7 posts tagged “healthcare”
A new Harvard study estimates that nearly 45,000 Americans die each year because they don’t have health insurance — and that’s after other factors like income and unhealthy behaviors are taken into account.
"Deaths associated with lack of health insurance now exceed those caused by many common killers such as kidney disease," an article by the Cambridge Health Alliance reports.
The study says the uninsured have a 40% higher risk of death than people who have private health insurance — like the insurance you get through your job. Or, to put it another way, a person dies because of a lack of insurance every 12 minutes.
Of course, some people neglect their health. But many, we suspect, don’t see a doctor because they’re afraid of the cost. Doctor visits and tests can add up to an intimidating amount, even if you’re uninsured but have a good income. A CNN story put a human face on some of these avoidable deaths — a freelance cameraman, a self-employed mother of two, and a 25-year-old woman who worked in a movie theater.
Let me explain my stance on the matter. I am not a fan of insurance in principle. The idea of paying for something in the case that something “might” happen is a similar model to what the mafia used during its protection racket heyday. The sad truth is that healthcare costs have become so astronomical that the “necessity” of insurance has become a prominent concern for everyone. I happen to believe that insurance is one of the leading contributors to the rising costs, but that is merely my opinion.
I happened to have an enormous amount of medical bills, and don’t have insurance. While I won’t get into the fact that if you ever do get sick insurance companies will do ANYTHING they can to get rid of you, I will admit that having insurance initially could have saved me a lot of money. With that being said, there is no doubt that my overall costs would be unaffected because I would have been dropped from any policy that I may have been on.
Last night, I was notified that DeVry and Keller School of Management students HAVE TO have insurance through the school. This really pisses me off, and screams of a cash grab by the university. We don’t have an option and the minimum cost of $280 will automatically be applied to our accounts. I am all for healthcare for everyone, but I don’t want the private sector making it mandatory! This is especially true when the policy is something that I have no control over!
Think what you will about Al Franken, but in this case he proves to be a sensible politician. He is likely the only one. The novel idea of having a DEBATE over the issues in a sensible manner without mudslinging freak outs, is very refreshing. Kudos to him.
I have hated insurance since as far back as I can remember. To me, it seemed like a legitimized mafia practice. Pay me in case something bad happens. Oh, and if something bad does happen, good luck getting us to do anything about it! I hate insurance because it has changed the medical industry as well. Medicine is now practiced based upon the bottom line rather than the care of patients. Costs have skyrocketed because hospitals know that they can get the money from insurance companies rather than patients. If you are a patient and you have a severe illness, you can't expect to be treated unless you demonstrate the ability to pay. Do you know what really hammers this idea home? Should you get really sick, insurance companies will ACTIVELY seek to remove you so that they don't have to pay out! This practice is acknowledged by our government:
The Department of Health and Human Services put a spotlight on that practice Tuesday in its continuing campaign to build support for an overhaul of health insurance.
“When a person is diagnosed with an expensive condition such as cancer, some insurance companies review his/her initial health status questionnaire,” the HHS said in a posting at HealthReform.Gov. In most states, insurance companies can retroactively cancel individuals' policies if any condition was not disclosed when the policy was obtained, "even if the medical condition is unrelated, and even if the person was not aware of the condition at the time.”
“Coverage can also be revoked for all members of a family, even if only one family member failed to disclose a medical condition,” HHS said.
The department cited recent research by the staff of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which found that three large insurers rescinded almost 20,000 policies over five years, saving $300 million in medical claims.
“Simply put, these insurance company employees are encouraged to revoke sick people’s health coverage," HHS said.
Do you want to know the lengths to which they will go? I will offer you two examples, one which would seem obvious given what these corrupt assholes are doing, and the other that should terrify any clear-thinking person.
WellPoint and Assurant told the committee that they automatically investigate the medical records of every policyholder with certain conditions, including leukemia, ovarian cancer, brain cancer, and becoming pregnant with twins, the committee staff wrote.
In November 2006, after a Texas resident was found to have a lump in her breast, Wellpoint investigated her medical history and concluded that she had been diagnosed previously with osteoporosis. The insurer rescinded her policy and refused to pay for treatment of the lump, the committee staff wrote.
Under the current system, something as relatively simple as seasonal sneezing can jeopardize your financial security, HHS argues, citing a 2001 study for the Kaiser Family Foundation.
“Even when offering coverage, insurers can exclude whole categories of illnesses related to a preexisting condition. For example, someone with a preexisting condition of hay fever could have any respiratory system disease – such as bronchitis or pneumonia – excluded from coverage,” HHS said.
In a truly disgusting practice, it was revealed that Blue Cross REWARDS their employees for dropping policy holders who become ill with anything serious:
But documents obtained by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and released today show that the company's employee performance evaluation program did include a review of rescission activity.
The documents show, for instance, that one Blue Cross employee earned a perfect score of "5" for "exceptional performance" on an evaluation that noted the employee's role in dropping thousands of policyholders and avoiding nearly $10 million worth of medical care.
WellPoint's Blue Cross of California subsidiary and two other insurers saved more than $300 million in medical claims by canceling more than 20,000 sick policyholders over a five-year period, the House committee said.
What is the bottom line on all this? The bottom line is that it is all about the bottom line for insurance companies. They will gladly take your premiums, but when it comes time to honor their obligations, they will find a way out of them. It is a truly disgusting practice, but I believe it to be systematic of how things in our country operate in our modern age. It becomes increasingly difficult to believe that the rich and powerful don't run this country in a manner that only fosters their own interests. I firmly believe that the average citizen has no say in our government anymore.
I have to admit that I was rather optimistic when Obama was elected President. He struck me as someone who actually may be able to cut through the Washington machine and get something done. I was fearful that the machine would batten down the hatches and work collectively to prevent him from doing anything. As a geek and someone who loves learning, I was most optimistic about his stance on transparency in government. Sadly, I have been let down significantly.
The most recent, and glaring example of this (since I have beat the bailout thing into the ground) is that the White House is refusing to disclose visits by health industry executives.
Reporting from Washington -- Invoking an argument used by President George W. Bush, the Obama administration has turned down a request from a watchdog group for a list of health industry executives who have visited the White House to discuss the massive healthcare overhaul.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington sent a letter to the Secret Service asking about visits from 18 executives representing health insurers, drug makers, doctors and other players in the debate. The group wants the material in order to gauge the influence of those executives in crafting a new healthcare policy.
The Secret Service sent a reply stating that documents revealing the frequency of such visits were considered presidential records exempt from public disclosure laws. The agency also said it was advised by the Justice Department that the Secret Service was within its rights to withhold the information because of the "presidential communications privilege."
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics said it would file suit against the Obama administration as early as today. The group already has sued the administration over its failure to release details about visits from coal industry executives.
White House Continues Bush Policies
To be fair, Ben LaBolt (a White House spokesman) said that they were reviewing the policy. How many times have we heard promises from our leaders that have gone unfulfilled however? It happens in the vast majority of instances.
So what happened? Having promised transparency, the administration should be willing to disclose who it is consulting in shaping healthcare policy, said an attorney for the citizens' group. In its letter requesting the records, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics asked about visits from Billy Tauzin, president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America; Karen Ignagni, president of America's Health Insurance Plans; William Weldon, chairman and CEO of Johnson & Johnson; and J. James Rohack, president of the American Medical Assn., among others.
"It's extremely disappointing," said Anne Weismann, the group's chief counsel. Obama is relying on a legal argument that "continues one of the bad, anti-transparency, pro-secrecy approaches that the Bush administration had taken. And it seems completely at odds with the president's commitment . . . to bring a new level of transparency to his government."
White House Continues Bush Policies
I have to agree with her. I had hoped that Obama would be able to bring about a shift in the mindset of Washington. Transparency is something that our founding fathers would have wanted, and it sickens me that we don't have it. We have the tools in our modern age to make information available to all who desire to view it, but Washington has been sullying itself for far to long to be willing to let the public view the train wreck it has become.
Well, my good buddy, Steve Jobs, (NOT! I hate the man...) recently emerged from a liver transplant procedure and he is doing very well all things considered. While I hate the man with a passion that can't be comprehended by mortals, even I will admit that I am glad that he is doing well. I know that going through such a thing is hell, its risky, and it can destroy a person. I know that many people aren't aware of how the organ transplant process works in how it finds and matches donors, so I figured that I would shine some light on this subject.
Livers are a scarce resource. In any given year, only about one-third of the people on the national transplant waiting list receive one, and as of late June, more than 16,000 people were on the list.
Yet it sometimes seems that celebrities in need end up at the front of the line when they need a transplant, and people often assume they get preferential treatment. (Rumors about special treatment circulated after baseball player Mickey Mantle's liver transplant in 1995, for example.)
The truth is more complicated. No one can actually buy an organ in the United States (legally, that is). But getting a liver transplant, it turns out, is a lot like getting into college. Once you're on the waiting list, your chances of getting off it depend largely on your personal circumstances -- how sick you are and whether you are a good donor match. But getting on the list in the first place -- or on more than one list, as the case may be -- requires resources and know-how that most people don't have.
There are 127 centers in the U.S. that perform liver transplants. If you need an organ transplant, your doctor will refer you to one of these centers, where you will be evaluated, given a score based on the severity of illness, and placed on the center's waiting list, if you are indeed a candidate for transplant.
The center's waiting list feeds into a national database managed by the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), a nonprofit organization that contracts with the federal government to manage the nation's organ transplant system.
UNOS works with 58 organ procurement organizations (OPOs) that coordinate organ distribution in their region of the country. When an organ becomes available, the OPO in that region searches the UNOS database for a local match using blood type (and other biological considerations), the patient's severity score, and the time spent on the waiting list. If a match can't be made within that region, the organization expands its search to neighboring regions.
The problem -- or the advantage for some patients -- is that not all OPOs are created equal. Some regions contain nearly 15 times as many people as others, and their waiting list times vary widely. Patients in the smaller OPOs tend to be less sick and experience shorter wait times before getting an organ. In the Tennessee OPO where Jobs received his transplant, the median wait for a liver between 2002 and 2007 was just over four months. The national average was just over a year, and in some OPOs it was more than three years.
Though there is always the possibility of preferential treatment once a patient is on a waiting list -- UNOS conducts periodic audits of transplant centers for exactly this reason -- it is unlikely that someone like Steve Jobs can "cut the line" of the transplant waiting list.
The reason that some people might be able to get transplants more quickly is that they're standing in more lines. Nothing prevents someone from being evaluated and listed at multiple transplant centers. As long as a patient has the wherewithal to fly around the country -- and be available at the drop of a hat if a liver becomes available (this is where the private jet comes in handy) -- a patient can, in theory, be evaluated by all the transplant centers in the country.
"The system works at two levels," explains Arthur Caplan, Ph.D., the chair of the department of medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania. "One, who gets in to a center. Two, who gets transplanted off a particular center's list when an organ becomes available. Most of the attention goes to stage two, but the biggest ethical challenges are really at stage one."
Since 2003, UNOS has required that transplant centers inform all candidates that they can be evaluated and listed at more than one center, and that they can also transfer their care from one center to another without losing the time they have accrued on the waiting list. However, not everyone can afford to fly around the country and be evaluated at more than one transplant center. In fact, many people can't afford a liver transplant, period.
According to the most recent estimates, the cost of a liver transplant is $519,600 -- a price tag that excludes roughly one-third of Americans because they don't have sufficient insurance (or any insurance), Caplan estimates. According to data collected for UNOS, only about 5 percent of liver transplants are paid for out of pocket.
"What your insurance covers is very different from everyone else's," says Anne Paschke, a spokesperson for UNOS. Some insurance companies won't cover evaluations at multiple transplant centers, Paschke explains, and in at least one case, an insurance company has restricted its coverage to a single transplant center that the company itself owned.
Obviously, the system is flawed and favors those with the means to work the system. There have been attempts to reform the system, but they have all met their end in Congress. Politicking has left the larger transplant centers against the smaller ones. The larger ones wish to maintain the larger pool of available organs in their region, whereas the smaller ones were concerned that in a national organ allocation system, they would receive fewer transplants and be driven out of business.
There is work to be done in this area. No matter what side you fall on.
Source: CNN Health
Source: Health.com: The real gift of life: How medical donations help
If the only way we compared the two systems – U.S. versus Canada – was with statistics, there is a clear victor. It is becoming increasingly more difficult to dispute the fact that Canada spends less money on health care to get better outcomes.
Yet, the debate rages on. Indeed, it has reached a fever pitch since President Barack Obama took office, with Americans either dreading or hoping for the dawn of a single-payer health care system. Opponents of such a system cite Canada as the best example of what not to do, while proponents laud that very same Canadian system as the answer to all of America’s health care problems…
As America comes to grips with the reality that changes are desperately needed within its health care infrastructure, it might prove useful to first debunk some myths about the Canadian system.
Myth: Taxes in Canada are extremely high, mostly because of national health care.
In actuality, taxes are nearly equal on both sides of the border. Overall, Canada’s taxes are slightly higher than those in the U.S. However, Canadians are afforded many benefits for their tax dollars, even beyond health care (e.g., tax credits, family allowance, cheaper higher education), so the end result is a wash. At the end of the day, the average after-tax income of Canadian workers is equal to about 82 percent of their gross pay. In the U.S., that average is 81.9 percent.
Myth: Canada’s health care system is a cumbersome bureaucracy.
The U.S. has the most bureaucratic health care system in the world. More than 31 percent of every dollar spent on health care in the U.S. goes to paperwork, overhead, CEO salaries, profits, etc. The provincial single-payer system in Canada operates with just a 1 percent overhead. Think about it. It is not necessary to spend a huge amount of money to decide who gets care and who doesn’t when everybody is covered.
Source: Denver Post
Not so incidentally, single-payer systems run by the U.S. government can approach Canadian efficiency. Medicare and Social Security run at less than 3% overhead.
Myth: The Canadian system is significantly more expensive than that of the U.S.
Ten percent of Canada’s GDP is spent on health care for 100 percent of the population. The U.S. spends 17 percent of its GDP but 15 percent of its population has no coverage whatsoever and millions of others have inadequate coverage. In essence, the U.S. system is considerably more expensive than Canada’s. Part of the reason for this is uninsured and underinsured people in the U.S. still get sick and eventually seek care. People who cannot afford care wait until advanced stages of an illness to see a doctor and then do so through emergency rooms, which cost considerably more than primary care services.
What the American taxpayer may not realize is that such care costs about $45 billion per year, and someone has to pay it. This is why insurance premiums increase every year for insured patients while co-pays and deductibles also rise rapidly.
Myth: Canada’s government decides who gets health care and when they get it.
While HMOs and other private medical insurers in the U.S. do indeed make such decisions, the only people in Canada to do so are physicians. In Canada, the government has absolutely no say in who gets care or how they get it. Medical decisions are left entirely up to doctors, as they should be.
I am the last person to ever defend Canada on anything. In fact, for some unknown and unwarranted reason, I hate Canada. Go ahead and blame South Park if you want, but that isn't the case. I will be the first to say that the healthcare system is better than what we have in the United States. It CERTAINLY isn't perfect, but I am saying that it is better than what we currently have.
For some perspective, it's important to understand that I hate the medical industry. I loathe going to the Dr. unless I am about ready to keel over. I had an interesting discussion recently with a friend in Thailand (originally from the U.S.) where we discussed this issue rather heatedly. I came to be of the opinion that unless you have to deal with the medical industry in a serious capacity (ie. some life-saving/changing/etc. surgery), then you can't truly see how broken our system is. I think that once you have that perspective, you can then toss aside any preconceptions you may have and begin to truly wrap your head around the issues at hand.
Imagine a country where the government regularly checks the waistlines of citizens over age 40. Anyone deemed too fat would be required to undergo diet counseling. Those who fail to lose sufficient weight could face further "reeducation" and their communities subject to stiff fines.
Is this some nightmarish dystopia?
No, this is contemporary Japan.
The Japanese government argues that it must regulate citizens' lifestyles because it is paying their health costs. This highlights one of the greatly underappreciated dangers of "universal healthcare." Any government that attempts to guarantee healthcare must also control its costs. The inevitable next step will be to seek to control citizens' health and their behavior. Hence, Americans should beware that if we adopt universal healthcare, we also risk creating a "nanny state on steroids" antithetical to core American principles.
Other countries with universal healthcare are already restricting individual freedoms in the name of controlling health costs. For example, the British government has banned some television ads for eggs on the grounds that they were promoting an unhealthy lifestyle. This is a blatant infringement of egg sellers' rights to advertise their products.
In 2007, New Zealand banned Richie Trezise, a Welsh submarine cable specialist, from entering the country on the grounds that his obesity would "impose significant costs ... on New Zealand's health or special education services." Richie later lost weight and was allowed to immigrate, but his wife had trouble slimming and was kept home. Germany has mounted an aggressive anti-obesity campaign in workplaces and schools to promote dieting and exercise. Citizens who fail to cooperate are branded as "antisocial" for costing the government billions of euros in medical expenses.
Of course healthy diet and exercise are good. But these are issues of personal – not government – responsibility. So long as they don't harm others, adults should have the right to eat and drink what they wish – and the corresponding responsibility to enjoy (or suffer) the consequences of their choices. Anyone who makes poor lifestyle choices should pay the price himself or rely on voluntary charity, not demand that the government pay for his choices.
Just as universal healthcare will further fuel the nanny state, the nanny state mind-set helps fuel the drive toward universal healthcare. Individuals aren't regarded as competent to decide how to manage their lives and their health. So the government provides "cradle to grave" coverage of their healthcare.
Nanny state regulations and universal healthcare thus feed a vicious cycle of increasing government control over individuals. Both undermine individual responsibility and habituate citizens to ever-worsening erosions of their individual rights. Both promote dependence on government. Both undermine the virtues of independence and rationality. Both jeopardize the very foundations of a free society.
The American Founding Fathers who fought and died for our freedoms would be appalled to know their descendants were allowing the government to dictate what they could eat and drink. The Founders correctly understood that the proper role of government is to protect individual rights and otherwise leave men free to live – not tell us how many eggs we should eat.
