It isn’t pretty this time either, but I am new to all of this embedded media.
REVISED — The Health Care Diagram I promised
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Tag Archives: Health Care
Health Care Debate — in diagram form
Whether or not to reform the health care industry comes down to some basic ideas: what is our collective expectation of our health care options, and how can we lower costs and increase caliber of service over the long term?
1. Do you think health care is (a) a privilege, (b) a right or (c) regardless of whether it is a right or a privilege, it is a broken system that needs fixing? If (a), then skip to the bottom. If (b) or (c), then go to the next question.
2. Do you think AFFORDABLE, adequate, health care is (a) a privilege or (b) a right or (c) regardless of whether it is a right or a privilege, it is a broken system that needs fixing so those who have it can benefit from it? If (a), then skip to the bottom. If (b) or (c), then go to the next question.
3. Do you view health care reform as essentially a political issue? If yes, then skip to the bottom. If no, then go to the next question.
4. Do you agree or disagree: companies should not be able to deny coverage for pre-existing conditions, impose annual or life time limits, or drop coverage for those who develop illness? If you disagree with all or part of the statement, then skip to the bottom. If you agree with the statement, then go to the next question.
5. How do you think it is best to keep premiums down? (a) a best practices safe harbor from malpractice claims; (b) cooperatives; and/or (c) public option. If none of the above, then skip to the bottom. If any of the above, go to the next question.
6. How do you reduce the costs to the taxpayers of uninsured people? (a) refuse medical attention to anyone without proof of insurance; (b) require all persons residing in this country to have insurance, (c) tax those who don’t get coverage and/or (d) some other option that induces people to get coverage or at least takes the burden off of taxpayers for those who cheat the system. If (a), then skip to the bottom. If (b), (c) or (d), go to the next question.
7. If you are at this question, then grab a seat at the table and start negotiating. Let’s assume that the polls are correct and that the overwhelming majority of Americans want some kind of reform. FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION. LIBERALS AND CONSERVATIVES, ARE YOU LISTENING?
Bottom: Here you are at the bottom. It is a dog-eat-dog world, huh? Just some follow-up questions:
- Did you ever see Glenn Beck’s iReporting after his botched hemorrhoids surgery? (Now he is a raging you-know-what.) You might not trust his currently analysis after viewing the video.
- Or maybe you are invincible, lucky or just too rich and selfish?
- Or maybe you are delusional, like the actor Craig T. Nelson, who said no one helped him when he was on food stamps and welfare (yes, idiots can be actors).
- You are a patriot, right? So you aren’t going to leave the country when the deficit rages out of control because health care costs are ballooning out of control and the taxpayers will have to pay a large percentage of their incomes just to meet interest payments on the deficit?
The Public Option
For my first and last sports analogy — you can’t score if you don’t get on base.
Reform is a process. I think many of us would be surprised by the narrow focus of the Social Security Act when originally enacted.
If the emphasis on the public option defeats the broader reform bill, then that is a bigger tragedy.
I believe that a public option is necessary because insurance companies will now refuse to insure the currently uninsured at a reasonable cost because of the other reform measures that circumscribe an insurance company’s ability to deny coverage to existing policy holders.
But first we need:
a law that eliminates pre-existing condition exclusions, prevents “dropping” coverage when an insured person gets sick, and eliminates life-time maximums.
a “best practices” safe harbor so doctors aren’t forced into costly, defensive medicine practices. We need computerized record keeping to reduce costly, tragic mistakes from insufficient information.
If, within a year after bill passage, there is a spike in health care premiums, even the GOP and Blue Dog Democrats will want a public option because their constituents will demand it.
There are two other reasons to wait a year:
one, the cost of creating a public option may be more than our economy can handle right now. Do I know for sure? No. No one can know for sure.
two, we need to see how identifiable changes affect the system. The law of unintended consequences may yield a different set of problems or a different set of options when we see how the reforms actually affect the economy. And we need some room for tinkering.
I applaud those who recognize that a public option is necessary. But, please, don’t hold up the other reforms that the nation needs.
No-where-istan is a country, too (just in my head)
Our President gave an excellent speech today at the UN. If only words could make wishes come true.
Libya’s leader’s, Qaddafi’s, speech was, well, nuts. I know maniacs have been leaders of countries, but his speech made me think that anyone could be a head of state whether or not there is electricity firing in your brain.
So, I could run a country. I have always wanted to. That’s it!!
I hereby establish a sovereign nation run by me.
I think I would be quite good at it until I deposed myself. Hey, sometimes a person changes her mind and MY country is a free country where change is always possible.
Of course, given the logistical constraints of owning a box in the sky in New York City, this newly-formed nation must exist for now in my brain, until I can buy a townhouse on the East Side for my embassy and then renounce the debt under the theory of sovereign immunity.
Since the nation (until I buy the townhouse) is not easily depicted on a world map, it will be called:
No-where-istan.
We will have a constitution. I will be all three branches of government. We will have debates over issues, but only when I don’t take my meds.
We will have three-day weekends, naptime everyday and one hour daily of singing and dancing to music from the 1960s to the 1980s. Cell phones must be turned off in restaurants and other places of assembly. We live in luxury homes, with really nice bathrooms, because life is short — see below for my health care mandate. (How about that tent for Qaddafi? Nice tent, but I would have gone for living in the house already on the grounds of the estate in Bedford. So much easier than schlepping your summer home to another country.)
So I need a new name as leader of a new sovereign nation. How about, “Her Eccentricity, the Blogger Formerly Known as 40andover”.
Transfats will be permitted because no health care system can afford people living to their tenth decade. So, for the good of the nation and the economic futures of our children, we will live less than 100 years. But if, try as he or she might, a person still lives to 100 and beyond, we will still love him or her because we No-where-istanis are tolerant and loving people.
I haven’t figured out the prickly issues of immigration in, and emigration out, of my head. There are so many logistical problems.
But, Glenn Beck, you are hereby denied a visa to my country.
Anderson Cooper, you can come for short times but no “digging deeper,” or else you’ll give me an unintended root canal.
Politics is making my head explode, so I am watching cartoons
It doesn’t get more stupid than this:
Glenn Beck’s attempt to co-opt Yom Kippur as a national day of fasting for the health of the Republic, a large, government-paid, medical providers’ sending scary letters to disabled and senior citizens, GOP’s sending out questionnaires implying that race will have an effect on who gets health insurance, the president’s heavy handed approach with the NYS gubernatorial race (I agree with the sentiment but not how it was handled), the ACORN debacle, FOX News’ orchestration of 9/12 march on Washington, leaking the CONFIDENTIAL Afghanistan report, the ideologues on both sides of the aisle in Congress not seeing that some reform is better than no reform . . . I could go on and on and on.
But, I won’t go on and on and on and on (today).
I will go home tonight and watch cartoons on the PBS kids. Because in the land of PBS kids, people learn to work and play and get along with each other.
According to the Huffington Post, Bill O’Reilly Supports the Public Option
According to the Huffington Post, FoxNews psycho-in-chief Bill O’Reilly supports the public option.
WHAAAAAAAAT?
I got nothing to say because my mind cannot comprehend and my mouth cannot speak and my fingers are about to stop typing. . . right after . . . .
WHAAAAAAAAT?
An Outsider’s Perspective of US (and Us)
Yesterday, I spent almost two hours talking with a friend who is a businessman from the Cayman Islands. He is in New York on business. Since his business is somewhat US-dependent, he makes it his business to keep up with the news in the States. He is a Libertarian and a pragmatist. I am Democrat and (I like to think) a pragmatist. We agreed on many things, such as the need to compromise and get incremental reform because it is a matter of conscience that people have affordable access to health care. And I agreed with him that the public option will not pay for itself and should be phased in later if other measures don’t rein in the insurance companies. We simply cannot afford to institute this option at this point, given the deficit.
We disagreed on two points. The points of disagreement fascinate me.
First, he thought that death panels could be read into the legislation because it was not expressly disclaimed. My friend is an intelligent, well-read man; he is not Todd Palin. So I had to think about this more. Here is what I have deduced:
- if a person distrusts “government” enough to believe that it would kill its own citizens, well, then you can make that argument.
- if a person doesn’t believe that our government would kill its own citizens, you might argue that the panel of experts represented a disguised government take-over of health care.
- if a person believes that our government is not trying to kill us and trying to cut down on defensive medicine by setting forth safe harbor protocols, then you think the concern is ill-conceived and politically motivated.
I guess what I am learning is while I am firmly in the third camp, not all of the concern may be politically motivated. Sarah Palin must have hit a chord with many, many people who have a deep, abiding distrust of government. Hey, I was scared of government under Bush/Cheney, so I guess I have to be more open to the fear that this legislation unleashed. Interestingly, it took my Cayman Islands friend — an outsider — to help me start to understand the perspective of blog commenter “Jordana”. We still disagree, but now I understand that we may not be starting from the same point of trust. That changes the dynamics of the conversation considerably.
The other point was related to torture. Some torture is understandable under some circumstances. I have never met someone who held that view. While I can see not prosecuting the CIA, I believe that torture is not understandable under any circumstances. I don’t want to be tortured and I would probably make stuff up just to make it stop. So, I don’t see how it helps get to the truth.
Craig T. Nelson, I wish you had stuck to acting
Craig T. Nelson, someone whose acting work I had previously enjoyed, was opposed to the notion of universal health care coverage because no one helped him out when he was down and out and living on welfare and food stamps.
Dude, dude, dude: news flash — welfare and food stamps are government subsidies. Without the government, you would have starved to death.
But those programs are ok, because you received a direct benefit. Ok, great. Now, that you are a big time actor, you don’t want government taking more out of your income or intruding in your life. But long ago, you invited government to pay to keep you alive while you were following your acting muse.
I will never again pay to see something in which you act. Actually, I won’t watch it if it is free.
GOP: Congrats on your Pyrrhic Victory
So, scare tactics work (see below article). Great. Thanks for that information.
Pyrrhic victory, don’t you think? No reform now — let’s leave the disaster to our children.
Thanks, Glenn Beck, Dick Armey, GOP leaders. I hope your children and grandchildren remember that, at this critical juncture, you chose to support big business profits over better medical services and economic stability.
From Yahoo:
67 percent of respondents believe that wait times for health care services, such as surgery, will increase (91 percent of Republicans, 37 percent of Democrats, 72 percent of Independents).
About five out of 10 believe the federal government will become directly involved in making personal health care decisions (80 percent of Republicans, 25 percent of Democrats, 56 percent of Independents).
Roughly six out of 10 Americans believe taxpayers will be required to pay for abortions (78 percent of Republicans, 30 percent of Democrats, 58 percent of Independents)
46 percent believe reforms will result in health care coverage for all illegal immigrants (66 percent of Republicans, 29 percent of Democrats, 43 percent of Independents).
54 percent believe the public option will increase premiums for Americans with private health insurance (78 percent of Republicans, 28 percent of Democrats, 58 percent of Independents).
Five out of 10 think cuts will be made to Medicare in order to cover more Americans (66 percent of Republicans, 37 percent of Democrats, 44 percent of Independents).
There were exceptions.
Fewer participants believe “myths” regarding the impact of proposed changes on current health insurance coverage. For instance, less than 30 percent think private insurance coverage will be eliminated. And just 36 percent think a public insurance option will put private insurance companies out of business.
In addition, only three out of 10 respondents believe the government will require the elderly to make decisions about how and when they will die.
Health care
We are getting lesser care and paying more and the health care giants are getting richer and doing less.
Is everyone so afraid of changing the status quo?
Yet, everyone is dissatisfied with the status quo.
Am I scared that the public option will be a lumbering giant and people will get lost in the system? Hell, yeah. But people are already lost in the current system and something has to change. Health insurance companies are too entrenched in government and in our lives.
We have to do something big and bold.
I am not telling my son that I was too scared to support change to the intolerable status quo.
I stand with President Obama. Do it for your children. Make them proud.