Happy Thursday.
As I sit with my beautiful daughter in the bookstore, I thank God for reasonably good health. Meaning, I do not have any "known" health problems. However, anything can be lying dormant in my body, that I have no clue of. But to my knowledge, I do not have any known health problems.
Oh...let me correct myself, I do have earaches, once in awhile, and I get pimples on my face.(adult acne).
So why do I say that health care reform in America is needed?
First do you understand that many Americans are without health insurance? If these uninsured people are not covered by some form of health insurance, when they are ill or sick, they will just run up hospital bills that they cannot pay, and who will pick up the tab in the end?
You got it. The tax payers. This includes you, me and millions of other hardworking Americans. Also, it is important to note that many of uninsured are people who are working but cannot afford health insurance. Like myself, I cannot afford health insurance right now, because of my inability to purchase affordable insurance. I am pretty healthy but anything can happen to me, and I can be without my good health. What would happen to my beautiful minor daughter? God Forbid!
Health Care-the field concerned with the maintenance or restoration of the health of the body or mind.
Health Insurance-insurance that compensates the insured for expenses or loss incurred for medical reasons, as through illness or hospitalization.
Illness-unhealthy condition; poor health; indisposition; sickness.
Reform-to form again.
Some of my fellow Americans believe that we "simply cannot afford" to pay for health care to cover "these" people because our taxes may be raised beyond what we are able to sustain. However, this argument falls short.
The truth is that we cannot afford NOT to ensure that our fellow American our covered. Moreover, according to the New England Journal of Medicine:
Neither option is attractive. Evidence regarding regional variations in spending and growth, however, points to a more hopeful alternative: we should be able to reorganize and improve care to eliminate wasteful and unnecessary services.1
But not everyone is convinced. Some physicians, hospital administrators, and legislators appear to have succumbed to a behavioral bias. They know that their patients are sick and that sick patients need more care than relatively healthy ones. They therefore conclude that the reason their hospital or region spends more is that their patients are sicker and poorer than those cared for by institutions in other regions. Given this reverse “Lake Wobegon” effect that renders all U.S. patients below average (in Garrison Keillor’s fictional town of Lake Wobegon “all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average”), they argue that any efforts to rein in costs will cause harm to the people we most want to protect.
And it’s not hard to find examples of places where this explanation might appear to make perfect sense: in Los Angeles, where Medicare spends $10,810 per capita, a somewhat higher percentage of the population (15%) is at or below the poverty line than in Minneapolis (10%), which spends $6,705 per capita.
This is too important a moment to allow physicians or policymakers to be confused by behavioral biases or distracted by one-off examples. Health is indeed the most important determinant of health care spending, but differences in health explain only a small part of the regional variations in spending."
Health care reform is needed now. It does need to be a partisan issue. All of the members of the House of Representatives and the Senate have "first class" health insurance",, paid in full by the "tax payers of these U.S. "
So they can enjoy the benefits and fruits of yours and my labor, but our fellow citizens in real and genuine need cannot? Give me a break. It is high time these members of Congress take a pay cut and pay for their own health insurance. In fact, I believe every member should a pay cut and forego health insurance coverage for at least a year. Then let them return to congress, and debate the issue of health care.
Sometimes, you do not understand and cannot therefore empathize with people that you have no inkling what they are going through. It is so very easy to sit back under the U.S. citizens umbrella and argue that health care insurance should only be for those who can afford.
My questions are, "what if YOU could not afford health care insurance? Would your position change"?
Have a healthy day,
L. for Love
I think the passage of a Health Care bill is the Civil Rights equivalent of our day. As you mentioned they are too many interests against this provision, some of them because they only care about their profits, and some others out of biases or just plain fear, or ignorance. As a nation we cannot afford having an unhealthy population, we cannot have people die before their time because we are not willing to invest in prevention, or just simply to have to face financial ruin in ourselves or our families if we look for help without coverage.
ReplyDeleteWhile Congress can never seem able to find the money to fund programs that other less affluent countries can, they sure find the money to spend it on wars on the other side or the world, that at the end only benefit their campaign benefactors. But I'm drifting off topic here.
My point about this being a "Civil Rights" moment is about the leadership we need to have in order to pass any kind of bill that will cover all the uninsured. Back in the 1960's when President Johnson signed the Civil Rights act, he knew the huge political cost that his party, the Democratic party was going to pay for decades to come, because of the unpopularity of this law. But he did it, because he knew it was right, and it was his moment to lead the country into a better future. Well, this is President Obama's moment,he needs to do what is right, no matter the political price he or his party must pay. The american people are waiting Mr. Obama and Congress.