A lot of people on this site are concerned about affordable health care. Some have very real, very terrifying needs concerning their health care. I have watched as we have debated in public whether or not to have a one party pay system for health care. And of course, Louise and Harry, brought to you by the courtesy of insurance companies fanned the fear of having impersonal health care. And those ads killed the efforts by the Clinton administration to address health care. Somewhat akin to the unisex bathroom idea killing equal rights for women.
So what will be our design of choice for health care?
More on the flip.
Since then we have watched the pharm industry grip this nation’s purse strings with an iron grip! Abramoff and his indian tribes are a joke compared to the pharm lobbying. I live in fear of going to the doctor on some health issue and finding myself captive to some drug of this week’s choice. Doctors are inundated with propaganda from pharma and gifts as well. Somehow or other there is also a way for pharma to track prescriptions from docs, I think, and probably some minor kick back scheme. If nothing else, everyone knows that docs get all kinds of samples to let their patients try out. And we all have heard the argument that the high prices for drugs are the price we pay for R&D within that industry.
So how can we have reform without attending to those issues?
I propose that we drain the money making out of health care. We allow insurance companies to become the niche marketer. There are all kinds of areas for this to happen – cosmetic surgery, experimental techniques for various ailments, etc. While we let basic health care stand on its own as a single payer through the government. All drugs through that system are negotiated down to the rock bottom price. Drugs for the other areas can float to whatever the people (and insurance companies) can bear. Along with the single payer system we also support things like YMCA where exercise is a firm part of creating a healthy nation along with meditation, yoga and other forms of integrating body and mind and emotions and spirit. Within the basic system, I believe that acupuncture should be a basic part. It is better than surgery for a lot of ailments and can work with pain management better than some drugs. However it works we need to have real R&D and not just window dressing for health care needs. No R&D for basic health care should be funded by any medical or pharma group or affiliate or insurance group. This should be viewed as strictly consumer and health alone.
How do we define “basic health care”? I submit to you that it means life saving measures, check ups and some quality of life measures. The latter we would have to negotiate over time. Prosthetics, for example, are part of the latter and we would expect to get those, but motorized and computerized stuff might be part of the niche market. Fertility issues would be split as well – day to day care such as birth control, abortion and pregnancies would be part of basic (yes abortion as it is part of the management of health). While IVF and other extraordinary efforts would be part of the niche.
I submit to you that if we have true research into causes of disease free from corporate meddling, we might find some surprising answers to health care issues.
in basic health care?
a commercial product, not a right. It is a meme which is used by great effect by political candidates to indicate as one of them did in 2004, a plan to help out people who have thousands of dollars to give to the insurance companies every year, the promise of getting them a discount of up to $1000.
There are an increasing number of people who have a total of $00.00 available to give to the insurance companies.
I would strongly recommend that the US consider following the lead of other developed nations, and provide health care to its citizens.
US is the richest country in the world, and can easily afford to do this. Sure, it might mean giving up its slaughter and torture activities around the world, but what is more important to Americans – Health care for Americans, or killing foreigners?
I really am talking about government supplied health care via single payor (government paid). I want it not to be a product by taking companies out of it.
Our health care system is fast becoming fractured. Even emergency services are going down hill fast. Putting profit into health care has killed it.
that in the richest country in the world, anyone should have to pay a cent for medical treatment.
In the US, health care IS affordable, if the people demand that they, like their brothers in other developed nations, are accorded this basic human right.
even the basic care I scantily outlined. We will pay in tax dollars.
as opposed to crimes against humanity. Taxpayers will be pleasantly surprised to learn that health care is much cheaper.
It’s more about what should be excluded from health care. I think we must cut off the profit for insurance companies.
Doctors and patients are held hostage to the whims of giant corporations who want to control everything involved to protect their profits.
The soaring cost of health care is not due to the extreme greed of big pharma, it is the whole insurance scheme. Doctors and hospitals must hire entire staffs of people whose job is to deal with insurance companies. This makes their service very expensive.
Meanwhile the insurance companies refuse to hire people to even answer their phones, and do their best to weasel out of paying claims.
Not all, but some, breast implants, for example, cheekbone implants ( except in cases where illness or injury had damaged them ), removal of toes in order to enable the individual to wear more painful shoes, operations to make people taller, and the like.
Probably an unpopular view, but I do not think fertility treatments should be included.
There are so many children who need parents, I would like to see even fertile couples adopt one of these children, and when one thinks of the thousands of dollars spent on fertility treatments, and how much that money could do for a child who no one wants, it does not, in my view, seem either ethical or moral.
I understand the urge to perpetuate one’s genes, but if the desire is truly to raise a child, what are those genes compared to the opportunity to perpetuate one’s values, one’s wisdom?
If there is one thing prospective parents need, one quality that will make them good parents, it is unselfishness, and the ability – no – the desire to put the needs of the child first.
And the child is not a vaporbeing in the ovaries, it is huddled somewhere by a dumpster.
You are so right that there areso many children who need parents and everyone expects someone else to do it, or the state to take care of it, while,at the same time, complain about taxes.
And, it is one of the subjects that is too often ignored.
Give double deductions for adopted children, and make contraception and pregnancy termination available at no cost, so that there is no question of unfairly penalizing those who inadvertantly reproduce.
And, couple that w/the single payer health care system, and all the $ that is saved as more and more children will be adopted and the costs for living services which are currently provided by the states, fund such unfunded mandates such as Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) enfocement, IDEA (Idividuals With Disabilities Education Act), NCLB…
Here is a good starting point, I think. From the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the member nations of the United Nations, and though I am not an expert on international law matters, I believe it to be binding on the U.S., as a signatory.
Elsewhere in the delaration, it requires signatory nations to educate their citizenry about the rights enumerated. I didn’t read this declaration until I started blogging some decade after law school. I guess the U.S. missed the target goal there, or I was an exceptionally poor student.
At any rate, I think it says, as a matter of law, people have a right to sufficient “medical care” to ensure their “health and well being.” An equal right. Not based on income. So I would say a basic system should include free clinic visits as necessary, access to medicines and treatments as they are available in the society, where the decisions are based not on wealth, but on medical need.
require also a Living Wage. Now at this time, the US does not recognize the concept of human rights, regardless of what it has signed.
Bringing US into compliance with this document would require action substantially more substantial than merely electing another set of corporate lackeys to maintain the status quo, while declaring that they really think that one day that status quo may change.
The situation at this point is critical and urgent, and taking any action to correct it will almost certainly requir violating the Patriot Act.