if (or how many of) the people in those countries ever declare bankruptcy due to medical bills. Across the board, the answer was an unequivocal, even a resounding: “NO! Never! No one! It would be a scandal!” and so forth. What is the American statistic these days? Medical bills underlie about 60% of all American bankruptcies now, and in about 75% of those cases, the people had health insurance, but were still overwhelmed by the medical debts. (Of course, after that, their credit is trashed for years, so they can’t buy houses or cars, or send their kids to college, etc.) Sometimes it’s only a single medical incident, but it’s crushing families, and robbing them of their futures.
Scandal indeed. Shameful. Absolutely shameful. And yet, the debate rages. Why does the opposition cling to tightly to their position? It is ever so short-sighted not to see the real costs of our health care system–it takes a collective toll on our economy and our society. I get why the insurance and pharmacy lobbies debate it, but the rest of society? Is the propaganda that strong? (BTW, most of those other systems were not Socialistic.)
We could do it. We could take care of everyone. How to pay for it? Well, of course, the appropriate sweeping changes would save more than they would cost, but what if we also stopped spending $1,000,000 a year for EACH soldier we send to Afghanistan? (O.K., O.K., the Pentagon swears it’s only half a million per soldier, not the full million other sources claim it to be.) That’s not going to the soldiers, of course, but rather to the infrastructure required to train, transport, equip, and keep them there. And now they want 40,000 more soldiers. Let’s see…. 40k x 1 million (or even half that) = a nation falling apart at the seams, crumbling from the inside out, in nearly every possible way, and going deeper and deeper into debt every second.
Oh dear, now I really am getting on my soapbox. Forgive me. These are issues very near and dear to my heart, and I get riled so easily.
What part of the health care reform legislation now in the house or senate would have helped your brother?
As I understand it the ‘public option’ part of both bills would REQUIRE everyone to purchase $6000.00 per year insurance under penalty of incarceration for non compliance.
Indigents who make less than $40,000 per year ($80,000 in some versions of the bill) would have their insurance paid for by the government.
Several months ago Obama held a meeting with many heads of the insurance industry and, I believe, made a deal with them about the contents of the ‘reform’ that would be passed. That meeting resulted in the ‘Baucus’ proposal in the senate today. Our politicians, also, won’t be able to resist adding things to the bill like Sen. Landrieu did.
I think the fix is in. All the insurance required by the new law would be more business for the current insurance companies. So payments by the government for insurance for ‘indigents’ would be just U.S. citizen’s tax money flowing straight to the insurance company’s pockets.
I think the best thing to do about ‘health care reform’ is to NOT DO ANYTHING!
Yep, let us simply bury our heads in a bucket of sand you glupak prostak!
I bet you did really well in school, Ephraim.
Ten-year-old Ephraim: “The answer to number eleven is 156.”
Teacher: “No, you don’t have it quite right. Look at your work and try again.”
Ten-year-old Ephraim: “Nope. Oh well.”
(Meanwhile, two classmates die of cancer.)
You and John seem to be saying that bad law is better than no law.
Is that true?
If you like some provisions of the proposed law (as far as anyone knows about it) tell us what they are. Let us judge for ourselves if the positives you and John see overweigh the negatives I see.
Ephraim, if you think I would spend even 30 seconds trying to explain anything about the health care bill to you, you must not have read any of your own comments on this web site.
I recently had a great experience with Presbyterian Health Care here in Albuquerque. I honestly think it should be the national model – in other words, single payer.
I have Pres insurance. I got sick, I went to the Pres Urgent Care Center. From there, they transferred me to the ER. I was in the hospital for a total of 6 days, and I practically had to beg my doctor to send me home, he wanted to make sure everything was fine before letting me go. I went to my Pres primary care doctor a few days later, she had all of my test results, etc., she could just pull them up online in the system. While I was in the hospital, my hospital doctor and my Primary Care physician talked to each other on the phone a few times, and made some plans for my follow up care. I needed further testing, the secretary for my Primary Care doctor called the specialist and made my appointment. It was all incredibly seamless. They all work in the same system, and their goal was the same – getting me well. They didn’t have to worry that they weren’t going to get paid, because they work for the payer.
I don’t think this would work on a national scale, but a network of similar mini-systems might. In any case, I am glad I didn’t have to put up with the insurance company rushing me out the door.