Do go read it all, on the opinion page of The Washington Post, but here is the bit that was personally resonant:
. . . .As a columnist who regularly dishes out sharp criticism, I try not to question the motives of people with whom I don't agree. Today, I'm going to step over that line. . . .
The recent attacks on the effort to reform the health-care system by [some opposition] leaders and their ideological fellow-travelers have been so misleading, so disingenuous, that they could only spring from a cynical effort to gain partisan political advantage. . . .
Health reform is a test of whether this country can function once again as a civil society -- whether we can trust ourselves to embrace the big, important changes that require everyone to give up something in order to make everyone better off. [Some opposition] leaders are eager to see us fail that test. We need to show them that no matter how many lies they tell or how many scare tactics they concoct, Americans will come together and get this done. . . .
6 comments:
Yes there are improvements that can be made to our system. Read the bill and be bothered as I am by the bills' sponsors to make illegal any private insurance policy dated after the date the bill goes into effect, required "advanced Life care planning" every 5 years from the age of 65 where I learn to withhold food and water from myself, or the rationing based on age. Mr. Perlstein's pleas fall on deaf ears until I am convinced that the effort to reform is paramount and not the effort to control my private conversations with my physician.
I don't mean to be disrespectful, but it sounds like you've been listening to too much Fox-News spin here (exactly what Mr. Perlstein is worried about above, BTW).
No one wants to control your conversations with your physician -- I promise you. We may all receive a little less care than we might ideally-wish for -- in some mythical, non-resource contstrained, utopian world -- in order to ensure that almost all Americans will have access to at least basic preventative and acute care.
Thus, as Mr. Perlstein admonishes -- we will all need to give some things up -- the system (as is) is simply no longer sustainable.
I do value your input, and I do think some of what you've written is fair criticism of the pending bills. Do stop back.
Namaste
No disrespect taken although implied. On the contrary, I have downloaded the bill and read every word for myself. I am an independant thinker and can discern spin when I hear it.
How can you promise me that 'No one wants to control your conversations with your physician" when HR3200 clearly mandates advanced Life care planning" every 5 years from the age of 65 where I learn to withhold food and water from myself among other things? Condor, you generally do not make empty promises - don't start now.
Why should we "receive a little less care"? Why not raise the bar? It is possible to make the pie bigger instead of slicing it into ever smaller pieces. I wonder if the koolaid is being sipped on your side as well?
Having been in medicine for 30 years, I challenge you to show me the Americans (and the illegals BTW) who do not 'have access to at least basic preventative and acute care.' This is the myth. Every three year old and every one else has it as every MD in a clinic or ER who sees them knows - (Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP,etc.)
Try this instead of 1000 pages of disaster: (of which I have only read 500 pages)
1.Give docs a tax deduction for seeing patients without the ability to pay. Watch the magic that single action would create without costing anyone anything.
2. Give employers the option to spend a small amount of their yearly employee budget ($500) for health insurance on catastrophic insurance in case the employee goes in the hospital. Let them take the balance ($3500) and place it in an interest bearing account where it stays unless the employee needs it for visits, Rx, etc. Give the employee some control over his own health by letting the employee have what ever is left over at the end of the year. Try that and see how much control the employee asserts over excess visits, prescriptions because they want the remaining change.
To upend the entire system makes no sense when more rational fixes for those few are available. Mr. Perlstein and Mr. Condor, I am still deaf.
Sorry, just cannot buy Nobama in a lab coat. He is NOT everything to everybody, he just wants to give everything to everybody - and that is unsustainable.
Agreed. We are taking a wrong direction. Although health care in these United States could improve, we should not allow the whole system to be thrown under the bus. The events happening around the country are not extremists or planned, they are legitimate frustrations being shown to the ones in power who are not listening.
A good dialogue, here, one and all -- to stir the pot, just a little more, one Anonymous commenter wrote:
". . . .Having been in medicine for 30 years, I challenge you to show me the Americans (and the illegals BTW) who do not 'have access to at least basic preventative and acute care.' This is the myth. Every three year old and every one else has it as every MD in a clinic or ER who sees them knows - (Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP,etc.). . . ."
I hear this, and read it, all the time.
I take it, we are to assume, because you work in health care, that you know, for a fact, from your own personal experience, that EVERYONE gets access to basic PREVENTATIVE care.
That is simply false, and I'll offer one explanation as to why.
True enough, some hospitals will take anyone that walks into the ER. Acute care only -- not prevenative. Come with me to the West Side of Chicago, now: There is really only one hospital -- Cook County -- that will take indigent cases, for non-emergency care. If you want preventative care, and cannot walk 30 blocks to get it, for your kids, or more likely, grandkids -- you don't get that care.
And the above ignores entirely the working poor, who make too much to qualify for admission as indigents to Cook County, but cannot afford (and their employers do not provide) any health insurance. In many cases, the "working poor" ar eworking cash-only jobs, and their "employers" are not paying into medicare/medicaid -- (nor reporting the earnings to the IRS) thus these employees are effectively locked out of the entire system.
Hospitals regularly charge people without insurance five times what the insured pay, for the same procedure -- and I know, because I have been both insured, and uninsured, in the last four years.
So -- point me again to where the working poor may receive free preventative health care, for themselves, and their children?
A third of those without insurance are children, guess how much these children are going to cost the system -- if we do nothing to prevent diabeties, high cholesterol
levels, and hypertension in these kids who generally have poor diets, and get little exercise to begin with -- once they reach adulthood?
Right. You cannot.
It would plainly be cheaper to restore REAL physical education, and provide meaningful health programs in every public school.
You may not know this, but in many schools in Chigago, PE now consists of 15 minutes of unsupervised play outodoors. That is all. For an entire class day.
There is no budget for organized physical activities (at these public schools) -- and no scheduled hour for it -- during the school day.
As to the President in a lab-coat -- my meaning was exactly the tongue-in-cheek one another Anonymous commenter took (but in reverse). He is not everything to everyone. But he sure is tackling the "big problems" -- the ones we all know are there, but refuse to confront.
Keep the diealogue goin' here. . . .
Namaste
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