Print
E-mail
Share
digg
Newsvine
Facebook
Stumble
Technorati
reddit
Fark
twitterLETTER TO THE EDITOR:
No reason for anyone to live with no safety net
Sunday, July 26, 2009 | 2:05 a.m.
America should have a national health care system to, at the very least, provide a safety net for everyone. Even if you are fortunate enough to end up at an emergency room, you still have to sign your financial life away before you enter the door. (In the interest of disclosure, I operate a home health care agency.)
I’ve heard it said (more from Republicans) that access to medical care is not a right. With a country so rich, placing a fee on its own peoples’ primary well-being is unconscionable. We are never billed when firefighters or police officers are called out, but when we have a heart attack or physical ailment, you either pay up or die!
Medicine in America is all about money — making profits from other peoples’ misfortune. As a patient, you are at the behest of insurance guidelines that are geared to maintaining the highest profit instead of the best result.
National health systems in most other western countries don’t advertise, they’re not in competition and are geared toward maintenance of good health, so people will use “the system” less.
There are no ads for prescription drugs and public hospitals or institutions. Our insurance companies spend about 20 percent of gross revenue on this.
If you don’t think the limitations of a public system suit you, there’s the hybrid system. Private health insurance companies will give you all the added individualism you want for a fee. But if you lose your job, you still have the safety net.
Most people have never experienced a national health system, so how would they know, other than by listening to all the lies and distortions coming from ads and special interest groups that support the status quo?
If you have good insurance from a company or public service, then you’re set. My main concern is a safety net health care system for the not-so-privileged.
Discussion: 13 comments so far…
Post a comment
- Most Read
- Discussed
- Most E-mailed
- Binion’s to close all 365 rooms, lay off 100 workers
- Ex-NBA star to pay $12,835 monthly in gambling debt case
- “Last Call!”: Two words you wouldn’t expect to hear on The Strip
- Slot makers team up at behest of CityCenter
- Report: 70 percent of homeowners underwater
- Scuffle in pub parking lot leads to attorney’s arrest
- What reactions to Palin, Stewart say about society
- Now, Rebels must build on big Louisville win
- Nevada leads nation in rate of bankruptcy filings
- Rebels enter hoops rankings at No. 24
Blogs
High School Sports Scene
Prep Football: State Championship
Elsewhere
UFC debut in Boston likely July or August (1 Comment)
The Kats Report
Planet Hollywood's Thomas McCartney headed for Tropicana (14 Comments)
Elsewhere
LV woman robs Kentucky strip club, police say (4 Comments)
Las Vegas Sands' Hong Kong IPO flops (3 Comments)
The Kats Report
Monday List: Top 13 Moments and Observations From Thanksgiving Weekend (4 Comments)
Politics: Ralston's Flash
Tarkanian: Reid is liberal, out of touch, rude, poisonously partisan and a know-it-all (21 Comments)
Calendar »
- 2 Wed
- 3 Thu
- 4 Fri
- 5 Sat
- 6 Sun
-
Nic Faniciulli at Godskitchen
Body English | 10:30 p.m. to 11:59 p.m.
-
Mischieve Wednesdays at T&T
Tacos and Tequila
-
Ben Sherman gift bag giveaways at Wasted Space
Wasted Space | 10 p.m. to 11:59 p.m.
The Sun
Locally owned and independent for more than 50 years.
Health care is not just for the lucky or the wealthy.
When money speaks, truth is silent.
Peter Schumann said "Most people have never experienced a national health system, so how would they know, other than by listening to all the lies and distortions coming from ads and special interest groups that support the status quo?"
Any one in the VA system, SCHIP, and Medicare knows directly the failing of the public plan.
The VA service is based on whatever budget get passed each year.
Medicare is unfunded by $37 trillion.
Yet most seniors have to buy a Medicare Supplement because of it lack of coverage.
SCHIP is grossly under subscribed because of it limited coverage.
Obama's attempt to control cost is by paying Doctors, nurses, hospital, and other less money for each medical procedure. Healthcare provider are dropping out of Medicare.
When Medicare pays less than the cost of the service - the cost are shifted to the private insurers. Estimats are for $1200 per year.
Preexisting conditions and mandating buying a plan could be fixed by Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Obama today without the public plan baggage.
What can be said about Obama's arrogance and overconfidence is that Obama is complacent about the details of the bills, that he is prone to ignore fundamental facts and use liberal agenda assumptions, he has an unfocused risk-taking perception, and he takes mental shortcuts to decision making.
Obama distrusts Doctors, Nurses, and insurers and uses slogans like we want Quality Care rather than Volume. What does that mean? Does it mean that a doctor who spends an average of 15 minutes per patient will take 20 minutes but will be paid the same.
In spite of hearing from Obama every day we get the same logorrheic emotion filled audacity and hope but no substance.
Obama has a propensity to find a specialist to conjecture "what if" scenarios. Then he fearmongers about the speculated consequences. Obama has been relentless in attacking for profit insurance companies.
Obama wants to pick whether you can take the red pill or the blue pill; get prolonged treatment or a tonsillectomy.
Every week Obama denies a report by the Congressional Budget office.
Aside from excessive cost and the unwanted public plan, two other key issues Democrat Blue Dogs have is coverage of Illegal Aliens and abortion.
Why is it that we cannot start with a simple healthcare bill that handles the bulk of the concerns most liberal and conservative have - without a public plan -- it would pass
- Give everyone access to tax deductible (same as a business provided deduction) health insurance by, Health Insurance Exchanges and State Cooperatives open to individuals and small employers, require coverage of pre-existing conditions on a new policy, prevent dropping coverage, and paid access to Medicare for early retirement.
- Subsidize transient uncovered people who are laid off (COBRA) and those that earn up to 2 times the poverty level (4 times is too high a threshold).
- Individual mandate - as a minimum everyone has a "minimal essential benefits - catastrophic" healthcare policy.
- Eliminated cost shifting where one plans pricing power gets a lower rate than other less powerful insurers. That is the cost of a red pill is the same for all.
- Impose tort reform to reduce defensive medicine.
- Government investment in innovation and technology.
- Automate Healthcare records to eliminate duplicate tests by multiple doctors.
- Reduce corruption and eliminate billing scams.
Thank you Future...I was trying to explain something similar yesterday and was only derided for my efforts. It's gotta make sense!!!
His main point makes no sense.
"you still have to sign your financial life away before you enter the door."
If you have money then it is dumb for you not to use that money to get insurance. I believe that the majority of the uninsured are young people who choose not to have insurance. They prefer to spend money on partying vs. have health coverage.
If you have very little money then you are risking very little when going through the door. Many of those people will qualify for medicaid or medicare or some charity will pick up most of the bill.
His point holds no water.
The New York City Hospital is a totally government run organization. Read about the deaths and cover ups by government health care workers on the front of the New York Daily News today. It's beyond criminal it's disgusting. Putting government in charge with government health care workers doesn't seem to guarantee anything except a bigger bureaucracy.
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2009...
The healthcare bill does not include any requirements to show proof of citizenship or immigration status of those receiving taxpayer funded health benefits. Restrictions on illegal alien enrollments are not clearly enforced under the House bill. It is very vague and has no enforcement capability to it.
Heller's amendment would have ensured that applicants would have to show eligibility through the Income and Eligibility Verification System and the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system. By using systems that are already in place for Welfare & other benefits, we could have used this to limit fraud and abuse, and make certain that this taxpayer funded healthcare plan is reserved for citizens only. So while democrats say that this healthcare will not be available to illegals, they refuse to take any measures whatsoever to require applicants to establish proof of eligibility.
Obama has already stated his wish for an exception to be made for illegal children.
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/07/21/...
Peter operates a home health care agency. Home health care agencies are making huge profits off govt Medicare. Many of the claims are bogus and fraud is rampant in this field. All agencies have equal access to Medicare patients, so it is a free for all fight to profit off these patients. However, with private insurances, the private companies tightly regulate which few home health companies are allow to take care of their patients. Only the best agencies determined by the insurance companies are contracted with. The govt/Medicare make no determination between good and bad home health agncies. Soooo, Peter would profit hugely if all Americans had govt run non-private health insurance. It is always about money, even when you pretend to be altruistic.
Medicare has already unfunded liabilities of almost $40 trillion, and increasing by $3 million every minute, what happens when the money runs out, rely on charities.
Those of you who are talking like this, wake up to the real world, the good times are over
My greatest concern is for the hard working poor and others including homeless men, women and children. There should be medical care available so that no one goes uncared for.
liberals love this concept because right now, liberals are running the show.
in a few years when conservatives are running the show, they'll be saying "well, you got aids from gay sex... why should our tax dollars cover something that is a sin?"
or "we can't let you pull the plug on your mom because only god has a right to do that and my tax dollars are keeping her alive."
and suddenly national health care will not be such a great idea.
we are not europe or asia.
we have too many stupid bible-thumpers, fast food eaters, and lazy people that do nothing but sit around and smoke and get fat.
Has anyone thought about if we continue paying for health care as we are now, for instance I pay $200.00 a month for the best now let's add in that my parents have now exhausted there life savings for their care and now are in bankruptcy and you have to pick up the cost not only have I had to pick up the cost that could cost my children there college fund but I have lost any Inheritance that I would have been able to pass on to my children and by the way the cost for my parent's care is over $3,200.00 a month each that's more than double what I make so I have to make sure that when they die that they die broke and some how keep me out of bankruptcy.
That reason and the fact that people are dieing is the reason this must be done so we can have a future.
Canada's Awful Health Care System
From http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-web...
How many cases of Hobson's Choice must Americans hear before they realize that they are being colossally ripped off; that the pay-or-die option so generously offered by the medical and drug industry actually, really does not represent the best care in the world? All the fear-mongering, political obstruction and verbal gymnastics opponents of a national health care plan for the United States have been spewing are nothing more than frantic attempts to keep money in the bottomless pockets of Big Pharma. And the stranglehold the pharmaceutical industry has on the country is the same one the banks have, tenaciously hanging onto their primacy as the physical well-being of the country it professes to care about ebbs away.
In fact, the greatest threat to the health of individuals in the US is the lack of a nationalized, affordable health care program. Why the spin to cast it as socialist or downright deadly? Because to some, it ain't medicine which makes you live a better life.
It's money.
And that's the only reason everyone from the Blue Dog to the fair and balanced Fox hates the idea of people paying less and ultimately becoming healthier and detached from Big Pharma's slow drip.
And listen, Canadians also seem to have skirted (for now, anyway) the housing and real estate crisis which has gripped its big shot, big-assed cousin by their wallets. Canadians are still making tidy profits on sales and construction, the same ones Americans enjoyed for so many years of blissful indulgence. Only, the Canadians have hold of their senses. And it shows in their stable economy and satisfied health care recipients.
And once again, ONCE AGAIN (Zeus, it is so boring to have to say it over and over) the obvious need for universal health care, the kind that works so well in most other technologically advanced countries, is prevented from being implemented by the same folks whose job, apparently, is to obfuscate the necessities rightfully due all American citizens; who brought us the tragically corrupt morass in Iraq; who instigated the unregulated banking fiasco; who toil in the dark cause of relentless profiteering while cynically cloaked as Conservatism, as Republicanism, as reliable news and information, as food and drug regulation -- you name it, they corrupt it. The people who want to bring health care down want to bring you down.
From up north it's easy to see the cure for what ails.