Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Why I Support Health Care Reform

There has been a lot of noise flying around the Great Cheeseball regarding health care reform. This has spilled over into organized demonstrations by the sheep following Big Insurance and Big Pharma into thinking equal coverage for everyone at a lower price is a bad thing.

The right wingers have themselves whipped up into the largest case of mass hysteria, the likes of which have never been seen before. Some of the idiotic talking points they keep trying to make include "Do you want a bureaucrat rationing your health care?" and "They will make all the old people commit suicide" and other such drivel that a normally rational person would not even think about twice.

Jay Bullock has done a laudable job of highlighting the flat out lies that the right would have us believe. But it was this specific time of the year, and a post by Michael Mathias, pointing out that the family of a little boy severely burned in an accident had to hold a fund raiser to pay for the medical bills, that triggered me to write about this issue in more depth.

Later this month my family and I will be marking the tenth anniversary of my mother's passing.
She was diagnosed a few years earlier with breast cancer and uterine cancer. She underwent two major surgeries, a radical mastectomy and a hysterectomy, in short order. The oncologist then wanted to follow a standard procedure of chemotherapy and radiation for her chest, followed by another round of chemo and radiation for her abdomen. Due to the strong dosage of medicine, it was standard practice to do a bone marrow draw from the patient, freeze the sample, and then re-inject it after the treatment regimen was done to help speed the recovery and healing process.

This treatment was delayed by more than six months as she fought the insurance company to authorize the bone marrow transplant. Even though the procedure was recognized as the common course of treatment, and had been done for many years with great success, the insurance company called the procedure "experimental" and would not cover it. They only changed their mind when my father's employer advised us to contact the state ombudsman.

By the time that they finally authorized the procedure, she was very sick again, and the treatment didn't work as well as it should have. She had two episodes of recurrence of the cancer before she succumbed to it. I still remember holding her as she cried in frustration every time the insurance company gave her a run around and denied the claim.

I believe that if my mother was allowed health care coverage that did not put profit before people, and did not balk at an established treatment procedure, she might have lived.

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When my mom died, I was "adopted" by her two best friends, Valerie and Sharon. A couple of years before my mom died, Sharon suffered from a brain aneurysm. Fortunately, the city paramedics got to her in time and she suffered no lingering effects from it. However, her insurance decided that they could not cover her anymore and dropped her from her husband's policy, which he got through his job.

They went to find new coverage, but either the insurance companies rejected her due to a "pre-existing condition" or they would want to charge as high as $1,500 per month for her coverage. She eventually qualified for Badger Care and started receiving medical attention again. But by the time she did get coverage, it was too late. She was immediately diagnosed with cancer that was already mastestizing and she died about a year later.

As with my mother, if Sharon had coverage where profit did not proceed people, she could have had affordable health insurance, and her cancer might have been discovered earlier, giving her a better chance at survival.

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The weekend after next, my wife and I will be going up north. However, it won't be to relax, do yard work, or anything else. We are going for the sole purpose of attending a fund raiser for a friend of ours, (a different) Sharon.

Sharon and her husband, Pete, own a small diner in Rosholt. They also have a contract with Portage County to provide the meals for their meals on wheels program. Pete is covered by the VA for his health care needs. However, they could not afford decent insurance for her. Earlier this year, Sharon was diagnosed with small cell lung cancer.

She has undergone severe and multiple rounds of chemotherapy and radiation simultaneously, leaving her in a terribly weakened state and unable to work.

If Sharon could have had affordable health care to her, she would not have to rely on the kindness of her friends and family to spare what they can to help alleviate her costs.

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I realize that these are anecdotal examples, and could be met by some horror story from another type of system, but I have buried loved ones due to the crappy health care insurance system we have now. But these are just three examples from my personal life, and I could give you another half a dozen without thinking too hard about it. I do not consider myself to be particularly unfortunate, so I would find it easy to believe that most people could share similar stories.

The issue isn't the doctors or the hospitals or the clinics, per se. It is about people being greedy and putting their own profits before the greater good. But it is the people that profit so largely from people's illnesses that are funding the groups like the misnamed Americans for Prosperity, who are organizing these so-called rallies, trying to prevent true reform from happening. The exude their misinformation and outright lies in a fear and smear campaign that would make Karl Rove proud, and those that are so willing to distrust anything that has to do with a Democrat, a liberal, or a black President, are more than willing to glom onto these falsehoods in order to preserve their own skewed sense of reality.

I don't think that anyone would argue that the United States has some of the best doctors, hospitals and technology in the entire world. But what good does all that quality equipment, facilities and personnel do for someone that cannot afford to access it?

8 comments:

  1. How about your mother being told that no insurance company would pay for chemotherapy for your father because his cancer was considered "incurable"? And then finding out none of them would! After his first surgery to remove the tumor strangling the common bile duct, the doctor thought they had it all and wanted to try chemo to stop any reoccurance ... Read Moreor get any cells they may have missed. He didn't get the chemo and 7 months later we were told he wouldn't make it through Christmas because he was terminal. He lasted 2 and half more months before he closed his eyes forever. My mother was left with 69k in medical bills and a lein on her home. The doctor forgave his part of the bill and a wonderful social worker convinced the hospital to do the same with some help from State Senators who were appalled he had been refused chemo. They saved our family home but not my father. Given the choice, I'd rather still have him...

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  2. First, sorry capper tough history there. The point you make so wel is, that it is our current system that rations, and has long delays.

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  3. I am in the situation where I have to find my own insurance and the most affordable "reasonable" coverage I could get for myself and my wife was a premium for $315/mo. w/ a $7K deductible. INSANE! No office visits. No preventative care. The only reason I stick with it is there is a modicum of coverage for maternity benefits (I believe it's $8K inclusive, but that only goes so far with hospitals). Other providers we looked into will not cover maternity. This does not include coverage for my 1 year old son (what good would it do for him anyways without office visits?), so we have to pony up the maximum allotted for Badgercare to get him covered, which is thankfully around $90/mo at this time.

    But don't worry, I'm very appreciative of the high premium/low service coverage I get. After all, my provider's profits dipped 36% to only $2.98 billion in 2008. Someone's got to look out for the faceless corporations, right? They've been doing the same all this time for us, right? Oh wait...

    Let's face it, anyone arguing against health insurance reform is a complete idiot.

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  4. i pretty much agree.

    however you said "It is about people being greedy and putting their own profits before the greater good..."

    While this may occur to some extent, I think by and large most people in the insurance industry DO care about people. The profit- oriented actions they may take are not necessarily what they would choose. I think the greater problem is with the organizational structure of a for-profit bureaucracy. Those people are just following the rules of their jobs, much as a soldier shoots people he has no quarrel with. If they don't do the job, the company will find someone else who will. Perhaps these cogs in the machine are not blameless, but the greater share of the blame has to rest with the overall design of the machine itself.

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  5. I think everyone agrees that some type of reform is necessary. A lot of us, however, believe that the reform that is being purposed will make the health care system better.

    At its best our health care system is the best in the world, but at its worst it underserves a significant portion of the population.

    I think all of us, on every side of the debate, would agree that the objective is high-end care at the lowest cost possible.

    The problem as I see it is that the approaches that governments have used to provide "universal healthcare" sacrifice quality to pay for it.

    For example, the cancer mortality rates in the U.S. are lower than countries with universal health care:

    http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/49525427.html

    Thus, the models for the reform certainly have their flaws as well. In short, there are no easy answers. But rushing into a entitlement massive program will inevitably be ineffective. Or worse, what if it makes the health care system and the economy worse than the current state?

    Both sides of this current reform measure would benefit from increased discussions. And, if we find ourselves disagreeing with this current reform measure, we can take comfort in the Bush era bumper stickers "Dissent is Patriotic"

    Cheers.

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  6. Hermes-

    I agree. But what matters is the ones that set the policies that the representatives follow. They are the culprits, in my humble opinion.

    Super Id-

    Welcome, good sir. Just one point. The "government ran" health care we have now, i.e. Medicare, Medicaid, Badgercare, and Seniorcare, are all actually administered by private companies, like WPS and Humana. But having the government holding the purse strings, giving a flat rate, minimizes the profit-driven factor in the decision making.

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  7. “The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.”
    - Thomas Jefferson
    Now try to come up with ways to fix healthcare, without raising taxes on ANYONE, or having the government run it. It can be done. More Government is never the right answer, I dont care what the question is.

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  8. Your story is unfortunate and these same stories abound in the insurance industry. The insurance lobby is strong and powerful and they will profit from the current proposals. If there was no profit in the current proposals they would be defeated. Another anecdote - - and I realize that people are not the same as homes but if the parallel is people going bankrupt - this anecdote works. 2500 homes burned in San Diego County in 2003. 25% of those homes were in my hometown. Folks lost everything. 98% of them were insured. Average replacement cost that they received was 47-50% of the cost to rebuild (not market value) of their home. Many of those people, myself included, lost our life savings. The insurance industry desperately needs reform. However the current proposals are NOT insurance reform....and are NOT being fought by the insurance industry. All that being said, they are "for profit" companies and that is how our system is set up. If we expect every grocery store to handle every item that we want to buy or it needs to be government controlled we are in sad shape. If the government takes over healthcare, they might just as well take over homeowners insurance and property and casualty as well - because after all - some folks can't buy a new car when theirs is totaled with the payment from their insurance. I know this is not the same as a human life - but if you want more from insurance - let's demand better and more varied types of policies - term policies for young people at extremely low rates, inexpensive policies for people with pre-existing conditions that don't cover the condition for one or two years and then cover it fully after that, high risk pools shared by all companies for people with active chronic conditions or lifetime conditions,(the government could subsidize this pool), riders that you can buy personally to supplement the insurance that is provided by your employer if you feel the benefits are inadequate...many other ideas are out there. However, there are simply not enough doctors to handle millions more patients even if they are phased in. We graduate about 15-17 thousand medical students a year and that number is capped by the Federal government. So everyone with have healthcare that they cannot access.
    Health insurance is NOT designed to provide everything for everyone regardless of cost. If it were, the insurance companies would go broke or your premiums would skyrocket. However, the government is offering this healthcare - while at the same time not knowing how to pay for it. We will pay dearly - just as you already have. If you think a government run system is the Nirvana to replace the private system, you will probably be looking forward to the government providing a whole lot more down the road. My stance is not-uncompassionate to your loss, but at the same time recognizes how much more we all stand to lose when we nationalize whole industries. Our new motto - If its broken - give it to the government to run.

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