The health care debate

[kangeiko]

I'm going to wade in to the healthcare debate currently waging. A few points.

1. The Democratic bill does not, in any way, shape or form, resemble the NHS. So deciding to have a huge swing at the NHS "just because" is bad form.

2. Stephen Hawking is British. He was born British, and he lives in the UK. So your argument that "he wouldn't have a chance in the UK" is void, as the man says himself.

3. I'm interested that, thus far, no one has commented on the race relations implications of the proposal and the Republican response. The demographic that would overwhelmingly benefit from free healthcare would be the Hispanic and particularly the African American population, who experience greater infant mortality and have a harder time securing health insurance. The part that would lose out are the wealthy classes (primarily white) that would see their taxes rise higher than their premiums. Yet no-one seems to be commenting on the fact that the Republicans are blocking the reform of a set-up currently massively weighted in favour of whites.

4. Death panels? Seriously? As I understand it, they already exist: in insurance companies, where regular debates on who gets their life-saving op paid for wage. Or, rather, how they can get out of paying for the life-saving op. Again, those that suffer disproportionately are those that can't mount a legal challenge, i.e. the poor and disenfranchised Hispanic and African American populations. Because life expectancy comes into it as well, and the life expectancy of an African American male is 66.1 years, a lot lower than the 73.6 year average for men (wiki has the average male life expectancy at 75.5, which is an even higher gap). By comparison, Costa Rica (with its free universal health care) has male life expectancy of 74.6, Cuba 72.6, Dominican Republic 71.3, and North Korea 69.18 (!!) (linky). So there's something to be proud of, I suppose.

5. For those arguing that Medicaid is just as effective as the NHS, in at least one state, an already paltry provision is about to become even weaker. Those arguing that it's sufficient to meet the health needs of the population without health insurance are throwing ever-smaller scraps from their table and calling it a meal.

Comments

[darlas-mom.livejournal.com]

5. For those arguing that Medicaid is just as effective as the NHS, in at least one state, an already paltry provision is about to become even weaker. Those arguing that it's sufficient to meet the health needs of the population without health insurance are throwing ever-smaller scraps from their table and calling it a meal.

HA! The people who think Medicaid is "just as effective as the NHS" have clearly never been on it.

In South Carolina, the last state in which I was on Medicaid, there was a law about which services you could receive on Medicaid based on your age. Once I turned twenty, I aged out of almost every service. They'd cover most everything until age nineteen, but after that age, the only Medicaid that I was qualified to receive (even though I was just as broke and struggling as I had been the day before) was what is called "family planning Medicaid," i.e, birth control paid for by the state from the local health clinic. In South Carolina, there are no exceptions to this. When I went down to renew my paperwork for my family planning Medicaid, there was a woman in the next cubicle over sobbing because she had been diagnosed with breast cancer that day and the social worker was gently explaining to her that her only option would be to look for charitable assistance from her church, because even though this woman HAD FUCKING CANCER, she was in her forties (twenty years too young for Medicare, which is a separate program) and it was "out of their hands."

::seethes:: Seriously, who is mounting this argument? Find them for me so I can smack them with a newspaper.

[kangeiko]

Exactly. It was some idiots commenting on the Guardian article I linked to above.

[executrix.livejournal.com]

What I haven't seen commented on is the underlying assumption that when a patient's doctor recommends $X worth of tests and then prescribes a medication that costs $Y that it's the patient's fault that the tests don't cost $5 and the pharmaceutical doesn't cost $1; that the patient would have reduced the costs by being a smarter consumer; or that it's all the patient's fault for being a fat slob in the first place.

When insurers are allowed to set their own premium levels (apart from rubber-stamps from state regulators) and decide, essentially without review, who gets care, and when pharmacos are allowed to set their own prices (with Medicare, a major purchaser, forbidden to negotiate prices) then OBVIOUSLY prices are going to rise explosively.

[ryosato.livejournal.com]

THIS.