Health'S' Care or Health 'S'care Reform?

Miss Mya
People, what am I missing?! I’m not quite sure why the issue of health care is so prominent for President Obama and the nation as a whole. Every single 2008 presidential candidate expressed concern for and willingness to upgrade the current status of health care. Why is that? While perusing Wikipedia, one of my favorite online sources, I found the following information:

The U.S. is the only wealthy, industrialized nation that does not have a Universal Health Care system, according to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and others.... In spite of the amount spent on health care in the US, according to a 2008 report, the United States ranks last in the quality of health care among developed countries. The World Health organization (WHO), in 2000, ranked the US health care system 37th in overall performance and 72nd by overall level of health (among 191 member nations included in the study). International comparisons that could lead to conclusions about the quality of the health care received by Americans are subject to debate. The US lags behind other wealthy nations in such measures as infant mortality and life expectancy, but some argue that these differences have little to do with the structure of its health care system.

Ah yes, I totally get it now, our influence on other countries and stature in power and authority may be misinterpreted if citizens of the United States aren’t even able to receive or have adequate health care. Never really thought of that way....so in other words, image is everything! Completely valid point, however I still fail to see the sense of urgency in the matter.Initially, I was thinking that there were hundreds of millions of people without health care, either not able to afford it, working for an organization or company that didn’t provide it, or maybe felt like they didn’t need it. On my way to work this morning, I started to wonder which companies and/or organizations might or might not offer health care.

As I drove along the question came to mind. How many people actually do not have health care coverage? As you know, I like to have at least some facts before I start to ramble and here’s what I found: “The number of people without health insurance coverage at some time during 2006 totaled about 16% of the population, or 47 million people.” This internet source says that a lot of the insured folks actually have inadequate coverage with limits on what it is covered and pay high premiums and/or deductibles. Interesting....is 16% of the population considered a lot? In my opinion, it’s not a huge impact. The source does not cite statistics on those who have inadequate coverage, but just says “many of those with insurance are not sufficiently insured”.So what exactly does that mean? Does it really matter how many people are affected? Yes and no. Yes, because obviously the health of one human being has greater or lesser value than another and ideally proper, adequate health care is the goal. Having proper health care for families is vital to the sustainability and prosperity of this country. I say no, because the overall cost to implement the reform covering the uninsured or under insured doesn’t seem worth it if only a few million people benefiting from the reform program. Another concern is that undocumented immigrants or those that wouldn’t pay into the pool would be able to access loop holes and/or obtain coverage meant for citizens of the United States.

Western medicine seems to focus on just taking care of the symptoms instead of researching and finding cures. As we all know health care in this country is BIG business, with little or no regard for the well-being of the patient. So why build an entire reform around a system that, in the long run, doesn’t benefit the user. Studies have shown that health care costs in this country are among the highest, especially for those who are obese. So why not push advocacy programs that will assist this country to get their weight under control instead of throwing money toward money-hungry prescription drug companies, non-empathetic hospitals and clinics? Why not put our efforts towards eliminating what we know to be a major problem and create positive, effective solutions for the masses. Just think about the mammoth –sized portions at restaurants and the cheaper yet unhealthy food grocery stores sell. These are just some of the many problems. Why not have exercise become apart of the daily work routine not by choice, but making it mandatory – these are the types of things that may have an impact on the health and physical condition of this country.

Well....that’s my two cents!



Mr Hines
Mya, I'll tell you what you're missing! The simple fact that your opinion, along with the opinions of potentially hundreds of thousands of Americans, has been spoon fed to you, almost injected via a hypodermic needle, by the very entities that stand to lose billions upon trillions of dollars they earn by choking it out of the citizens of this country! This debate is no different than the debate on oil dependency. The entities that earn billions in the oil business pay millions to keep the propaganda machine roaring, scaring people into thinking that alternative fuel sources are unrealistic and virtually logistically impossible to implement, or suppressing the reality that there exists the capability to produce an automobile capable of achieving significantly higher mpg averages. This is a simple case of the uber rich wanting to stay rich at our own risk!

The central issue is everyone having access to adequate health care. Everyone! Not just the rich, or the employed, or the self employed that pay up the wazoo, or the elderly on Medicare, or the military who utilize the VA. Those who have health care now, for instance, through their job, and oppose Health Care Reform because they are "satisfied" with their current provider, are the very people, in my mind, reform benefits most. In our current economic state, (where unemployment nationally topped 9.5% and 14% in at least one state), jobs are being lost by the thousands and scarce for job seekers. A person who is content with their health coverage on Monday could quite easily find his/ herself unemployed and uninsured on Tuesday. This is where the biggest impact is made. People are either condemned to a career in which they might be miserable, often mainly to have barely adequate health coverage, or they lose their job (they hated) and are punished two fold with the financial hardship of not having an income, and the harsh reality that they have no health insurance.

I will spare everyone, and not repeat much that I'm quite certain you've already heard. This debate is a no brainer. It is time for America to do with health care what the courts seemed to be so preoccupied with doing to Bill Gates and Microsoft. I would sooner have a monopoly in the world of computer technology than in the area that deals with my health. It is no accident how the current system evolved. It was planned and designed several decades earlier. (Go to http://kaiserpapers.org/ or Google Kaiser Erlichman Nixon. If you're not already aware, you will find it very interesting).