Health Care Bill Must be Passed for the Sake of Humanity: Michael Kirschner
I know I have invited debate in the past over my political posts, however here I ask that commentators save their articles for Colleen’s article. This post will be my feelings on the issue; I invite comments but this will not be a debate post. My debates will return so if you guys are missing them (all one of you), don’t worry they will return.
This health care bill is the most important issue of the century. Debate over this represents a fight between corporate greed and the people who are taken advantage of by this greed. Whatever happens here will determine whether corporations can continue to abuse and murder or if the people will rise up and say enough is enough. There will be setbacks but the bill must be passed for the sake of humanity. The United States is the only developed nation that does not have universal health care. We live in a country where people are denied treatment because they do not have enough money so their lives are not worth an investment. How can you call yourself a citizen of a developed country when you will willfully allow your own people to die?
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All I can say is: living in a country where we have Universal Healthcare, I could not imagine being somewhere where I didnt.
When I was last in the states with family my brother slipped and sprained his wrist badly. It cost $300 for the x rays and I think it was $150 for the wrist support. Thankfully we had health insurance for the travel, but you know, if we hadn’t, we’d have been high and dry.
Everyone has a right to their own health, and alot of hardworking people are denied by the extortionate costs of a completely privatised system.
A system like that here, with a National Health Service and a privatised option is ultimately the only way forward - those who can afford to pay will be treated faster yes, but those who can’t should not be shut out completely by the corporate greed of the select chosen few.
Just before anyone chimes in pointing out our system isn’t perfect either, I’m gonna apologise for double posting and THEN gonna preempt that comment, and entirely agree with you. Of course its not perfect. There will never be ONE perfect solution, but hey, it does the job, and ultimately thats what matters.
Let me chime in also from an international perspective.
I’m a dual citizen of the US & the Philippines. I was born in the Philippines and grew up in the States but got my medical degree and am licensed to practice medicine in the Philippines.
In the Philippines, there is no universal healthcare and the cost of insurance for the common folk is prohibitively expensive. If you receive health benefits through your work, you’re fortunate; but it’s not guaranteed that they’ll cover everything. For the most part, patients pay out of pocket in cash.
For this reason people will tend to skimp on their health. They’ll stop antibiotic treatment after a few days when they start feeling well instead of completing it, leading to antibiotic resistant pathogens. On medical missions to rural areas, I once came across a woman who pretty much was dying of breast cancer but couldn’t get treatment due to cost. She came in asking for vitamins. It broke my heart.
There has to be reform. If costs continue to rise for health care in the US, this is the road we will be traveling. The cost of your insurance or deductible or co-pay will increase for the same or less coverage. Eventually, you’ll be priced out of decent or any coverage. And despite whatever fear or disdain some of you may have for the government, the reform needs to be legislated. Do you honestly think insurance companies will do anything unless forced to? Remember, these are for-profit companies. If it came down to making money or making sure you have affordable coverage, which do you think they’ll choose?
Bigger government may not be the answer to everything, but it has to step in and crack a few heads when it’s in the best interests of the citizenry. And when it comes to the rising cost of health care and the lack of coverage for Americans, it has a moral obligation to see to the needs of the people. Or else what I’ve seen and experienced in a 3rd-world country will happen here.
The question we have to ask ourselves is how much government control is too much? At what point will proponents of this health care reform say the government is too controlling? If the government sad “Ok citizens, we have developed a medicine that makes everyone live to be 150 years old. The only catch is, you have to live how WE instruct you to live.” What would you do? Personally I would rather have liberty and deal with corrupt corporations and be able to vote with my dollar, than risk giving a very corruptible government entity control over my life.
Sure the current system has problems, but they are problems that WE can work to fix rather than entrust it to the government, who has proven time and time again that they mismanage everything they touch! It’s amazing to me that people think that a government that has screwed up every social program it has ever created will somehow handle public healthcare wonderfully.
Let us vote with our dollar, keep our taxes low, so we will be able to GIVE to those that can’t take care of themselves.
Just my opinion.
@Steve: I’m just curious what you mean when you say “they are problems that WE can work to fix rather than entrust it to the government.”
I guess what I mean is what can a regular worker who gets their health insurance through their job do to keep their insurance costs low? Will the insurance industry listen to us as individuals or will it need the collective power of the citizenry of the US in the form of the government for them to pay any attention to us?
And as for your statement, “If the government sad ‘Ok citizens, we have developed a medicine that makes everyone live to be 150 years old. The only catch is, you have to live how WE instruct you to live.’ What would you do?”; change the word “government” to “insurance company” and you pretty much have the current situation for many Americans.
@ManilaRaf: Here are a few things we can do to improve the quality and prices of health insurance.
1.Stop abusing insurance. This goes for both the patient and care providers. When people go to the doctor with the sniffles for a work excuse and pay a $25 copay it drives up the cost of insurance. Also, care providers have been known to charge more for a service if the patient has insurance. These abuses can be corrected largely by educating people of their effects. The thing is, even if we have a government option the abuse will continue and since the government will artificially keep prices low, the quality of health care will decline.
2.Shop around. There are different kinds of health insurance plans out there. One of my favorites is the Health Savings Account plan, or HSA. If you have an HSA plan with a $1500 deductible, you are responsible for the first $1500 out of pocket, then the insurance company pays 80 to 100 percent after that, depending on your plan. Rates for these plans are usually much lower than conventional plans, mostly because they aren’t abused as much. This type of plan also promotes the patient to shop around for their care providers, because it is their own money they are spending.
3.Vote with your dollar. Don’t buy health insurance from a company that has policies you don’t agree with. Don’t go to a Doctor that is known to overcharge for services. People think that since it’s health care that they can’t shop around. I accidentally cut my finger once and I shopped around to get it sewn up. People thought I was nuts but I got it all done for $225 cash.
4.Be charitable. By supporting and promoting reputable charitable organizations we work towards taking care of those who cannot take care of themselves. The Access Project, The Children’s Health Fund and The Medi-Corp Health System are just a few organizations that take care of the needy with health issues.
Just these few things will go great lengths in making our current health care system better.
As to your changing the word “government” with “insurance company”, my main point is this: Once the government gains power, it NEVER recedes it. The federal income tax was supposed to go away after WWII, and we see how that turned out. I can stop paying money to support an insurance company without the risk of being fined and thrown into a cage, that isn’t the case when you are dealing with the government.
Maybe I missed something but I thought that the bill that passed the day before Christmas eliminated the public option. This would mean that everyone would have to buy into a private insurance, which will increase premiums like woah and if you didn’t have insurance, you’d get fined, much like if you don’t have auto insurance. How on earth is this bill that caters to private insurance companies - the very corrupt ones the change is supposed to be about fixing - humane? That’s still catering to “corporate greed” and hypocritical of the change we were promised. I don’t disagree we need change but it just seems to be change for the sake of giving someone a legacy, even if it’s more corrput.
2 articles I’ve read which reference there’s no public option, in case anyone is wondering where I got my intel from (they’re both from yesterday) : http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-hamsher/dear-president-obama-time_b_429649.html and http://elections.firedoglake.com/2010/01/20/ny-01-bishop-47-altschuler-45-adding-public-option-makes-mandate-26-more-popular-with-republicans/
P.S. No one who comes into my office is EVER denied care and you may not know this, but in the ER or Urgent Cares, it is also illegal to deny someone treatment. You make it sound like the US is a 3rd world country where if you walk into an ER, they’ll just turn people out into the street if they can’t present an insurance card. Work at a hospital or a doctor’s office for a little while and you’ll see that it really is not like that.
The solution to the health care system needs to start, not with the doctors and insurance companies but rather the lawyers who pursue outrageous malpractice suits which then drive up doctors insurance rates and health insurance rates. I’m always in shock when I read about a jury that awarded a family some ridiculously high judgement against a doctor or hospital. Sure, mistakes are made by doctors and some of them could have been prevented, but some of these awards are just way too high.
And it’s also the lawyers who are to blame for the 2000+ page bill that’s currently being debated. I find it hard to believe that it takes that many pages to come up with a health plan that would work.
There’s nothing wrong with a 2,000+ page bill sometimes simple isn’t always better especially in law when you have to cover all your bases.
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