Via Think Progress, here’s an ad that makes you think a bit about our health care system:
If he were anyone else, he’d probably be dead by now. The patient’s history and prognosis were grim: four heart attacks, quadruple bypass surgery, angioplasty, an implanted defibrillator and now an emergency procedure to treat an irregular heartbeat. For millions of Americans, this might be a death sentence. For [him], it was just another medical treatment. And it cost him very little.
Who’s “he”? If you didn’t click the link to the ad, “he” is Vice President Dick Cheney, who likely doesn’t have a fraction of the trouble you or I do getting access to health care. Or paying the avalanche of bills that come after.
The rest of the ad talks about a house bill proposing a single-payer health care system for the US. While I don’t think we’ll get single payer in the very near future, it seems like a good thing to work towards. We should be ashamed – as a society – that any American has to go without health care.
A couple my sister knows worked at a high-end hotel and restaurant in DC. Together, they pulled in around $120k a year. They had almost $200k in the bank and decided to have a baby. They did not have insurance (both had minor pre-existing conditions (minor skin cancer (in full remission) and a removed spleen due to a blood infection) which disqualified them from the company’s plan, much less getting a plan outside the group. When their daughter was born, she had a disconnected esophogus. Three years and about a half a million dollars later, she was ‘corrected’. The couples savings? gone. Hope of buying a house? gone. Credit rating? gone. Jobs? gone (too much time off to deal with the surgeries). They are still in debt to the tune of about $300,000 with little hope of ever paying it off. With their credit rating, they can’t get good paying jobs. Just one more family sacrificed on the altar of the ‘free market.’
I have often wondered why, if tax-payer funded federal insurance is good enough for America’s lawmakers (and law-breakers), why is it not good enough for Americans?
I have heard the arguments:
National health insurance would be too complicated (um, has anyone else out there tried to wade through what is covered, what is not covered, and what the standard co-pay (under my FEHB plan, the co-pay is $20 (unless it is $8, or $30, or $40)));
National health insurance would mean rationing of health care (it is already rationed, based on who can pay, and who has insurance (yes, hospitals are required to treat any who need it, but what about preventive care, which would eliminate up to one third of emergency room visits));
National health insurance would be too expensive (take a look at what a useful family health insurance plan costs if you are not in a group).
We read about kids dying because of an absessed tooth, about babies born with disabilities because of vitamin deficiencies, about people visiting an emergency room three days late and thousands more expensive.
The problem in Washington, in my useless opinion, is that the current ruling clique really doesn’t give a tinker’s damn whether or not their policies work. They only care if the policies are ‘politically correct.’
Sorry for the rant. Today is my Monday. ‘Nough said.
You’re right. We do a lousy job especially with preventative care. I have what most would say is “decent” insurance coverage through my job, but it pays for practically no preventative care.
Getting it to pay for other care and prescription drugs is sometimes an adventure as well, but that’s another rant …