Healthcare in the United States: Universal Coverage or Business Model?

[amileegirl]

Here are my responses to a group discussion on Universal Healthcare.  My responses are in black.

But that is why we become educated, trained, whatever possible to get jobs that have healthcare benefits, or that pay enough for us to afford it. This is the American Dream, why do we give up on it.

You know it isn't that people "give up."    Some people work very hard doing the jobs that most of us take for granted.  SOMEONE has to pick up your garbage, work in factories, work in the fields, work in restaurants, and to do unskilled labor.  What about the hardworking people just entering the workforce who haven't had time to get either an education or to develop experience or skills?   These are decent hardworking members of the community to provide necessary services.    These people are the backbone of society without them we wouldn't have society.    To say they just need to work harder is insulting.

Let's not forget the cost of living.    Not everyone can move to a place that pays better wages or if they do they are stuck living in worse conditions than the place they left where the cost of living was lower.  What about the elderly?   Or the widows from an era where women were not encouraged to work, what do they do?  What about the ones who lose their pensions when companies change their names.  How can they afford the cost?  And they do get taken advantage of by the current system.

People shouldn't be denied basic, necessary healthcare just because they don't have a higher degree and/or don't work in a profiting business that can afford to give them insurance coverage, bonuses, and annual raises.

The problem is not that people can't afford reasonable healthcare, it is that American healthcare (for all its wonderful advancements) is so outrageously bloated that the fees they charge passed the line of sanity a long time ago.

There are other ways to earn money while still having those kinds of jobs. Some of those jobs actually provide medical benefits. And if not, then what's the harm in getting a second job?

This makes it sound like there are ALWAYS jobs waiting to snap up the moment it is needed.   In some areas a person is lucky to have one job in which they can barely make ends meet.  And there is no guarantee that IF you are lucky enough to get a second job (or a third job) that it will even give you benefits.   And if you do get benefits that's not even a guarantee that you can afford to pay the out of pocket expenses so having the benefits does little to help you.


How about investments? What happened to the fiscally smart people of our nation? And as far as the elderly (or mentally or physically disabled), that is what Medicare is for.  It used to be that children took care of their parents or Grandma had investments [her home, her retirment (NOT SS, because people actually invested in retirement, and SS was intended as a buffer, not sole retirement income), etc.]

To invest you need income that doesn't all go towards the simple cost of day-to-day living.  These days people are barely able to keep up with heating their homes much less have money aside to invest!         Do you know what they happend to my grandmother?   She is from a generation of housewives who never worked.  Her sole source of income was from my grandfather.  When he died they took HALF of his pension.      If it weren't for the fact that her sister owns the house they live in she wouldn't be able to live on her own.   My grandfather worked 6 or 7 days a week, backbreaking labor for half of his life.   He was not an idiot and they saved what they could.    My grandmother is among the lucky ones.  However, there are a lot of retirees these days who have no choice but to work in a menial job because they are too old to get hired in prime positions and they can't even enjoy their much earned rest!   Should we just say, too bad Grandpa and Grandma, you'll just have to get a second job to cover what your Medicaid won't?     And with the state of the housing market right now, there might not be much left in equity on their home depending on several factors.


So now that it's gotten out of hand people think it's okay to take it to the next EXTREME step. Where's it going to end? Soon we'll be working for everyone else (each other), it will be like some robotic communistic system. So let's step back a minute and take a deep breath. Let's go back to our American values or personal responsibility and charitable contributions.

What "people"?    Just because a few take advantage of the system doesn't mean that the vast majority don't only take what they need when they need help.  There shouldn't be such a stigma or shame of getting help.  That's why we pay taxes when we work.  It is to keep things going and if we for some reason can't work we can be safe in the knowledge that our years of taxpaying will help us in our time of need.  Our taxpaying years should ensure that!

I am all for personal responsibility, but there needs to be an overhaul of the cost of a BASIC of healthcare.    Healthcare was NEVER meant to be a business of profit.     If you want to know how bad it is and what a money grubbing business it can be...I went to one dentist who was going to charge me $2600 because I "needed" lots of dental work and I needed scalings, etc, etc.  I couldn't afford that!  (Not to mention I have a mirror I can see my mouth!)   I called FIVE offices they all had bloated prices and kept giving me the run around.   I finally went to another dental office across town and they told me that I needed a good cleaning but everything else looked good, I just needed to step up the flossing.  They charged me $56 as a new patient.      I paid out of pocket.      

Tell me that healthcare isn't a bloated business and how easy it is for everyone to just work harder!  I'm lucky because I live in a large city and I had a number of dental offices to choose from.   Not everyone is that fortunate.   If I had had insurance at the time I might not have been able to choose where I went if the approved office wasn't on a list.  So if I really needed serious dental work, I would have been forced to choose the bloated business.

I don't want the government to regulate everything per se, but I do want them to smash down a heavy hammer and make these  health care businesses and insurance companies stop taking advantage of people.

 

 A January 19, 2008, article in The Globe And Mail states, "More than 150 critically ill Canadians – many with life-threatening cerebral hemorrhages – have been rushed to the United States since the spring of 2006 because they could not obtain intensive-care beds here. Before patients with bleeding in or outside the brain have been whisked through U.S. operating-room doors, some have languished for as long as eight hours in Canadian emergency wards while health-care workers scrambled to locate care." [43

You are posting this as if this is unheard of in the United States. That people don't wait hours and hours in the emergency room. Or that all over Canada this happens all the time to everyone and that no one can get the care they need because it is the fault of universal healthcare.   I can poll Canadians and some will say they've never had a problem and some will say that yes, the've seen the problems. The problem of overcroweded understaffed clinics and hospitals is NOT a unique problem to Canada or to universal health care. So this proves nothing except Canada isn't perfect.   I work with a former Canadian who is planning on going to Canada when she can to get some dental work done because she can't afford it here!     What I see is that Canadians aren't spending $1200 a month to be denied care and wait in line for hours anyway!

In 2007, it was reported that Canada sent scores of pregnant women to the US to give birth.[40] In 2007 a woman from Calgary who was pregnant with quadruplets was sent to Great Falls, Montana to give birth. An article on this incident states, "There was no room at any other Canadian neonatal intensive care unit."[41]

And people have gone to Canada to get treatment that they can't get here. So again this provies nothing except that Canada has some croweded facilities just like we do here.   No one said Canada was a paragon of perfection.   But they are doing somethings right and we need to look at that!   Let's talk about the other things that Canada offers its citizens. Like materity benefits for working mothers. A woman gets 15 weeks of paid maternity leave as long as she's worked 600 hours within the last year. If there is an emergency and the baby is hospitalized, that limit can be extended for every week that baby is in the hospital for up to a year. Adoptive parents are also elibible for leave benefits. Again, all your quote proves is that Canada isn't without its problems.     A better questoin is, "Do enough of their citizens get the healthcare they need to justify their system and the time needed to iron out problems as they arise?"

A March 2, 2004 article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal stated, "Saskatchewan is under fire for having the longest waiting time in the country for a diagnostic MRI — a whopping 22 months." [14]

It's not like an MRI is a necessary surgery that will kill the patient by the way so this is a bit alarmist.   Was someone denied a life saving operation or transplant because they couldn't afford it?  Now, that would be a headline!     Anyway, that article also aknowleded that it was a violation of the Canadian Health Act and that they needed two more machines added to the three available to carry the load. Those without emergency needs would still need to wait 7 months since those who need it must and should go first. So what does this tell me about the Canadian system? That they have an issue that need resolving.  In the United States people have insurance that won't cover NECESSARY medical procedures. How is this MRI story worse!?

Another obvious problem is hospitals closing down. Universal health means we would then pick what ever hospital that we want....people would go to one hospital over another for "looks" or for what ever reason we make up.

There are some hospitals that I REFUSE to step foot into right now just by their reputation alone. I would rather go across town to a shabby good reputation hospital than go to the fancy one that give appalling care and then overcharges for it. Do you really think, if given the choice, people are going to pick the pretty building facilities over the hospital that provides quality care? People are crowding clinics now for the simple reason that it is AFFORDABLE and they can't go anywhere else! We already have the problem! So we've got crowding issues already and hosptals are already shutting down. Why? They can't afford it. Why? Because the hospital needs to make a profit. Why? Because they follow a business model! Basic health care SHOULD NOT be a business!

That would make one hospital more rich and another more poor, correct? What would this do over time? Inner city hospital will remain crammed if not more crowed with excessive wait times while rural small town clinics and medical centers take the financial beating and have to close down.

We already have a painfully obvious rich and poor division. Go to any town and you can easily point out the rich facilities and the poor ones. Inner city hospitals are already cramped and small clinics and centers are already taking the financial hit and DO close...right now. So what is the solution to fix it?

The price to be transferred to a hospital would go through the roof.  If  you feel so privileged, you decide, "I'm not going to pay for this!" ...So allow companies that save lives to become bankrupt. Universal Health Care just won't work in a market like ours.

I don't know about you but up until six months ago I couldn't afford an ambulance ride even if I wanted one. It's insanely expensive to even go a short distance.

Like I said, I want government to help by putting a price cap on outrageous prices and to put a short leash on insurance companies at the VERY LEAST. This way the taxpayer has a fighting chance if they don't want full government regulation. The system right now is out of control. We can't just sit around and do nothing while people are denied basic coverage, denied their claims, and who have no choices.  I think people can't see a different health care system because they can only see it in a MARKET.    This is a big problem.    Our health isn't a business deal!

Is paying $1200 a month in insurance helping the healthcare system? Where is that money going?   It certainly isn't going to where it is needed.    And if a person doesn't get sick or rarely uses a claim can they get some of that money back for SAVING the system money?  Does a hospital really need a marble fountain in the foyer to announce how rich it is? Wouldn't that money have been better spent donating an expensive piece of equipment to a community hospital in need?    If you want your hospital to look inviting, buy some white paint at the hardware store and spruce up the place.   Want to decorate your hospital with art?  Ask some local artists to donate some of their pieces.   Must a hospital follow a business model?  Can not the business model be left to very specific areas of healthcare while the direct care is not profit driven?

I say, lets look at the most successful self-sustaining non-profit organizations and how they provide all the services they do. All the extra money they make goes back into the system to provide more services and being non-profit ensures that that money goes where it should. How are they doing it, and how can we turn our money-grubbing healthcare system into a non-profit, self-sustaining engine?     

If anyone has a better idea, let's hear it!

And by idea, I mean a solution.  No more about how the United States is going to implode if hospitals don't make a profit hand over fist or that Canada isn't perfect.    A real, working, feasable solution to the obvious problems.  People are not getting the care they need and they don't have time for the non-answers.

[jramsaran]

Feb. 12, 2008 at 12:33 PM

People who have insurance aren't completely covered either.  If you have a 20,000 dollar surgery and the insurance will only pick up 80% you are left to cover the rest!  Also if you are having a routine, covered surgery and something goes wrong and your insurance doesn't cover all of that cost...once again you are left to foot the bill.  People who see nothing wrong with their current insurance have been lucky enough to never really need it, because when you do need it...it isn't there.

[kittyhasclaws]

Feb. 12, 2008 at 2:32 PM This is what scares me the most about my husband getting out of the military.  I won't be able to find an insurance company that will cover me due to my medical past.  I will be on at least two medications for the rest of my life (and I'm only 22!) and I don't know how I will pay for them.  It scares me.