BlogHer - CJR series exposes the business and politics of the health care crisis - Comments

Glad you found it helpful!

Kim Pearson — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 13:13:05 -0500

I hope that you can get insurance. It's not treatment, but it is access.

Kim
BlogHer Contributing Editor|Professor Kim|

Insurance may not be health care, but I can't even get insurance

greenlagirl — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 12:59:41 -0500

So far, both Blue Cross and Pacificare have declined to insure me -- and I'm scrambliing to find a company that will. But on a brighter note: Cali could get universal health coverage if Schwarzenegger signs SB 840 into law! It's on his desk NOW! Californians: Please call, email, fax, or otherwise get involved to prevent Schwarzenegger from vetoing this bill again!

Thanks for the great post and the links to CJR articles, Kim :)

green LA girl

Don't Call Me A Low Life!

Gena Haskett — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 21:02:13 -0500

Because that is what you just did. I've been working for pay since I was 16 years old. I've worked jobs that didn't have insurance, temp jobs where the minimal insurance available had an astronomical deductible and jobs where I had insurance and had to fight for proper treatment.

I've been underemployed and sick and unemployed and sick.

That does not make me a low life. Or anyone else who has to figure out how to get medical treatment, work and pay bills. God help them if they have kids or aging parents.

Your ignorance as to the complexity of access to health care is dangerous. That person that serves you overprice coffee might have hepatitis but does not have insurance or the $150 to get to a doctor. Or pay for medication.

That person that makes your burger and fries or cleans your office bathrooms can have TB but keeps working because they have to pay the rent. The administrative assistant who need a follow-up mammogram can't get it because if she takes any more time off of work she is toast.

I'm not asking you to pay my f**cking medical bills. I'm asking for a fair and national consensus on how Americans can get access to treatment, medication and health care respect that is equal to other nations. It might be a partnership between private and public, it might be that a new type of infrastructure needs to be created. Maybe governmental, maybe not.

But if it does not include your so-called low life on the curb then we deserve to spiral down the drain.

Gena - Out On The Stoop

universal health care

donormarchia — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 12:36:40 -0500

It costs me approximately $2400 per year for health care, and this amount is only 20% of the premium. My employer pays the other 80%. Why should I be further taxed for some low life who is unemployed so he can be healthy sitting on the curb and possibly have more offspring to drain the medical system?

Gena has it exactly right!

gmellis625 — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 12:57:24 -0500

Insurance is not the same thing as health care, and defies the basic tenants of economics. Here is how we got here:

1) Government restrictions on salary increases during WWII forced business to use other incentives to hire people and started the process of providing "hospitalization" for employees.

2) The more insurance that was provided the more expensive health care gets for two reasons: a) the person purchasing the services isn't paying for them so cost is not a consideration, and b) when more money is available to pay for something the price goes up (basic economics).

3) Insurance companies try to control costs and increase profits by a) expanding covered services (higher premiums and providing on-going care to reduce the number of large claims) and b) taking control of healthcare decisions (denying certain treatments or limiting payments for treatments).

4) We now have bureaucratic claims processors making health care decisions based on profit motives, continually rising health care costs (again, basic economics with more dollars chasing limited services), and LESS control over our own health care!

I'm glad Kim FINALLY gave an example of someone getting less care because they didn't have the money to pay for it; every other example I have seen only shows how health care is costly but people cannot be turned away at a hospital if they need care.

The solution is to put patients back in control by making them MORE responsible for the costs. Don't let someone else pay your bills. Health Savings Accounts lead to better decisions, more control over health care, and will start to work the economics in favor of the patient.

Insurance Is Not Health Care

Gena Haskett — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 11:14:21 -0500

We talk of insurance as if it was treatment. It is not. Insurance is a barrier to services to maximize profits. If you have insurance and an HMO you might only wait two weeks but you fight the same battles.

If you have more things wrong with you they will delay, cut access and do what they can to prevent treatment.

Doesn't matter if you are employed, underemployed or a medically indigent adult. The infrastructure is f**cked.

I would welcome visiting a Nurse Practitioners office if that meant if I called on Monday I could see you no later than Wednesday. I would welcome them if they could be used as an community information resource/advocate so that I don't have to plow through online information databases trying to figure out what is wrong with me.

Universal access to health care, I'm not necessarily saying governmental administered - has to be structured from the bottom up. There are forces a plenty that does not want to see that happen.

I'm pulling the bullshit card on all of them. The number of people that will die in the ER will continue to rise and not all of the poor souls will be caught on video.

Gena - Out On The Stoop

Reigning In The Health Care Industry Is Mandatory

Megan Smith — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 10:13:02 -0500

If the next president, whoever they are, doesn't insure that a comprehensive health care bill is passed, I will consider them a failure.

Too many people are suffering because of the greed of the insurance companies and the health care lobbyists who protect them.

Megan Smith
BlogHer Contributing Editor, TV/YouTube
Megan's Minute: Quirky Commentary Around The Clock

Nurse Practitioners fill the gap

NurseBarb — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 01:15:49 -0500

It costs so much less to treat people in a clinic rather than an ER. It's more cost effective to provide preventive care for diabetes and heart disease than to do bypass surgery.

In California, the state government realized that it costs less to provide free prenatal care to women than to try and treat the families who show up in labor without care. Yes, the clinics need more staff and many turn to Mid-level providers, like Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants. We, with our physician colleagues want to promote health and prevent disease.

Thanks for a thoughtful approach.

CJR series exposes the business and politics of the health care crisis

Kim Pearson — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 23:57:07 -0500

Back in 1995, I had both of my hips replaced and spent a month in a hospital and rehab center. Fortunately, my insurance covered the substantial cost. One day as I was pushing myself to learn how to go up and down steps on my new bionic joints, I overheard a couple of the rehab staffers chatting about the release of another patient. The doctor said something like, "We can send him home Friday."The other said, "But he's really not ready to be home on his own," the other person said. "I know," sighed the doctor, "but he doesn't have enough insurance to stay longer."

Not long after, an elderly man was sent home, crying and protesting that he wasn't ready to take care of himself and had no one to help him.

That experience has been on my mind a lot as I listened to the speeches at this year's Democratic National Convention.

In her rousing speech to the Democratic National Convention tonight, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton pledged to return to the US Senate next year to work for passage of a universal health care law, echoing Monday's night's pledge by Sen. Edward Kennedy. Clinton and Kennedy have spent a lifetime working toward that prize. Both Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain have advanced proposals that that say will move us closer to that elusive goal.

If everyone is so committed to health care reform, why has it been so hard to achieve? And how likely is it that the candidates' proposals will finally fix this mess? If you really want to know the answers to those questions, Trudy Lieberman's series on health care policy is must reading. She's written a series illustrating the potential impact of the candidates' proposals on real people. In her opening post, she faults journalists and bloggers' coverage of the issue:

So far, mainstream media coverage of health care during the campaign has been characterized by stenographic reporting—simply transcribing what the candidates say, buzz words and all. Blogosphere coverage has trended the opposite direction—way too much wonk talk, angels dancing on the head of a pin-type stuff. What have been missing are the people stories.

Another article exposes the agenda behind those "Harry and Louise" ads that seem to call for a bi-partisan grass roots approach to health care that makes it easier for people who are uninsured or uninsured to buy private insurance. This "grass roots" group is actually an alliance between a business lobbying group and a hospital trade association that used a similar advertising campaign to help sink the Clinton health-care initative 15 years ago.

Most recently, Lieberman blogged about a Washington Post story on Michelle Obama's role in an initiative by the University of Chicago Medical Center to get poor, uninsured patients to get their non-emergency health care from community health clinics instead of hospital emergency rooms. A lot of health care professionals would support that in principle, the problem is that the clinics are woefully underfunded and understaffed.

Lieberman noted that the McCain campaign is using the story to argue that Barack Obama talks about expanding health care while his wife's actions made it harder for poor Chicagoans to get that care. But Liberman said that the press should extract a different lesson from the episode:

I agree the media should be all over the issue—but not because of Obama’s hypocrisy. The scenario in Chicago is being played out in big cities all over the country.

Which brings me back to my friend from rehab. I still wonder what happened to him. I've been told that my hip prostheses will have to be replaced one day as well, and I worry whether my health insurance will be adequate when that day comes. Trudy Lieberman's work doesn't ease my worries, but it is lifting the veil on the confluence of business and political circumstances that contribute to this growng crisis.