Pro vs Con: A Look At Health Care

If government can run health care so well, why is Medicare going bankrupt? Medicare has worked for 40 years. But the price pressures driving up costs in the private health care system affect Medicare as well. Medicare actually has lower overhead than private health insurance. And if we design a comprehensive program to cover all Americans, we can save $1 trillion over the next 10 years. That will get health care costs under control and stabilize Medicare. more pro vs con >>

the CASE: Campaign for America’s Future Pro vs Con Series

You think health care is expensive now, wait until it’s ‘free.’

Guaranteeing affordable health care choices for all will require some tax revenues?$50 to 100 billion per year depending on the plan?plus modest contributions from companies and individuals. But it will save us $1 trillion in health care spending. We?ll be able to slash administrative costs, emphasize preventative care, reduce emergency room visits and cut down on unnecessary procedures with electronic medical records. more pro vs con >>

Truth Hurts… But Obama Is Owned By Big Money Influence

June 25, 2008
www.votenader.org

www.officialnaderstore.com

Senator Obama said earlier today that I haven’t been paying attention to his campaign.

Actually, I have.

And it’s clear from Senator Obama’s campaign that he is not willing to tackle the white power structure - whether in the form of the corporate power structure or many of the super-rich - who are taking advantage of 100 million low income Americans who are suffering in poverty or near poverty.

Senator Obama is opposed to single payer national health insurance.

Why?

Because he favors the health insurance giants over the millions of Americans in poverty or near poverty who are uninsured or under-insured. Eighteen thousand Americans die every year because they cannot afford health insurance, according to the Institute of Medicine.

Senator Obama wants to expand the military budget which is loaded with waste, fraud and abuse - instead of cutting it and investing the long ignored peace dividend in the inner cities with good jobs and public works - including schools, clinics, and libraries.

Why?

Because he fears and favors those thousands of lobbyists in charge of enlarging the military industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us against.

Senator Obama says he favors a living wage. But he doesn’t say he would immediately increase the minimum wage to $10 an hour, which is the equivalent of the 1968 minimum wage adjusted for inflation - because by doing so he would offend the big corporations who exploit labor in places like Wal-Mart and fast food chains. (The minimum wage needs to be increased immediately, not phased in over a number of years, as Senator Obama would have it.)

So Senator Obama, let’s get specific.

We’re looking for deeds, not, as Shakespeare put it, words, words, mere words.

Your public career, which I have also been paying attention to, is long on words, and short on action when it comes to consumer protection, cracking down on corporate crime, curbing the violence of toxic environmental racism, and extending clean, affordable public transit, among other issues.

For the purposes of the here and now, three things:

One, why don’t you support single payer national health insurance, which is supported by a majority of doctors and the American people?

Two, why do you favor expanding the military budget which is replete with waste, fraud and abuse?

And three, why don’t you come out and support an immediate increase of the minimum wage to $10 an hour?

When can we expect the authenticity of hope and change?
Your contribution could be doubled. Public campaign financing may match your contribution total up to $250.

Your Tax Dollar: Better Used for Iraq or Health care?

B’Man: Our illustriously Bush suck-up leadership in Congress is spending your money again. They are taking your hard earned dollars, stealing the “taxed” portion, then spending that money on Iraq and the Military Industrial Complex’s insatiable need for more and MORE.

I wonder if you rednecks could think of a better way to spend our money than on an illegal invasion that you were lied to to accept and endorse? How about health care?

If someone were to ask you how to spend the money you give the government, would you select Iraq as the beneficiary? Would you select any freaking country or military base that wasn’t in America?

Neither would I.

Norman Solomon has an excellent article in which he suggests that our piss-poor health care system, totally dependent upon and financed through profit-driven motives, is a better investment than Iraq. If you disagree, could you take the time to explain why?

Fund Health Care, Not War

By Norman Solomon, AlterNet.

Speaking in a time of war, Martin Luther King Jr. said: “Somehow this madness must cease.”

Forty-one years later, young soldiers are returning to the United States from terrifying zones of carnage. The old claims of a justified war have melted away. So have the promises of a humane society back home.

Statistics about the war dead tell us very little about human realities. And familiar downbeat numbers about health care — 47 million Americans with no health insurance, perhaps an equal number woefully under-insured — tell us very little about the actual consequences or other options.

“The shocking facts about health care in the United States are well known,” Yes! Magazine noted in the autumn of 2006. “There’s little argument that the system is broken. What’s not well known is that the dialogue about fixing the health-care system is just as broken.”

That’s an apt description. For all the media focus and political rhetoric on health care, the mainline discourse is stuck in a corporate-friendly rut. But there are signs that a movement for a rational, humanistic health-care system in this country is now gaining strength.

A few hours after writing these words, I’ll be at a large demonstration in San Francisco. The lightning rod for this historic June 19 protest is a national meeting of America’s Health Insurance Plans, an outfit that cheerily pitches itself as “a national trade association representing nearly 1,300 member companies providing health benefits to more than 200 million Americans.”

As it happens, this meeting of America’s Health Insurance Plans got underway just as news broke that the congressional “leadership” has devised a formula to fully fund more war. “Democratic and GOP leaders in the House announced agreement Wednesday on a long-overdue war funding bill they said President Bush would be willing to sign,” the Associated Press reported. The bill would “provide about $165 billion to the Pentagon to fund military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for about a year.”

There’s a lot of profit in death. Under the guise of national security. And under the guise of health care.

Today, across the United States, people are dying because they don’t have access to health care. But policy solutions are available. In Congress, about 90 co-sponsors are backing H.R. 676, a bill to provide “comprehensive health insurance coverage for all United States residents.” Call it whatever you like — “single payer” or “improved Medicare for all” or “universal health care with choice of providers and no financial barriers.” What it adds up to is the policy option of treating health care as the human right that it is.

In the latest edition of “Health Care Meltdown,” author C. Rocky White identifies himself as “a conservative Republican who has always held an entrepreneurial ‘pull yourself up by your own bootstraps’ free-market philosophy.” A longtime physician, White describes “the frustration I began to experience while trying to provide compassionate, quality health care in the context of a market in which the accustomed rules of business economics don’t apply.”

Dr. White immersed himself in research on health-care policy and finance. Then he pored through reams of the latest data on the tradeoffs of reform options. “No matter how I turned the cube,” he writes, “the answer never changed. That answer was nearly impossible for me, a free-market Republican, to accept.”

Here are Dr. White’s two key conclusions in his own words:

• “Until we remove the motive of profit from the financing of health care, we cannot and we will not resolve our current health care crisis.”
• “Any group that proposes reform policy that maintains the use of for-profit insurance companies in a so-called free market is being driven by one single motive — to protect the golden coffers of their share of the $2 trillion cash cow!”

Dr. White adds: “To continue down this road is paramount to suggesting that we privatize our fire and police services and turn them into for-profit organizations. You do that and people will die — just like they are dying now under our current health-care system!”

Grotesquely, the insurance and hospital industries at the center of health care in the United States are, in effect, profiting from priorities that condemn many people to death and many more to avoidable suffering.

Meanwhile, corporate enterprises continue to make a killing from U.S. military expenditures now in the vicinity of $2 billion per day.

During a wartime speech in 1969, the Nobel Prize-winning biologist George Wald said: “Our government has become preoccupied with death, with the business of killing and being killed.”

The preoccupation continues.

“When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people,” Martin Luther King observed, “the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

Still, somehow, this madness must cease.

Remote Area Medical Returns to Lafayette, Tennessee, U.S.A.

B’Man: I wrote about this group visiting Tn a while back here.

I do not find this situation an odd occurence in the deep south. Most people I know don’t have any real insurance (maybe hospitalization, for full coverage cannot be afforded right now). As a matter of fact, BuelahMan’s family is going through a harrowing ordeal right now and may likely lose much (if not all) my coverage.

So, we may be on board for the next visit from RAM…

Medical Charity Helping US Poor

Stan Brock is like a 21st-Century Florence Nightingale.

He started a charity - Remote Area Medical (RAM) - more than 20 years ago to bring relief to those cut off from healthcare.

Originally it was to help poor tribes in the former British colony of Guyana, South America.

That is where he lived after leaving Preston, Lancashire, more than half a century ago - he still is a British citizen.

But now Stan spends most of his time bringing relief to the richest country in the world.

Production line

Some 60% of RAM’s work is now carried out in the United States.

On a wet, spring weekend he lands his vintage World War II aircraft - once used to drop American troops on D-Day - in Lafayette, Tennessee.

He bought the plane to parachute medics into the jungle.

Today he is unloading dentists’ chairs from the plane into a pickup truck.

By eight o’clock on Friday evening the first patients have arrived after travelling hundreds of miles.

They start queuing.

For one weekend RAM has turned a high school into a hospital.

Classrooms have become consulting rooms and the sports hall has been transformed into a production line to fill or extract painful teeth.

Volunteer nurses, doctors and dentists have flown in from all over the country to man the stations.

ike Stan, they are not getting paid.

By five o’clock on Saturday morning the line is snaking round the school.

State troopers are on standby to help.

The patients are handed numbers as they wait in the pouring rain.

‘Working poor’

Most of those I speak to seem to have jobs, but cannot afford healthcare.

For one reason or another they do not have insurance.

They call themselves the “working poor”.

And then Stan Brock arrives with a loudspeaker to call the first batch in.

Once inside there is more queuing and waiting.

The patients slowly make their way to tables with yet more volunteers, who take blood pressure and medical history.

Among the sea of faces is Donna Pollard.

She wants a mammogram to check out a lump on her breast, as well as dental work and new eye glasses.

For her, this service is nothing short of a lifeline.

Healthcare is a luxury when you are struggling to pay the bills.

Then there is Ken Barbee.

At 64, he has been working for most of his life.

But recently he had to give up his job as a truck driver to look after his sick wife.

By the time I catch up with him he has already got his new glasses - now he hopes to have his last few teeth removed.

Ken calls it “a shame” that people have to resort to charity for their healthcare in the world’s most prosperous country.

He feels let down: “We’re just pushed out there and told to do the best y’can.”

Election issue

And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Some 47 million Americans have no health insurance.

Millions more are under-insured.

It is no wonder that healthcare is now such a big issue in the presidential race.

For a stoical Stan Brock, organising these clinics is both rewarding and depressing.

Come Sunday when it is time to pack up, he will be turning people away.

He watches over the whole operation wearing a neatly pressed khaki uniform, carrying a clipboard and pen, looking like a figure from the old British empire.

He has given his life to all this.

He takes no salary, and lives in an old school building in Kentucky from where he plans RAM’s expeditions.

As for his views on America’s healthcare, Stan says:

“We need to fix it… fall into line with Britain and France.

“Here in this country if you’re poor - you don’t have much of a shot.”

In this one short weekend, RAM treated 550 people - 416 teeth were extracted, more than 200 pairs of glasses handed out.

The estimated value of this free treatment was nearly $1m (£500,000).

So Stan Brock will continue flying in healthcare to rural Appalachia as well as the developing world.

He is also seriously thinking of returning to Britain - with a team of RAM volunteers.

He has heard his old country has a shortage of NHS dentists.

“I am sure we’ll get just as large a crowd as we’re getting here in the US,” he says.

© 2008 BBC News

Stand Tall for America | Senator Ron Wyden | Stand Tall for Health Care Reform

from www.standtallforamer posted with vodpod

 

Watch and sign up. This is what America needs for its healthcare solution.

Big Meds and Big Insurance Spend $17 MILLION a Day to Influence Congress

B’Man: When the corrupt Congresspeople get their biggest contributions from Big Health (to a tune of $17,000,000/Day), you should not expect any changes to our healthcare fiasco we are dealing with.

$17 Million a Day to Influence Congress

Health interests dole out the dough to get their way

By Trudy Lieberman
Wed 16 Apr 2008 01:22 PM

On Bill Moyers Journal Friday night, David Beckmann, who heads the hunger advocacy group Bread for the World, recalled his visit with Senate Majority leader Harry Reid. Reid told Beckmann, “Look, I’ve been here thirty-five years. I think the two best organized interests in the United States are the insurance companies and the commodity groups,” meaning the people who produce corn, soybeans, etc. Reid said the obvious—that these special interests have very powerful friends on both sides of the aisle and it would be difficult to make changes in the commodity system that Beckmann was hoping for. Reid might well have added that it is also going to be really hard to change the American way of health care, a fact of life that the press is yet to truly illuminate.

A glance at what health insurers spent in the past year to get their way with lawmakers—mostly on one key issue—shows why. That issue may not be as sexy as the latest candidate gaffe, but it’s far more important. It is the question of continuing overpayments to insurance companies for their role in private Medicare Advantage plans.

A quick refresher: Medicare recipients can get their benefits from either traditional Medicare or from private Medicare Advantage plans, which in turn are paid by the government to provide the benefits. Last year the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPac), a neutral outfit that advises Congress, said that Medicare was paying sellers of these plans on average 12 percent more than it cost to provide the same benefits under traditional Medicare; it paid sellers of a special type of plan called private-fee-for-service plans 19 percent more. So a middleman—the insurance company—is getting a large cut. And for what, really? This year MedPac says the overpayments are 13 percent and 17 percent. And what is worse: the commission says these overpayments contribute to Medicare’s worsening long-term financial problem.

The insurance companies, of course, think the system is just fine, and they spent heavily to keep the status quo. Health Plan Week, an insurance industry trade pub, took a hard look, revealing that overall health insurance payments to lobbyists soared last year and are likely to grow again in the next couple of years as health reform becomes the biggest issue. A large percentage of that money, the magazine found, was focused on the Medicare Advantage issue, which was front and center last year. Analyzing disclosure forms from the Senate’s public records office, Health Plan Week found that fifteen health plans paid lobbyists more than $22 million in 2007, up from $18 million in 2006, a hefty chunk of change by any measure. WellCare Health Plans, a big seller of Medicare Advantage products that has gotten in trouble with regulators for its questionable sales practices, quadrupled its spending to $320,000 and paid half of that amount to the Washington law firm to plead its case on Medicare issues. Health Net and Tufts Health Plan more than doubled their spending, while insurance biggies like CIGNA and UnitedHealth Group substantially increased their lobbying budgets. Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans spent nearly $10 million.

The Health Plan Week story is instructive. It shows what money can buy. Given the millions that insurers spent, it’s hardly surprising that attempts last year to get rid of the overpayments failed. Meanwhile, predictions of even greater spending this year and next should prompt journalists to closely watch the Medicare Advantage story.

A press release just issued by the Center for Responsive Politics further reinforces the money and health care story. Its message: Special interests spent $17 million for every day Congress was in session, and the drug industry spent most of all, paying lobbyists 25 percent more than they did last year. Did Harry Reid forget to mention them? Drug companies spent some $227 million on lobbying activities. The insurance industry was right behind with $138 million, and not far down was the hospital and nursing home industry, which spent some $91 million. When the Center pulled apart spending by organization, Pharma, the American Medical Association, and the American Hospital Association ranked three, four, and five on its list of top spenders. It’s too bad that the Center’s latest numbers haven’t gotten more press. For they, too show, the rocky path ahead for health reform.

It’s easy for reporters and editors to dismiss yet another press release about gobs of money thrown at politicians and lobbyists. We’ve seen that before, they say; what else is new? And it’s easy to cop out and blame readers for stumbling over the big numbers anyway. But the big numbers tell a big story. It’s crucial to remind the public of the intersection of money, lobbyists, Congress, and the presidential candidates. “It’s a constitutional right to petition your government, but the average citizen is not doing this petitioning,” says Massie Ritsch, communications director for the Center for Responsive Politics. “The average person’s lobbyist is the elected official sent to Washington.” But, he adds, “Those officials are listening to the outsiders who are doing the petitioning.” The Constitution may guarantee lobbying, but it doesn’t say Congress has to listen to big money. The press needs to shine a light on just who is listening to whom.

B’Man: Oh, but then the media would have to stop its complicity in ravaging of Americans. Good luck with that.

There is but one clear answer and that is to cut the head off the middle man that serves no real purpose and is ONLY set up to make profits off the backs of Americans… the Insurance Companies. $.31 of every dollar spent on health related expenses is for the insurance companies’ operating expenditures (which are far higher than Medicare/Medicaid’s costs), profits and huge bonuses.

We need, no REQUIRE, a single payer, NOT-FOR-PROFIT healthcare system… just like most of the 36 better healthcare systems above us.

America #37!

 

Amy Goodman Addresses Single Payer Health Care

The Single-Payer Solution

By Amy Goodman

As the media coverage of the Democratic presidential race continues to focus on lapel pins and pastors, America is ailing. As I travel around the country, I find people are angry and motivated. Like Dr. Rocky White, a physician from a conservative, evangelical background who practices in rural Alamosa, Colo. A tall, gray-haired Westerner in black jeans, a crisp white shirt and a bolo tie, Dr. White is a leading advocate for single-payer health care. He wasn’t always.

He told me in a recent interview: “Here I am, a Republican, thinking about nationalizing health care. It just went against the grain of everything that I stood for. But you have to remember: I didn’t come to those conclusions with lofty ideals of social justice.”

In the early 1990s, his medical group started falling apart. White, a keen student of economics and the business of medicine, determined that it wasn’t just his practice but the system that was broken.

“You’re seeing an ever-increasing number of people starting to support a national health program. In fact, 59 percent of practicing physicians today believe that we need to have a national health program. I mean, that’s unheard of, even 10 years ago. It’s amazing to see a new generation of physicians coming up who are disgusted with our current health-care system. You know, we’re trained to be advocates of patients, we’re trained to save lives, we’re trained to practice medicine. And instead, what we’re doing is we’re practicing Wall Street economics.”

Single-payer is not to be confused with universal coverage, which Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both support. In fact, in a recent debate, when Clinton raised the issue of single-payer, the audience interrupted with applause. She immediately countered, “I know a lot of people favor [it], but for many reasons [it] is difficult to achieve.”

Why? One of the most powerful industries in the country opposes it—the insurance industry. Under universal coverage, insurance profits are preserved. Under single-payer, they are not. Dr. Rocky White, who now sits on the board of the nonprofit Health Care for All Colorado, has switched his political affiliation. He also has updated and reissued Dr. Robert LeBow’s book on single-payer called “Health Care Meltdown: Confronting the Myths and Fixing Our Failing System.”

He described possible solutions: “There are a lot of different types of single-payer systems—you could have purely socialized medicine. That’s kind of like what England has. The government owns the hospitals, the government owns the clinics, the government finances all the health care, and all the doctors work for the government. That is truly socialized medicine, as opposed to the Canadian system, where the financing comes through their Medicare program, but all the doctors are in private practice.”

The economics are complex, but this plain-spoken country doctor explains it clearly:

“You know, this industry is a $2-trillion industry, and the profits in the for-profit insurance industry are so huge and it’s so deeply entrenched into Wall Street … but until we move to a single-payer system and get rid of the profit motive in financing of health care, we will not be able to fix the problems that we have.”

What would it take? Dr. White has spent his life dealing with the high winds on the high plains, from Nebraska to Colorado, and describes the challenge the country faces in familiar terms:

“I think that our current presidential candidates understand that ideally single-payer would be the best, but they don’t have the political will to move that forward. Their job is to feel which way the wind is blowing. Our job is to turn that wind.”

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 650 stations in North America.

 

Posted on Apr 23, 2008

Stand Tall for America | Senator Ron Wyden | Stand Tall for Health Care Reform

Job Lock… or have you even noticed?

My Friends –
Our health care system is broken.  That’s obvious.
It’s broken in many ways, but one of the big ways that it’s broken is our continued reliance on employers to provide health care to their employees.
But our employer-based health care system is melting away, like a popsicle on a hot summer sidewalk.
If you hate your job, but need your health care, you’re stuck.  If you want to go back to school, start a business, find a new job, or just plain quit, you’re stuck.
It’s called job lock.
Whether you love your job or hate your job, you should be able to keep your health care no matter what you choose to do.
At CareYouKeep.com, watch the 90-second video that tells Americans that it doesn’t have to be this way.
I won’t give away the punchline, so watch my video.
And when you’re done, share it with a friend.  Share it with a co-worker. 
You can even share it with your boss.
 
Senator Ron Wyden

from www.standtallforamer posted with vodpod

Frontline: Sick Around the World

Frontline: Sick Around the World

Health Insurance is ruining me. The biggest problem as a business owner and individual that I have. Literally going to break me if something doesn’t change soon.

I saw this program from Frontline last week and it does EXACTLY what I have called for on many occasions: look at all the best health plans in the world and come up with the very best, selecting from the cream of the crop.

There is but one reason why it isn’t happening here and that is because Big Money rule everything. If all my congresspeople receive most of their money from insurance, then why would they vote against their interests? They won’t.

And neither should all you rednecks who keep voting these people in. You should not vote for another person who will not insist on taking profit out of healthcare.

This video is excellent and goes through 5 different industrialized systems in the world and compares them to ours. The USA spends 16% of its GDP on health, where Taiwan has 6%, Japan 8% and ALL others in the world much less than us.

In Switzerland administrative costs for “insurance” is 5.5% (in the USA it is 22%… including massive bonuses, etc) and the other countries have far less than us.

Preventative medicine is key in Great Britain and even tho many services are considered slow compared to here, try living in the rural south and say that. They are improving their systems all the time.

In all of these systems, no one has ever gone bankrupt from some medical expenses… but it is estimated in the USA that some 700,000/year go bankrupt for that reason.

Also note that these countries (and all the others which list ABOVE the number 37 the USA has, in spite of spending MORE money than any other country) have longer life expectancies, lower infant mortality and a much better quality of health and life.

In other words, we pay a shit load of money to Fat Cat Insurance Companies who control our healthcare and make huge profit windfalls from our health and live shorter, less quality lives (if we make it at all) than all those 36 above us who pay a FRACTION of the money (sometimes less than 1/2).

For Profit Insurance is killing Americans and making some dick head rich.

This video is excellent.

Having Health Insurance has Proven to be a Matter of Life and Death

From Facing South:

Health insurance: a matter of life and death

Families USA recently released a report, Dying for Coverage, from all 50 states on the number of uninsured and the estimated number of deaths directly related to lack of health insurance.

Commenting on the report, Executive Director of Families USA Ron Pollack said:

Our report highlights how our inadequate system of health coverage condemns a great number of people to an early death simply because they don’t have the same access to health care as their insured neighbors. The conclusions are sadly clear — lack of health coverage is a matter of life and death for many people.

A study by the Institute of Medicine, tha basis for the Family USA report, found that uninsured adults are 25 percent more likely to die prematurely than adults with private health insurance. Another academic study found that lack of health insurance is the third leading cause of death, following heart disease and cancer, for uninsured adults between the ages of 55 and 64.

While the percentage of uninsured, working age (25-64) people in the South reported by Families USA in 2006 (20.5%) is similar to overall U.S. percentage of uninsured in the same age group reported by the U.S. Census (19.9%), several Southern states have a significantly higher percentage of uninsured.

For example, the Families USA report found that Louisiana had the highest rate of uninsured among working people at 26.2%. Florida (25.3%), Arkansas (23.2%), and Mississippi (22.1%) also exceeded the regional and national rates. Virginia (15.1%) and West Virginia (16.5%) are well below the regional and national rates.

Other state reports from around the South on the percentage of uninsured working age people include Alabama (20.1%), Georgia (19.7%), Kentucky (19.0%), North Carolina (21.1%), South Carolina (19.7%), and Tennessee (18.3%).

The U.S. Census report shows that the South has the highest percentage of uninsured overall, 19.0%, as compared to 11.4% in the Midwest, 12.3% in the Northeast, and 17.9% in the West.

When you add it all up, there are nearly 8.5 million working age people in the South without health insurance. Even more disturbing, the Families USA report attributes nearly 52,000 premature deaths to lack of health insurance in these states between 2000 and 2006.

The National Coalition on Health Care, an influential, bi-partisan alliance working to improve America’s health care, has published a fact sheet about health insurance coverage in the U.S. It explains who the uninsured are, why there are so many, and some of the consequences:

• Lack of insurance compromises the health of the uninsured because they receive less preventive care, are diagnosed at more advanced disease stages, and once diagnosed, tend to receive less therapeutic care and have higher mortality rates than insured individuals.

• Regardless of age, race, ethnicity, income or health status, uninsured children were much less likely to have received a well-child checkup within the past year. One study shows that nearly 50 percent of uninsured children did not receive a checkup in 2003, almost twice the rate (26 percent) for insured children.

• Studies estimate that the number of excess deaths among uninsured adults age 25-64 is in the range of 18,000 a year. This mortality figure is more than the number of deaths from diabetes (17,500) within the same age group

Their report concludes:

The impacts of going uninsured are clear and severe. Many uninsured individuals postpone needed medical care which results in increased mortality and billions of dollars lost in productivity and increased expenses to the health care system. There also exists a significant sense of vulnerability to the potential loss of health insurance which is shared by tens of millions of other Americans who have managed to retain coverage.

Every American should have health care coverage, participation should be mandatory, and everyone should have basic benefits.

The state of health care in the United States is a national disgrace. And it’s only going to get worse. Even more so in the South, where the fastest growing region in America continues to struggle with poverty and unemployment which contribute to the higher rates of uninsured.

The upcoming elections could and should be a referendum on the problem. Unfortunately, none of the three leading Presidential candidates has a comprehensive plan to solve it. All they offer are band-aids that patch up various failing components of our broken system.

But that’s largely irrelevant, because the President doesn’t have the power to fix it alone. Congress will have to act to effect fundamental change.

HR676, which would open up Medicare to everyone and eliminate private and employer provided health insurance, is a radical idea. But it’s a good place to start a serious discussion about solving a serious problem. And complex, serious problems sometimes require radical solutions.

Report: Lack of health insurance takes toll on Tenn

From the Nashville Business Journal:

Nearly 13 Tennesseans die every week due to lack of health insurance, according to a report published this week by Families USA.

That number means about 676 Tennesseans died in 2006 for the same reason, the national organization for health-care consumers says. And between 2000 and 2006, the Washington, D.C.-based organization estimates more than 3,600 Georgians between the ages of 25 and 64 died because they did not have health insurance.

Nationally, about 22,000 Americans without health insurance died between 2000 and 2006.

Families USA says uninsured adults are more likely to be diagnosed with a disease, such as cancer, in an advanced stage, which greatly reduces their chance of survival.

“Our report highlights how our inadequate system of health coverage condemns a great number of people to an early death, simply because they don’t have the same access to health care as their insured neighbors,” said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA. “The conclusions are sadly clear — a lack of health coverage is a matter of life and death for many people.”

The report says in 2006 about 18 percent of those 25-64 living in Tennessee were uninsured.

18% Uninsured, but I wonder what the number is for “under”insured (like I will find myself after an upcoming surgery). I make a bit more money than most people in the SE, but much of my “extra” money goes to health insurance and their lack of coverage (to the tune of $25,000 out of pocket last year).

This is but one harrowing scenario of devastation for Americans and it is evident that the SE is taking a huge hit.

Redneck Healthcare: A Buelah-Poll

How do you feel about healthcare and your personal health insurance (even if provided through work or the government)? I know how I feel and could (will) write about my family’s ongoing horror story in the near future.

Of course, if you visit here, you know that I bitch about it. And perhaps, if you are a ReTHUGlican redneck, you may blame me for my problems and suggest I desire “welfare queen” status, requiring the government to take care of me and my family. I would also bet that if you think that, you pay little or nothing for your insurance or you are the rare breed of “rich redneck”.

Wanna bet?

At the first of this year, the AFL-CIO and Working America sponsored an online survey of over 26,000 people that had various opinions and horror stories to tell. You can download or read the findings in a pdf report here. Most participants were currently insured and employed college graduates.

Most are concerned with health care costs:

One-third of respondents to the online survey, sponsored by the AFL-CIO and Working America, report skipping medical care because of cost, and a quarter had serious problems paying for the care they needed.

Ninety-five percent say they are somewhat or very concerned about being able to afford health insurance in the coming years.

Almost half overall (48 percent) and 60 percent of Latinos say they or a family member has stayed in a job to keep health care benefits when they would have preferred changing jobs.

Ninety-five percent of respondents say America’s health care system needs fundamental change or to be completely rebuilt.

Seventy-nine percent say health care is a very important voting issue, and 97 percent say they plan to vote in the November elections.

Simply having coverage is not enough and the future is looking bleak:

Ninety-six percent of people with insurance say they are somewhat or very concerned about affording coverage in the next few years.

Seventy-one percent of the insured worry about losing coverage because they may lose or change jobs.

Almost two-thirds (61 percent) who have employer-provided coverage say their costs have gotten worse.

Ninety-five percent of people with insurance are dissatisfied with health care costs, and 62 percent of them are dissatisfied with health care quality.

Ninety-four percent of the insured say the health care system needs fundamental change or to be rebuilt.

Not having insurance is devastating and getting scarier for Americans:

In the past year, 76 percent of people who lack insurance themselves and 71 percent of people with uninsured children say someone in their family did not visit a doctor when sick because of cost.

Sixty-seven percent of the uninsured and 66 percent of those whose children are uninsured report skipping medical treatment or follow-up care recommended by a doctor.

Fifty-seven percent of the uninsured and 61 percent of people with uninsured children had to choose between paying for medical care or prescriptions and other essential needs (such as the rent or mortgage and utilities).

Those of us who buy our own insurance are more likely than those whose employers pay for their health care report that critical needs are not covered or affordable.

Fifty-two percent of people who buy private coverage say prescription drugs are not covered or are unaffordable, compared with 44 percent who have employer-provided coverage.

Forty-one percent who buy private insurance say preventive care and checkups are not covered or affordable, versus 36 percent overall.

It doesn’t matter who you are, either:

A third of college graduates say they or a family member skipped recommended medical care because of cost.

Half of people in insured families say their coverage does not cover all the care they need at a price they can afford.

People of color, including 75 percent of African Americans and 76 percent of Latinos, are especially likely to voice dissatisfaction with health care quality.

Large majorities in all age groups—from 74 percent among 18- to 29-year-olds to 80 percent among 50- to 64-year-olds—consider health care a very important voting issue for the 2008 elections.

70% are employed and 20% are retired. 77% are in insured families. 51% have completed college or postgraduate school, and another 29% have attended some college.

Even so, most of them say they are barely getting by or are actually falling behind. 84% believe that the next generation will face a worse standard of living than we have today.

So, rednecks, how is your healthcare? Is it like Cheney-care? Or more like Buelah-care? For those are the very two extremes.

Universal Healthcare: It Will Cause Doctors to Quit or Move To Another Country

In my travels throughout the SE USA, I call on people that are generally somewhere around middle-class (engineers, etc) or upper middle class (owners of those companies). In almost every conversation I have, one of the biggest rationales by these against Universal Healthcare is that the good doctors will leave America or find something else to do.They fall for the meme that we have “the best healthcare in the world” and I can swear as a personal testimony that this is just a downright lie. My daughter has a sore throat and was forced to wait three days to see a doctor.

But, back to my point, I have done enough investigation to understand that by and large, this is an untrue statement (when comparing to other countries that have a similar system). Even with England (who, according to some, has a horrible system), the doctors aren’t really all that unhappy or underpaid.

But, I have asked three of my personal doctors (including an eye man) how they felt. In all three cases (and I intend to ask as many personally as I meet) they have explained that they WANT it. They understand that many of their patients wait for and/or totally go without help that could have truly benefited early on.

They understand that the problem is Insurance Companies and their stranglehold on our politicians. But now someone other than this redneck has done a poll and what does it say?

From CommonDreams:

Doctors Support Universal Health Care: Survey

WASHINGTON - More than half of U.S. doctors now favor switching to a national health care plan and fewer than a third oppose the idea, according to a survey published on Monday.The survey suggests that opinions have changed substantially since the last survey in 2002 and as the country debates serious changes to the health care system.

Of more than 2,000 doctors surveyed, 59 percent said they support legislation to establish a national health insurance program, while 32 percent said they opposed it, researchers reported in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.

The 2002 survey found that 49 percent of physicians supported national health insurance and 40 percent opposed it.

“Many claim to speak for physicians and represent their views. We asked doctors directly and found that, contrary to conventional wisdom, most doctors support national health insurance,” said Dr. Aaron Carroll of the Indiana University School of Medicine, who led the study.

“As doctors, we find that our patients suffer because of increasing deductibles, co-payments, and restrictions on patient care,” said Dr. Ronald Ackermann, who worked on the study with Carroll. “More and more, physicians are turning to national health insurance as a solution to this problem.”

PATCHWORK

The United States has no single organized health care system. Instead it relies on a patchwork of insurance provided by the federal and state governments to the elderly, poor, disabled and to some children, along with private insurance and employer-sponsored plans.

Many other countries have national plans, including Britain, France and Canada, and several studies have shown the United States spends more per capita on health care, without achieving better results for patients.

An estimated 47 million people have no insurance coverage at all, meaning they must pay out of their pockets for health care or skip it.

Contenders in the election for president in November all have proposed various changes, but none of the major party candidates has called for a fully national health plan.

Insurance companies, retailers and other employers have joined forces with unions and other interest groups to propose their own plans.

“Across the board, more physicians feel that our fragmented and for-profit insurance system is obstructing good patient care, and a majority now support national insurance as the remedy,” Ackermann said in a statement.

The Indiana survey found that 83 percent of psychiatrists, 69 percent of emergency medicine specialists, 65 percent of pediatricians, 64 percent of internists, 60 percent of family physicians and 55 percent of general surgeons favor a national health insurance plan.

The researchers said they believe the survey was representative of the 800,000 U.S. medical doctors.

R