The following is a reader take by Malinda Markowitz.
If you wonder why Republican campaign strategists are worried about their party’s vulnerability on health care, consider the story of Leslie Elder of West Palm Beach, Fl..
“We had major medical health insurance, and than I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1987. After a radical mastectomy, I was again diagnosed with breast cancer and another radical mastectomy in 1992. Left with large unpaid balances and triple the premiums we were forced to drop the insurance in 2003,” Leslie wrote in a recent message to the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association.
“In 2005 I was diagnosed with kidney cancer resulting in the removal of one completely and part of the other. I had the help of a family member and paid almost $70,000 for the two surgeries.”
“The horror now is that I won’t go back for check ups, for fear of hearing those words again ‘you have cancer, and you have no coverage’. I still work so I cannot get Medicare, and the insurance is unaffordable.”
Sadly, Leslie and her family are not alone. A report cited in the Wall Street Journal June 26 found that 20 percent of Americans said they’d put off medical treatment in the preceding year, nearly 70 percent of them due to cost.
She may also be among those identified by a July NPR/Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard School of Public Health survey of the battleground states, Florida and Ohio.
That survey found 28 percent of Floridians and one-fourth of Ohioans say they or a family member had problems paying medical bills the past year. Among that group, more than half self-ration care — delaying or foregoing needed medical treatment or dental care, not filling prescriptions, cutting pills in half or skipping doses.
What makes the health care crisis worse is how it compounds the overall economic plight for American families today. The Kaiser Health Tracking Poll in June recorded that six in 10 adults cite a “serious” financial problem, led by gas prices, low paying jobs, and paying for health care.
It has not escaped many voters that their health and financial ship of state has hit rough waters under the Bush administration. The Journal report, for example, noted relative “stability” in patient access to care from 1997 to 2003 and a massive leap in insecurity since. During that same period, the number of uninsured and underinsured Americans, insurance premiums, and drug prices, have all skyrocketed.
Against this backdrop, Sen. John McCain’s health plan closely resembles the policies of the present administration. He’s proposing tax credits of $2,500 for individuals and $5,000 for families to help more people buy insurance.
But that’s less than half the current average premium costs. And, McCain offers nothing to control the costs of those skyrocketing premiums except a dubious reliance on competition in an insurance industry that does not compete on quality or access, but by cutting costs mainly through denying care or dumping people when they get sick.
McCain wants to further deregulate an already poorly regulated industry, and eliminate employers’ health insurance tax deduction, a worrisome incentive for employers to stop offering health coverage. The inevitable result — more costs and health risks shifted on to families like Leslie’s.
By contrast, Sen. Barack Obama’s health plan would provide subsidies for those who can’t afford the current pricy plans, and take a tougher stand against insurance and drug company practices. He wants to permit Americans to buy cheaper medications from other countries, repeal the Bush administration ban on the government using its bulk purchasing power to negotiate lower prices from drug companies, and prohibit insurers from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.
Though a step well beyond the McCain plan and the dismal indifference of the Bush years, the Obama plan does not go far enough either. It still leaves too much control over our health in the hands of the insurance giants.
Leslie has another idea, “We need HR 676.” That’s the bill that would essentially improve Medicare and extend it to all Americans.
The need could not be greater. A Commonwealth Fund study July 17 found that U.S. has plunged to last among major industrial nations in preventing deaths through timely and effective medical care even though we spends more than twice as much per person on healthcare.
What’s the central difference? All those other countries have a national healthcare system (like our VA healthcare system) or a single payer system (like Medicare), and they don’t have insurance companies determining when or if you should receive care.
HR 676 has more co-sponsors than any health reform in Congress and millions of Americans who know it is the most effective solution to our health care crisis. We need a more humane health care system and a sharp break from the abysmal policies of the present. Families like Leslie’s and the rest of us deserve nothing less.
Malinda Markowitz, RN is co-president of the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association.
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{ 11 comments }
This partisan political, self-dealing nurse has not explained something. How does it follow that health insurance is a federal function? This patient should get help from her neighbors in her county.
This nurse is really arguing for taxing productive people to pay for mostly inefficient, wasted health care, useless effort, make work for excessive staffing. The latter is imposed on the providers and public by lawyer dominated accreditation. Most standards have no scientific validity, outside of increasing garbage services at the point of a gun.
“What’s the central difference? All those other countries have a national healthcare system (like our VA healthcare system) or a single payer system (like Medicare), and they don’t have insurance companies determining when or if you should receive care.”
Our healthcare resources are limited! Someone has to determine when or if you receive care. Will it make you happier when the government tells you “no” than when an insurance company does?
HR 676 would probably have let this poor woman die waiting for her expensive chemotherapy and surgeries. But don’t worry it would probably give plenty of cheap pain pills!
Clearly, extending Medicare to every American is the answer. Medicare is the perfect example of a well run/well capitalized government program. If that poor lady in the story would have had Medicare, her doctors would have been paid their $70,000. I just can’t understand why doctors don’t support Medicare for all.
The stat about people delaying care is misleading. Last week I had an ear infection, and I delayed seeing an ENT because rather than make a $20 copay, I wanted to see if it would clear up on its own. Do I need Medicare?
Another thing: why do libs have such a static view of the world where the only changes arise from govt policies? Deregulating insurance (or any company for that matter) makes it possible for more firms to enter the market and for more competition. The more you regulate, the more costs you impose, and the more companies have to look for ways to cut costs to offset the increased regulations.
The comments about a lack of cost containment in McCains proposal are untrue. The cost containment is a natural outcome of a plan which will encourage the replacement of first dollar coverage plans with real insurance–major medical that is individually purchased. It has been proven that utilization and costs are lower for those with high deductible plans.
The one sentence comment characterizing other countries health systems is highly inaccurate. Most European systems are actually fairly pluralistic. UK is highly dependent on private care now, and the US is actually near the bottom in percentage of health care costs that are paid by the patient out of pocket–most industrialized countries actually have the patients paying more of the costs.
Being sick and poor always has been hard and always will be. The real problem we have here now is having “insurance” tied to employment. That is inhibiting freedom and economic mobility and creativity to an extent that we are numbed to.
The fact that tax credits don’t cover the full cost is not a problem–unless you believe that people are entitled to have someone else pay for their health care and financial security. I get no tax credit now and buy an individual policy.
But even if I chose not to do so, that is not a public crises, it is a personal decision that a free person is entitled to make for themselves. This constant cry that everyone be covered is just rent seeking by the medical industry.
I realise there are significant differences between the US and France, Australia or New Zealand but surely if those countries can come up with a decent health care system, your government can too. In New Zealand, for example, all healthcare, medicines, etc. for children under five years of age are free. Everything. Totally free. For everyone. Our system in Australia is far from perfect but emergency care here is free for everyone, many GPs bulk-bill (the doctor gets his fee from Medicare aka the Federal government so patients pay nothing) and doctors decide who gets treated. Medicare and/or the patient’s private fund pays for all or part of the treatment.
“Free anon. 7:03″? Not really. Someone is paying the taxes that make those medicines free of charge to the patient, whatever the age. And ER care being likewise “free” to anyone needs to have real limits at the point of care or rather screening to prevent gross abuse, otherwise you hazard an E.R. overtaxed by people seeking care for which they will have no responsibility to pay for.
Of course we – taxpayers – are funding the cost of healthcare but that’s what our taxes are for. And how can it be ‘gross abuse’ of emergency facilities if the people using them are sick or injured and need care? They go to a GP if they’re not critcially ill. I guess it all comes down to your fundamental view of the world and whether you believe everyone is entitled to care when they are sick or injured.
People are entitled to free air and nothing more. Everything else requires the input of someones labor and therefore must be earned and paid for.
Wow, I thought Medicine was a calling and a moral obligation. Guess it’s just another way to make money. I should probably just go work for CIGNA.
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