The Health Care Debate. What the hell is the debate? Half the people are fortunate enough to be able to afford health insurance or the copay’s, the other half are not. Some people don’t need health insurance at all; they are wealthy enough to provide whatever medical interventions or procedures necessary to sustain health. The half that don’t qualify for decent coverage have three options,
1. Go without and risk everything
2. Go broke but provide insurance for you and your family.
3. Give up, stop trying to be productive and stay under the government limit for income that allows you to recieve taxpayer funded health insurance.
Option three has become more attractive. Getting by rather than excelling is more appealing to those who once had inspiration and initiative, and a drive to succeed at nearly any cost. Risk takers made this country work, and have kept this country great. Now, the risk is too great. Medical knowledge has advanced to the point where cancer is no longer a death sentance, hips, knees and other joints are routinely replaced as we age, MRI’s detect potential life ending or altering situations before they are allowed to begin their destructive tear through our bodies. Life saving treatment that works is available. If you can pay.
Sacrificing dreams and hard work to ensure access to a health care system that probably will at the very least improve your life, and may just save it is a trade-off too tempting to pass up for many.
So put your aspirations on hold, don’t open that business or invent that thing, forget about higher education, the chance of failure is not only great, but with that failure now comes the added fear of being left out if illness or tragedy strikes.
Wait! Washington has promised to “fix” the debacle that is the Healthcare Industry here in the US.
Congress is trying to pass a complicated healthcare reform package that will ensure quality healthcare for all Americans. The Democrats may not have enough votes to make it happen. Nancy Pelosi is busy counting supporters of the bill and hoping for some Republican votes to get the thing through.
Huh?
Didn’t we elect these people to put our best interests ahead of party line? Don’t our tax dollars support them and their staff? Are they working for us, or working for the party line? What difference is there between a Democrat and a Republican when they are lying on an operating table? Or in a trauma room? Or at the oncologist? Or delivering a baby?
I’d like to put the entire Congress of the United States in the waiting room at Rhode Island Hospital on a Saturday Night and not let them leave until they figured this thing out. Yeah, it’s complicated, but so is brain surgury, but we have figured that out. At least if you can pay.
I have to disagree. The “debacle” is health care funding, not health care. This bill goes well beyond attempting to fix the problem and is nothing less than a power grab to control 1/6 of the US economy. If they have their way, not only will health care be MORE expensive, but it will be far worse for everyone. Worst hit will be the poor and elderly, the people that reform is supposed to help.
Not to mention how much more you, I, and anyone else that is a producer will have to pay.
We’ll be better off if they do nothing, but they won’t.
I’m the last person to invite government into private industry, however, the govt. is imbedded deeply here, with medicare, medicaid, in RI, RITecare, and I’m sure the other forty-nine states have their own state subsidised or provided health care for the needy. My concern is that the line between “the needy” and the “not needy” is so close that those not in need may just give up and join the needy if it makes fiscal sense.
If our elected leaders are expected to draft legislation aimed at making our system accessable to everybody, then I expect them to do so.
The free market has failed miserably to make healthcare affordable. Individualy cannot access the components of the system without vast sums of money, money provided by insurance companies, or the government, the line between the two is now blurred, and that has disasterous consequenses.
The problems are many, as are the solutions. I posted on it a while back, but missed at least one reform. Which is tort reform. Litigation and the fear of it, drive up costs relentlessly.
As does “free” care. How many times have you seen someone with Medicaid and a $200.00 acrylic nail job demand a ride to the ER for routine care? If those people had to pay a co-pay as I (and I assume you) do, then they might think twice about it and go to a clinic instead. I’m not talking about denying people care, but about making them responsible for their choices.
I’m about to lose my health insurance, due to divorce. I do not make enough to be able to afford private insurance, and I make too much to qualify for medicaid.
Michael is right- the temptation is great to make LESS, because the amount less I need to make to qualify is smaller than the amount private insurance costs- I’d come out ahead, financially.
I am self-employed, so there is no chance of my job providing health insurance as a benefit.
I could give up doing what I love to do, and try to find some job that has healthcare, but my options are limited.
I think the problem, as it often is, is not just the system, but the abuse of the system, and the underlying reasons for that. It is frustrating to see people on public assistance using the ambulance as a free cab to a free emergency room, to deal with things that I wouldn’t bother seeing a doctor about, let alone an emergency doc. But that doesn’t mean that EVERYONE on medicaid does this.
It does seem to be true, though, that people who never have to pay, have less of a concept of the value of what it is they are not paying for, and less of an appreciation of what it takes to have it available. Similar to how teenagers who have never had to make their own way take what their parents provide for them for granted, without a second thought.
I’d like to see real reform, addressing the actual problems, and not just some bandaid approach, trying to cover everyone’s asses.
Not just in health care, but in everything.
Instead of having higher drinking ages, address the real issue: DWI.
Instead of mandating more and more standardized testing, make schools a better place to be, and the education provided more relevant to the students.
Address the issues of exhorbitant health care costs and insurance fraud.
Address the issue of access to care at a variety of levels, so that people actually have the choice to go to a clinic for minor things because there is one to go to, open and easy to get to.
It is easy to get frustrated at the way things are. Not as easy to get them to change.
At any rate, this was a longwinded way to say that I think everyone deserves adequate healthcare for their needs, and not everyone can pay for it, as much as they might like to. But this culture has a lot of deep seated problems that will not be solved by looking at each issue as a separate thing, and trying to fix them one by one. It’s all interconnected. The roots of the problem of medicaid abuse go way, way deeper than just lazy people wanting something for nothing. There remains the question of WHY they would behave that way, where that behavior is learned. THAT is part of what needs to be changed.
The problem Mike is that the answer Congress has given us is a bill that none of them have read, a bill that none of them will be covered by, but which we’ll be paying for for generations.
Silly me if I don’t see what’s so wonderful about it.
Great comment, Hilinda, sorry about your situation. I heard they passed some sort of healthcare bill, haven’t had the time or stomach to find out what it is yet. I bet it won’t be pretty.
At times starting over seems the only alternative we have, things have gotten too complicated.