Health Care Reform NOW!

A friend wrote to me that the new health care plan would cost $15,000 per person, and bankrupt the country.

I don't know where she got that figure, but I'll go out on a limb here and guess ... Fox! So, we know that equals zero credibility.

Let's just keep going back to the barest facts: we currently pay $5,000+ per person for average to poor outcomes, and we have 45 million uninsured. Finland and France pay $2,000+ per person for BETTER outcomes, and cover everyone. Why do you think we'd have to pay so much more?

Did you see the President's town hall meeting. today with AARP?

Some of the questions asked reflected the lies the right has been spinning to frighten seniors. No other way to say this. One old lady said she'd heard the new law would require every person to meet with a government bureaucrat who'd get to decide her end of life care. Would he please promise her that's not in the bill?

duh.

President said: 1) there aren't enough government bureaucrats to meet with every person to discuss health care, so, how could that happen? and 2) there's a very helpful provision in one version of the bill that will HELP people decide on their end-stage care by adding a payment for their discussion with a hospice, or helping them write a living will, so they get MORE control over what they want at the end.

The President wants a public option to run next to the private one. People who have and like their insurance can keep it! But insurance companies would be prohibited from cherry picking only the young and healthy, as they do now. That means that insurance companies, in order to compete with the public plan, will have to deliver less costly options for more people. That's a good thing.

It was Republicans in the majority on the Hill and colluding with President Bush who insisted the last Medicare bill include a provision PROHIBITING the government from bargaining with big pharma for lower costs on medicines. PROHIBITED. How much do you think THAT has cost us over the years since? What do you think the savings will be when the largest buyer of drugs in the world sits down at the bargaining table?

(And, as a political and ethical aside, how can anyone think that's defensible? Humongous give-aways at taxpayer expense to humongous companies run by cronies of the GOP leadership, but NOTHING for the poor and powerless. I am proud to be a Democrat.)

Doing nothing is not an option. If we do nothing, in 10 years the average family of 4 will have to pay $36,00 per year for health insurance. So, people will join the ranks of the uninsured by the millions. Then people WITH insurance will have their costs go up even more to cover all this, and so on and so on.

Why can't we take France, for example, as a model, and pay doctors for keeping people healthy? Why not begin with a universal basic level of care like well-baby visits, vaccinations, regular check ups, pap smears, mammograms, blood tests every year or so, etc.? There are millions of people who don't have access to these whose quality of life would go way up if they did. Not to mention the huge cost savings for spending a relatively small amount to keep people healthy, vs very large amounts to rescue them once they've become dangerously ill. And, let's be clear, we're ALL paying for these late treatments.

How about teeth cleaning once or twice a year? Dental problems can lead to all kinds of serious disease. Keep the mouth healthy and avoid a lot of costly problems down the road.

If we were to start incrementally, that would be the way. Create healthy-kids programs to prevent obesity and diabetes.

We're delusional if we think there won't be rationing. We're delusional if we think there's not rationing NOW. The ads from the right are designed to frighten us with warnings about government bureaucrats deciding what health care we'll get. This always makes me scream at the TV. How out of touch are these people that they don't know 1) everyone who has insurance already knows what it's like to have an insurance company bureaucrat - not a doctor - get to decide what care they have, and 2) for people (like me) without any insurance, we're not all that troubled by the thought of a government bureaucrat. We may have family on Medicare or in the Veterans' system, and those are government provided and run health care that people just love. So, spare me the cant about "socialized medicine."

So, yes, let's get moving on this health insurance reform NOW, and not let the right sabotage it the way they did in 1993. In 2008 the American people voted for CHANGE, and now it's time for the DEMOCRATS on the Hill to embrace this, even though their district may be kinda, sorta conservative, and get on the freakin' bus!