Thursday, January 18, 2007
health care rights?
What does the right to medical care mean in this country? There are lies told about the whole process. The United States spends far more on health care than other advanced countries. Yet we don't appear to receive more medical services. We have lower life-expectancy and higher infant-mortality rates than countries that spend less than half as much per person. How do we do it? It’s common to begin all discussions of American health care with a complete lie, uttered in this example by Bush: “We live in a great country that has got the best health care system in the world, and we need to keep it that way.” It does offer the very best care to some. It offers high-tech surgery and some space-age medical procedures which benefit 2 or 3 percent of the population, along with the richest citizens of other countries. Many countries around the world take better care of their people with fewer dollars. The statistics are even grimmer when life span is counted in years of healthy living. By this measure, the United States in 2002 ranked a distant 29th among the countries of the world.
America's fragmented health care system is the costliest in the world. A study conducted by Johns Hopkins University researchers’ offers evidence of the same. The United States spent $5,267 per person on health care in 2002. That's more than double, per capita, what 29 other industrialized nations spent. The total amounts to 14.6 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product. The United Kingdom, by comparison, spent 7.7 percent.
The pharmaceutical companies are this era's health care robber barons. Americans pay 30% more for prescriptions than Mexicans and Canadians because their legislators aren't as corrupt as ours so Retirees’ drive to Canada to buy their prescriptions while others visit foreign Pharmacies via the Internet.
The insurance industry and HMO’s pay politicians to be their dog. Big Pharma has more lobbyists than there are members of congress and always get their way. They spend less on R&D than they make in profits. Much of the really creative R&D is done at universities and gov’t labs and then licensed to industry and paid for with our taxes. The industry then charges us big bucks. As much as 30% of their costs are for marketing.
A lot of people don't know these facts. They listen to conservative pundits who say, "Health care is a commodity, not a right." When health care is a commodity you can choose not to carry insurance. A lot of young, healthy people think they'll always be that way, and don't contribute into the national health care fund. Because of soaring premiums many employers are not inclined to offer this essential service. By law emergency rooms can't turn away sick people.
Single payer coverage would levy a state-mandated health tax on all workers with a social security number, replacing private health insurance premiums. Everyone who works contributes; everyone benefits.
The current health system divides us into 3 categories.
Medicaid is set up so only those with no money and an extreme illness get benefits. Any assets and you lose your coverage. All you're allowed to own is your house and a vehicle. To keep Medicaid you have to stay destitute and so sick you can't work.
Then there are the people that work for close to minimum wage whose employers offer no health care insurance, or offer it as a deductible option from their salary. Most employees refuse because they can barely pay the rent. These are our neighbors that take their children to the hospital ER for emergencies because they have no money for regular care. These are the 45 million Americans with no coverage.
Those with private insurance pay most of health cost either as a benefit calculated into their pay or through taxes. Most of health care costs are during the last year of life. So, you pay in your whole working life and the insurance industry pays for you to die. If you finish quickly, a severe heart attack or car accident, they make a huge profit. If you get a devastating disease, they try to restrict care so you cost them as little as possible while you die. That's capitalist medicine.
The Patient Bill of Rights would allow you to sue the HMO for when they do refuse diagnostic tests or withhold care.
The answer is simple, universal care -- a single payer system. Are we an enlightened country or not? Do we take care of our own, our poor, or not? Single payer is coming, but in very slow increments, exampled by the Patient Bill of Rights and a conservative Supreme Court upholding Massachusetts' law to set realistic price controls for prescription medications for low income citizens.
Those of you who feel universal health care is just a give away to lazy people, consider this. Social medicine has been around in the European democracies for 50 years. If the systems in those countries didn't work or there was too much abuse, they would have been repealed. During the 1980s Thatcher's Conservative Government, in the United Kingdom, had a majority in Parliament and they never considered touching health care. So are Americans less compassionate than Europeans?
America's fragmented health care system is the costliest in the world. A study conducted by Johns Hopkins University researchers’ offers evidence of the same. The United States spent $5,267 per person on health care in 2002. That's more than double, per capita, what 29 other industrialized nations spent. The total amounts to 14.6 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product. The United Kingdom, by comparison, spent 7.7 percent.
The pharmaceutical companies are this era's health care robber barons. Americans pay 30% more for prescriptions than Mexicans and Canadians because their legislators aren't as corrupt as ours so Retirees’ drive to Canada to buy their prescriptions while others visit foreign Pharmacies via the Internet.
The insurance industry and HMO’s pay politicians to be their dog. Big Pharma has more lobbyists than there are members of congress and always get their way. They spend less on R&D than they make in profits. Much of the really creative R&D is done at universities and gov’t labs and then licensed to industry and paid for with our taxes. The industry then charges us big bucks. As much as 30% of their costs are for marketing.
A lot of people don't know these facts. They listen to conservative pundits who say, "Health care is a commodity, not a right." When health care is a commodity you can choose not to carry insurance. A lot of young, healthy people think they'll always be that way, and don't contribute into the national health care fund. Because of soaring premiums many employers are not inclined to offer this essential service. By law emergency rooms can't turn away sick people.
Single payer coverage would levy a state-mandated health tax on all workers with a social security number, replacing private health insurance premiums. Everyone who works contributes; everyone benefits.
The current health system divides us into 3 categories.
Medicaid is set up so only those with no money and an extreme illness get benefits. Any assets and you lose your coverage. All you're allowed to own is your house and a vehicle. To keep Medicaid you have to stay destitute and so sick you can't work.
Then there are the people that work for close to minimum wage whose employers offer no health care insurance, or offer it as a deductible option from their salary. Most employees refuse because they can barely pay the rent. These are our neighbors that take their children to the hospital ER for emergencies because they have no money for regular care. These are the 45 million Americans with no coverage.
Those with private insurance pay most of health cost either as a benefit calculated into their pay or through taxes. Most of health care costs are during the last year of life. So, you pay in your whole working life and the insurance industry pays for you to die. If you finish quickly, a severe heart attack or car accident, they make a huge profit. If you get a devastating disease, they try to restrict care so you cost them as little as possible while you die. That's capitalist medicine.
The Patient Bill of Rights would allow you to sue the HMO for when they do refuse diagnostic tests or withhold care.
The answer is simple, universal care -- a single payer system. Are we an enlightened country or not? Do we take care of our own, our poor, or not? Single payer is coming, but in very slow increments, exampled by the Patient Bill of Rights and a conservative Supreme Court upholding Massachusetts' law to set realistic price controls for prescription medications for low income citizens.
Those of you who feel universal health care is just a give away to lazy people, consider this. Social medicine has been around in the European democracies for 50 years. If the systems in those countries didn't work or there was too much abuse, they would have been repealed. During the 1980s Thatcher's Conservative Government, in the United Kingdom, had a majority in Parliament and they never considered touching health care. So are Americans less compassionate than Europeans?
