Hasina wrote in with a comment:
I’m interested in knowing how your audience (which I guess is mainly from USA) feels about the health care debate. I personally think it’s ridiculous to even ask if there should be nationalized health care because everyone should be taken care of. But this is just my opinion - I want to know what Americans feel about health care, and if there is a Republican(sic!) out there I am honestly wondering how they can support the McCain-Bush policies on health care and still believe in a better tomorrow. Seriously wondering this and if you don’t mind - please can you ask your readers?
Thanks
Let’s talk about this. I’m lucky to have readers who live or have lived in countries with nationalized health care. I’ve heard nothing but great things from this….and yet, the Conservative Media Elite here in the US keep putting out stories that universal health care is not a viable solution, that people in these countries get substandard care and have to wait forever to get an appointment with their doctor, it’s too expensive. Universal health care just won’t work here.
Could the US ever have universal health care–or a better system than we have now? But what do we have now, really?
Let me cry for a minute about my long lost, lamented former insurance. In 2007 my employer paid $5796 for my health plan and $659 for my dental plan. That covered me and the Boy. Nothing came out of my paycheck. Co-pay? $5. Prescriptions? $5, $3 if generic. In the 10 years I had this insurance, I don’t think I was overly excessive with my health care needs. I had one surgery, one root canal (which I partially paid for), one ER visit, and then just the regular yearly checkups or times I needed to see my internist for allergies, etc. Time at rehab for some knee problems. Regular visits to the chiropractor for a few years (regular eventually meant once a quarter for maintenance). I don’t take a lot of medication. I did pay for Fat Camp out of my own pocket, but that was a personal decision to not deal with the insurance company (herein lies the problem with insurance–if I’d put Fat Camp on my insurance, could I later be denied coverage if the Boy and I had to find our own insurance? I didn’t want to take the chance).
Would I want to pay $6500 out of my own pocket to continue this insurance? Not really, but I do miss those $5 co-pays (especially when I paid $30 for the concussion follow-up, which went well. I’ll be fine eventually). And actually, if I did continue the insurance through COBRA, it would’ve cost me $800/month.
Wouldn’t it be nice if the government took care of this? And by “take care of,” I’d still anticipate making a nominal co-pay, but I wouldn’t have to worry about drastic health bills. And the government, paying for everyone in the nation, would have a pretty strong hand in negotiating rates. And if health care administrators were just dealing with one insurer, would aspects of health care cost so much?
But could this happen? Could we see the demise of health insurance companies? Or would the government just contract out the work to the insurers? I can’t imagine the health insurance lobbyists would allow universal health care. They’d paint a picture of thousands of jobs lost and poorer health care for Americans.
Seriously though, with the way many Americans neglect their health because it’s too expensive to go to the doctor, is that a decent argument? Or are we a nation that needs to be weaned off of quick-fix pills and onto a treadmill to help prevent diseases that we bring about because of our own behaviors.
What do the Presidential candidates think? McCain thinks (and I’m paraphrasing/skimming, so correct me if I’m wrong) we should have a nationwide health insurance, rather than dealing with state systems. I think there’s been a fair amount of consolidation within the health insurance industry, that I wonder if the boundary problems would naturally go away. Or am I out of line in thinking this way? He’s got a lot of other points which seem somewhat common sense (and maybe the system is already doing this), but the other point I’d like to touch on is that McCain also thinks that citizens should be in charge of their health care dollars.
OK, so if I was in charge of my own health care dollars, I wouldn’t be able to afford the insurance I used to get because that payment was negotiated by my company. Can you imagine insurance companies having hundreds of millions of health rate negotiations? And if I had had the increase in salary but had to pay for my health care on my own, would I spend as much, or would I try to cheap out and get a bare bones plan? What about workers who make low wages and don’t have insurance to boot? Would health care for them cost even more?
What about Obama? He recommends the ability to buy into the government health plan that covers members of Congress. He also says health insurance companies should be forced to cover pre-existing conditions. And he talks about about credits for small businesses and tax credits for individuals, among other things. It seems like he just wants everyone covered, he wants insurance companies to back down, and he wants pharmaceutical companies to not charge so much (another aspect of health care in America that I can’t stand. We have to pay for the marketing costs and supposedly all the money put into R&D for drugs. Other countries just say no, we’re not paying that much. We can’t, supposedly, because we have that lovely free market system). Sounds like a bunch of little tweaks that may or may not happen. I can’t imagine the insurance lobbyists allowing tougher restrictions being placed on the industry. What do you think of this plan?
From the outside, I’m sure many other countries don’t understand how America can be such a rich country and not take care of its citizens. Maybe that wealth isn’t really all it’s cracked up to be. We have conflicting desires to want to push everything on the government, and then at the same time rail against the government for being too much into our business and our wallets. We can’t have it both ways, but what way will really work?
