True Pandemic Preparedness: Health Care Reform Now
The recent outbreak of the swine flu serves as a stark reminder about the need for comprehensive health care reform in this country. Every citizen in this country should have access to affordable, high quality health care. Given the recent economic downturn, the group of nearly 46 million Americans without health insurance has grown by perhaps as many as 4 million. This population, and the larger group with under-insurance in our country, are highly susceptible to any pandemic outbreak. They are less likely to receive early preventative care, early diagnosis, early treatment, and due to financial fears, are less likely to take sick time from work. Not only is such a large group of Americans without the resources to combat a threat such as a pandemic flu for their own health safety, but having such a large group of people without access to proper care dramatically increases the risk of transmission to the rest of the population. The realities of biology will not let us separate into "us" versus "them" categories.
I am pleased that the administration has recognized the importance of supporting our public health system. The President and Congress have recently made strong investments in Community Health Centers, and as we move forward we need to ensure that we continue to give our states the funds they need to support their public health efforts. Our pubic health system serves as the front-line of preventive care, and serves as important safety net for those who need it. The Swine Flu is just one more example of why it is important to maintain such infrastructure.
When I attended the President's White House Conference on Health Care Reform, I emphasized the necessity of prevention and holistic care as the cornerstones of meaningful and sustainable health care reform. I emphasized the need to shift our health care system from the current "sick-care" system to one that is patient-centered, collaborative, and focused on prevention. This means a re-incentivizing of the current payment system, an investment in proven public health strategies aimed at disease prevention, and a complete shift of the current paradigm so we treat each patient's whole body, recognizing that the health of the mind is not separate of the health of the body.
I am enthusiastic about the point in history where we now stand, with the administration and Congress both dedicated to enacting meaningful health care reform, and I look forward to working with my colleagues to achieve this goal. As too many Americans already know, there is no time to waste.
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Hmmmm,
So with National Healthcare, how are you going to prevent illegal aliens from getting benefits?
Since you tried to vote down E Verify, I am sure you will do nothing to prevent it.
Hmmm... Health Care for All Americans is Simple!
1) Merge Medicare with Medicade into one single "Income Based" system.
2) Require insurance companies to provide the same basic coverage for all Non-Medica
3) Allow insurance companies to offer additional benefits and options to those who qualify and are willing to pay the difference.
As for Funding...
1) Changing from an "Emergency Treatment" to a "Preventive Care" system will save local communities billions, maybe even trillions of taxpayer dollars!
2) Small business will be able to compete globally and hire additional taxpaying employees!
3) Wealthy seniors will pay their fair share!
4) The tremendous burden on future generations will be greatly reduced!
Perhaps the Representative can explain his Nay vote on HR2990, titled the "Patients' Bill of Rights bill"
HR 2990: To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to allow individuals greater access to health insurance through a health care tax deduction, a long-term care deduction, and other health-related tax incentives, to amend the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 to provide access to and choice in health care through association health plans, to amend the Public Health Service Act to create new pooling opportunities for small employers to obtain greater access to health coverage through HealthMarts, and for other purposes.
Highlights:
-Allows small businesses to subscribe to health insurance pools formed by national trade organizations as an alternative to supplying their own insurance plans
-Creates "HealthMarts," regional non-profit health insurance cooperatives made up of insurers, health care providers, and employers who offer expanded coverage options to employees
-Expands the number of services that community health center networks may offer
-Allows self-employed individuals to fully deduct health insurance costs from their gross incomes
-Authorizes the creation of tax-free medical savings accounts into which customers may invest money and make withdrawals to pay for medical treatment as needed
Link to Legislation: http://tho
Please copy and paste and SEND http://www
Dear Hon. (insert the name of your Senator or Representative)
We need an alternate plan to the current, private, FOR-PROFIT healthcare system we have that offers no other choice outside a private, FOR-PROFIT insurance plans.
I work in (insert the name of your city or town) in a company that offers no benefits due to its size. The private, FOR-PROFIT, insurance plans (your campaign contributors, by the way) are prohibitive.
This system of private, FOR-PROFIT, health care insurance has to go the same way slavery had to go, private Fire Departments had to go, For-Rent Hessian Armies had to go, and on and on.
Please refrain from answering with a form letter prepared by your campaign contributors with the usual, repeated bromides.
Respectfully,
(Insert your name)
relocate the "guests" and then close the border. Pandemic solved!
The truth is without health care for all, no one will be healthy.
But there is a problem, our government is not controlled by the people anymore, but by large corporations, who will prevent health care reform. If they can't outright prevent it, they will cut it's heart out so it's ineffectual, or pervert it's ends so they are the only ones who profit.
This is America, a country run for and by the elite. While they still retain political power America will continue to fail it's people.
Rep Kennedy-Thanks!
If a Public Option plan fails to be included this time around it will be a disaster for American public policy.
It will also be a disaster for Barack Obama who will alienate a huge consituency who depended on him to do something meaninful about the unmitigated disaster and immorality of the current US Health Care system
Leaders like you and the grassroots need to take to the streets, to their their telephones and to their keyboards asap!
The progressive media(like, Huffington Post ,AlterNet, Salon,etc) also must help because the mainstream media is hopelessly in bed with the status quo (with a few notable exceptions)
We have reached a defining moment in America on this issues. The battle is fully engaged."B
The stakes of losing are far too great for this great nation to endure in my opinion.
Dr. Rick Lippin
Southampton,Pa
http://med
Why should responsible americans pay for those who are not responsible? Nothing is free, and those who expect others to pay for them while they have sat on their butt all their life is a joke.
I do not want my medical records in the hands of the government, do you? And what has the government ever successfully ran? Social Security(almost bankrupt) DMV(nightmare) Post Office(2 hour lunch breaks, cool) and I wonder if the hospitals would close for holidays, hmm interesting. I want my freedom back, but as obama continues it seems I am losing more and more everyday.
Quit the whining. Pres. Obama's plan gives you the option of you keeping your FOR-PROFIT, private insurance and gives the rest of us that cannot afford your FOR-PROFIT, private insurance the option to have a NOT-FOR-PROFIT health coverage.
Do you get it?
Nobody is taking your option away ...
Are you still with me?
Nobody is taking FOR-PROFIT, private insurance away.
You cannot say someone who has lost their home due to an unfortunate event, such as cancer or an accident, hasn't worked and therefore is not responsible. Our country can no longer turn our backs on our own ... this is not what our country is based on.
We all are losing more because we have not united as a whole to say no ... to the banks, to Wallstreet, to insurance companies, to big pharma, to Monsanto for polluting our food/world ... and need I go on as I think you get the picture. How for-profit companies have and continue to profiteer off all of us and we sit back and point fingers to what we perceive to be the easiest culprit, yet it so much deeper than that.
A strong nation is one that can and has the means to take care of its own. We do, just priorities have been skewed and regulations have been dismissed. We have our hands tied as citizens as our elected officials are so concerned with their fund raising for reelection that they vote in favor of the corporation's interest rather than the citizen constituent. Campaign finance reform may be one of the first items we the people should demand ... to even the playing field. Notice how the French come together to demand of their government their needs, and their quality of life reflects their involvement. Our time to do the same has had an expiration date of long ago upon
what a simplistic view. it has nothing to do with 'responsible' vs not responsible.
i make less now than i did 10 years ago and the purchasing power is even less. the only jobs we have created (for the most part) are retail jobs that do not pay well in the first place, and schedules are set up to avoid as many full time employees as possible specifically to avoid benefits
i am simply amazed at the greedy outlook of posters like you: it all boils down to 'I got mine, the rest of you can f**k off'.
maybe if we weren't shipping our manufacturing base away; maybe if we weren't out-sourcing so much IT and other mid-level income job opportunities; maybe if our secondary educational system was not pricing itself out of range to provide a human resource base to be competetive in the 21st century; maybe if our government was not allowing corporate offshore tax havens; maybe if we weren't spending ourselves into bankruptcy on an ill-conceived, illegitimate and illegal war; maybe if the majority of this country (yourself excepted, of course) were not corporate serfs in one form or fashion we would be living in the utopia you seem to be deluded into believing GWB and the GOP have nurished and multiplied for all
obama cannot do enough fast enough to bring this country back to government OF the people, BY the people, and most importantly FOR the people
Big business, including insurance business, pharmaceutical business, for profit health care business, medical equipment and supply business, doctor's business, and every other faction of big business, should be excluded from all deliberation on health care policy. After the public, acting through its elected servants, settles on the final form of single payer universal health care, big businesses can negotiate for possible roles serving the public, and the public system.
In the past, big business has materially contributed to the ongoing disaster that is our non system of health care. Right now, big business wants us to listen to their selfish voice and perpetuate the same disaster. In the future, big business intends to maximize profit regardless of the cost to the public.
Big business has had their day, and we should all be sick of the disaster they have saddled us with.
There exists in our country, and in our government, a successful model of single payer universal health care. This system meets all requirements for success, and is ready today for an incremental expansion to universal coverage.
With thanks to "Bill" below, I echo a recommendation of the following article:
http://www
Big business! We hates 'em! We hates 'em, precious!
I'm agreed that we need better health care. I went to a top-rated specialist with one set of symptoms, and got a symptomatic treatment for it . . . then had another set, and went to another top-rated specialist, and so on, through nineteen symptoms, nineteen specialists, and nineteen medications. Each time I had to fill out a detailed list of all the medications I was taking and what they were intended to treat. Finally I went to a doctor in France, who asked me a few questions, and diagnosed the underlying illness that was causing the entire set of nineteen symptoms. I went from nineteen medications that took up a lot of time and money, to adding one plant to my diet and I was noticeably better in a few weeks.
Doctors need to look at the whole patient, not focus on a symptom. Instead of treating a symptom, they should pay attention to the symptom as a manifestation of an underlying problem.
Treating symptoms is the goal of the U.S. health system, because there is big money in it. The medical industry makes big money in treating symptoms that go on forever. If they quickly treat the disease, then there is little money made in short term treatment.
Look at the drug companies. They spend millions to create symptom treatments for chronic diseases, that people have to take their whole lives. The spending on actually finding a cure is a drop in the bucket compared to expensive symptom cures.
The purpose of the health care industry is to generate profit, treating symptoms forever helps increase profits.
it sure feels that way sometimes, why would you want to cure the patient, the insurance company may be the one who is paying most of the cost (depending on the coverage not the patient!!!
a lot of high ideals and pretty words.....
http://www
Single payer advocates cannot get a seat on the table because the congressman in charge denies them a seat on the table. That simple.
If by "re-incentivizing of the current payment system" you mean removing the 33% cost hit of having insurance companies operate as middlemen, I'm with you 100%. Otherwise, please stop the charade. Forcing people to buy a defective and overpriced product (private health insurance) is not "reform." Take a peek over the Rhode Island border: the Massachusetts "coverage for all plan" you're using as a model was hatched by a Republican governor and enthusiastically supported by the largest insurance companies in the state. The practice of cutting off coverage for technicalties such as "pre-existing conditions" is a form of fraud and should be a felony. You shouldn't let insurance companies use it as a bargaining chip to gain 50 million new customers.
If I contracted the flu, I would stay at home and wait it out. Why? I don't have health insurance and don't make enough money to piss away hundreds of dollars just to be told to wait it out or get access to drugs or vaccines I don't really trust. Sorry America, but I am not alone. The uninsured DO NOT get strange health precursors checked out by physicians, because they don't want to sacrifice a week or month of earnings especially when there is no guarantee that they will help you in the least. It cost me $600 to get blood tested for diabetes. That is about what I make in a month. I'll just risk death instead, it feels less like slavery.
That's another problem with the system. The uninsured, who are usually the least able to pay, are charged the highest prices. They pay list price for medical services and prescription drugs, while the big insurance companies get the highest discounts.
As far as prices go, it is way out of hand. So far this year, I have had one office call with a general practitioner and two Vitamin D blood tests. I was charged, and the insurance company approved, $550 for these services. When I asked Blue Cross why it was so high, seeing as they approved it, I was blown off.
A simple comparison of the appropriate use of health care outlets between Medicaid/Medicare patients and patients with private insurance suggests that improving access to care is not going to significantly alter the way Americans use the system. Preventative care and health maintenance are not successful where there is no significant financial motivation to use these services. As a physician with experience n both an inner city hospital as well as in tertiary referral center serving mainly privately insured patients, the contrasts in behavior could not be more diverse. Any reform must address the lack of individual responsibility for one's health. Government, especially teh US government has rarely demonstrated a willingness to implement programs in which personal responsibility play a significant role. No our current entitlement programs only encourage irresponsible behavior. OUr political leaders including MR Kennedy will likely fail us in this regards as well.
personal responsibility had nothing to do with me getting a benign kidney tumor. Stuff happens. It's expensive to fix. Why don't you doctors get together and eliminate the tobacco industry? You should. Then you could get together and address whatever your other issues are, McDonalds or what have you. BTW, I know plenty of doctors and nurses who smoke or are obese or abuse drugs, or are just plain psycho. Maybe if we had a better health care system, there would be better education, eh?
I have to chime in here as well. Three years ago I was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 38 with no family history. There was no "irresponsible behavior" involved. I sincerely believe that the only reason that I am alive today is because I had double health insurance. We did everything that was recommended for the best practice treatment of my disease. Had I been uninsured my choices would have been starkly different. Single payer is the only way to have a healthy country. Doctors have power to help form the health of this nation but unfortunately too many of them have forgotten why they went into medicine.
Considering that the US is at risk of losing our triple A credit rating--in part due to out-of-control health care expenditures: http://www
Democrats had better get it right and kick the price-gouging health-care industry to the curb.
Washington let the wealthy have their way for 30 years, and they ran this country into the ground.
Time to do right by the people. Single payer must be on the table.
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