Today I want to talk about health care because it is something that I feel very strongly about.
I’ll be honest, I don’t think the plan to “guarantee” that all Americans have health insurance (in other words, force everyone to buy insurance) is the right way to go. In my opinion, the right way to go is Universal health care.
Yes, I know, I could be labeled a (gasp, horror!) Socialist for these views. I like to think of it as putting what’s right for everyone ahead of what’s right for just the few.
People say that we don’t want the government running health care, because the free market system is more “efficient” and controls costs better. After all, the free market system is based on profit.
So, we want our health care to be profitable. What’s wrong with this picture?
Health care costs are paid by health insurance. Well, some of them are. If you’re lucky and can afford insurance that is – oh, and depending on your deductible and the percentage the insurance company is going to pay, etc.
Let’s think for a minute here. We all know that insurance companies are in it for the money, right? After all, every time you make a claim against your car insurance, the rate goes up. The same thing happens with your homeowner’s insurance. How many people have decided not to make a claim because they didn’t want their premium to increase? Instead they just pay the costs out of their pocket.
But, the health insurance companies can’t raise your premiums because they’re set for everyone for a year. This is probably a good thing or they’d be even higher than they already are. I can just imagine every time you go to the doctor they would be taking more money out of your paycheck. If you had a lot of health problems, by the end of the year you might actually have to pay your employer to let you work.
So, since they don’t raise your premiums with every claim, how do health insurance companies make profit then? There’s only one way and that is to deny health care – refuse to pay for that medical test or that operation. Obviously, you can basically forget about any form of preventative medicine. If the health insurance company sees that there’s no reason to have the test, they just refuse to pay for it.
When the question comes up – Is the operation critical to the patient’s health? We leave that decision to the health insurance company whose main goal is to increase profits. How do you increase profits? By decreasing spending. How do you decrease spending? Don’t pay for health care. It’s that simple.
Profit needs to be removed from health care so that doctors can do what’s right for their patients. Let them focus on what it is they have been trained to do rather than worry about understanding what each insurance company requires.
Then there are those who say, “I don’t want to spend my hard-earned money paying taxes for health care for lazy people who won’t work.”
It horrifies and angers me to hear so-called Christians give this argument.
First of all, the people who really suffer in this are the lower middle class who are working hard, making just enough money to get by and struggling for all their worth to be able to pay their bills. Then they get hit by a health problem and sometimes lose everything.
And what about all of those people who have lost their jobs because of the problems with the current economy? I guess they don’t deserve help either.
In other words, I guess only people who make above a certain amount of money “deserve” health care since they’re the only ones who can afford it.
There are a lot of “statistics” and “quotes” around that criticize the health care given in countries that do have a universal health care system. All of them focus on the negative side.
My challenge would be to talk to those of us who are expats in other countries that do have universal health care. I think you’ll find that very few of us would trade a universal health care system for a free market one.
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In 1976 I had been working two years, just out on my own after 18 months working at jobs that offered no health insurance. I couldn’t afford health insurance when I was starting out either. I hadn’t been covered since my divorce in 1974.
I was crossing a street and was hit by a car, thrown in the air and came down on my face. I almost lost the arm the car hit and did lose the use of it for a year. The car was uninsured. All the insurance I had was my automobile uninsured motorist coverage. I lost everything. I lived with my child in a construction site and was grateful for the opportunity. I started working as I could at anything I could find to do.
I still lost everything and started all over again from square one. Thank God I was young.
That just should not happen. To anyone.
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Mary Reply:
September 23rd, 2009 at 10:26 am
What a terrible thing to happen Judith! You’re absolutely right, it should not happen to anyone.
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I agree that profit should be taken out of health care in order for it to work for those who really need it.
I also think that Universal Health Care is not necessarily the answer either. Mary, I am not sure where the closest hospital is to you, but I have very vivid and horrific memories of my Nonno Florindo in the hospital when he was diagnosed with stomach cancer. The conditions at the hospital in Teramo were (and still are) awful.
My most vivid memory is of my Nonno in a room with 11 other people some of whom were a lot of pain moaning and crying out. When we got there the IV had come out of his arm and there was a pool of blood on the floor where he was essentially bleeding out. There was no nurse in sight. Who knows how long he had been that way. My nonna and my mom had to take turns feeding him and bathing him because the “nurses” could not be bothered. It gave me nightmares – especially since I was a candystriper at the time and volunteered every weekend at my local hospital. I could not get over the difference in treatment.
Also, I know for a fact that if you need an MRI or a CAT Scan in Teramo you may not be able to get one for a while depending upon the “availability” of the machines which several hospitals share among themselves.
Now I know that this is not true of all hospitals in Italy but I am just saying that both systems have flaws.
I just find it incredibly frustrating that with all the amazing things we have in this country – no one can come up with a compromise between private and universal health care…if we can transplant human organs and clone sheep we really should be able to come up with a better system which ensures that the people get the services that they need without the fear of going bankrupt.
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Mary Reply:
September 23rd, 2009 at 10:25 am
Strange Paola, I’ve been in the hospital at Teramo and a family member was treated there and the conditions weren’t anything like that. Maybe it was the department.
There are wait times for tests and other problems with the health care system, but at least everyone can get health care.
What I can’t believe is that a country like the US, with all of its advantages, does not care enough for its people to make sure that everyone has health care without the fear of financial ruin.
It’s so refreshing to take my child to the doctor and not have to worry about the bill or not have the doctor hurrying us out because he has a quota of how many patients he has to see in an hour.
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Cathy Reply:
September 23rd, 2009 at 5:28 pm
Mary, I agree with you. In a country as rich and powerful as the US it is a national disgrace that we have working people without health insurance, small employers that can’t afford to offer health insurance, and insurance companies denying coverage because of pre existing conditions.
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Mary Reply:
September 24th, 2009 at 10:21 am
Now, if we could just get everyone else to agree….
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My husband and I left the US and moved to Italy because of health care costs. I worked part time teaching at a college and all of my salary went towards paying our insurance premiums and co-pays. When I received my Italian citzenship we realized we could live in Italy and have money left to do something besides pay bills. Just as my Italian grandparents immigrated to the US for a better life my husband and I immigrated to Italy for a better life. When people ask us if we will return to the states to live, the answer is always that we can’t until there is affordable health care of some sort.
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Mary Reply:
September 23rd, 2009 at 10:21 am
I often have people ask me if I miss the US and if I ever plan to move back. Whatever advantages there are in the US don’t outweigh the peace of mind I have knowing that if one of us gets sick it’s not going to ruin us financially. Health problems are hard enough, having to add financial problems on top of them just makes it impossible to deal with.
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“I’ll be honest, I don’t think the plan to “guarantee” that all Americans have health insurance (in other words, force everyone to buy insurance) is the right way to go. In my opinion, the right way to go is Universal health care.”
…I agree with you 100%. Excellent Post.
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Mary Reply:
September 23rd, 2009 at 10:19 am
Forcing people to buy insurance is just going to make the poor poorer. They don’t have the money to buy insurance or they would have already done so.
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I’m with you, Mary; to me, single-payer is the only way to go and yet they say that’s unworkable in the current political climate. I’m so disappointed they didn’t even try, already giving in to a compromise before that could even be proposed. Yes, I’m sure many Americans would see it as *gasp* socialist, but it should’ve been pushed as Medicare for all from the get-go and then maybe more people would’ve seen the light before insurance companies got their dirty hands (and words) in the whole thing.
Although probably not anyway. Mah.
Moving to the US isn’t an option for us even if we wanted to either–not with health care the way it is (and I’ve told my senators and rep as such).
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Mary Reply:
September 25th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
I remember when I was still living in the US and had some health problems. It ended up not being a major problem, but while I was going through tests I was more scared about how much it would end up costing me than I was about my health, even though I had a pretty good insurance plan.
When you go to the doctor for some medicine and a 15 minute visit ends up costing you over $90 – that’s ridiculous.
But, a single-payer plan was never Obama’s plan – it was always to “make sure everyone has insurance”. As long as insurance companies are only out for profit, nothing will change, even if everyone has coverage.
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I agree with Mary. I live in the Netherlands since 1986 and am always shocked to hear about Americans losing everything because they got sick. A friend from Amsterdam asked me to drop off “drop” (Dutch licorice) for her sister in Enid OK when I was home for family visit. The year before she had been living in a lovely house with her boyfriend. She got cancer & the boyfriend later died of a heart attack. The poor woman (who was then in her late 50′s) was thrown out of her house (his kids threw her out) & had to move to a rental “shack” on the poor side of the tracks. I was so shocked I did not tell her sister about it.
We have universal health insurance & get the best of care without having to put our hands in our pockets. It only costs us +/- EUR110 per month for basic & you can add on to your premium as you like. You do not have to pay for medicine – the bill is automatically sent to the insurance co. unless the medicine is not covered. This even includes birth control, flu shots
It seems to me that the Republicans and the insurance companies in the US are smearing Obama’s efforts to keep that green coming into their own pockets. As you said, they who can afford to pay it!
Teresa
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I am not sure about the whole single payer/ universal health insurance option, however i think if they want to push a medicare type plan for all, they need to prove they are able to efficiently and effectively operate what they already have (medicare/medicaid)which they can’t. I think that is the main problem for alot of Americans, they don’t trust the government to be able to do it! The politicians are so corrupt and out for themselves that we the people do not trust them and want to place our lives in their hands! If they were all going to be on the same universal plan as the average joe, you can BET $ they would be doing a better job on it! But it doesn’t affect them so they are only looking at $ not at how it really affects people! That is why I DO NOT support health insurance for all. And that is what the debate is about- health INSURANCE not health CARE. Everyone can get health care, but not everyone can get or WANTS health insurance! It all boils down to GREED!
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