Health Care and It's Personal Effects

This past weekend an old mentor, and friend of mine passed away due to an unknown cause (as of now). She was struggling to find a job for the past two years; without a job she did not have any health insurance. At one point she became ill and went to the county hospital to look for help. Unfortunately, county was unable to help her, eventually she started to internally bleeding and county was forced by the hand of the law to operate on her. Six days after she came home from the hospital she passed away in her home.

The ordeal that I am tortured by is that went she went for help, she did not receive the care her body obviously needed. This was a day before the health care vote was taken and I immediately understood why the left wing people are so adamant about passing this bill. Now that the bill has passed, I can take a small token of relief because I cannot stand to let this healthy, strong woman just perish.

With the new health care bill, I hope that people will be able to walk into a hospital and receive the care they need when they feel need it.

Jon Stewart Never Fails to Get His Man

Although everyone loves to see Jon Stewert eviscerate a conservative on air, I must admit, Mr. Kristol must either misunderstand Mr. Stewert's question or he just made a nation full of enemies.

Megan McArdle: View on the Current Health Care Situation

As of now the health care issue and it resolve seems to be up in the air. Many people believe that Ms. Pelosi has the votes in the bag and that the bill will indeed pass. The controversy between the Democrats and the Republicans is still heated however. If the bill does pass, as many people it will, the Democrats will be satisfied but the Republicans will "go into the meltdown mode" (Megan McArdle).

Ms. McArdle's point is that she also does not know where the chips will fall in the health care matter and that if the bill is passed hell will break loose on the Republicans side of the Senate. She does however have an interesting take on what will happen if the bill does pass.

Assume this passes; what happens afterward? I don't think that many people believe that the answer is "Nothing: the bill becomes law, and we sing happy smurf songs all the way to the longest life expectancy in the Western world!" Even the bill's proponents expect it will need some follow-up work. But what will that follow-up work look like?

Although I, personally, hope the health care bill passes for personal reasons, Ms. McArdle does prove a valid point. What will happen in the long-term sense if the bill passes? Yes, it will immediately help those in need of health care, but the long-term effects seem to be ominously unknown.

Psychological Disorders are a Part of Health Care Too

As this country is well aware of, we are suffering from a major crisis: the cost of health care. Many people have been struggling with just being able to pay for health care, many have no coverage at all. Just because the cost of coverage is high does not mean that less illnesses, disorders and accidents don't happen everyday. Because of this problem, most lower class families are unable to see a physician.
Carlos, a second grade boy living in Los Angeles, suffers from ADHD and anxiety. Both of these are treatable problems, yet their family is unable to get Carlos the care he needs because the free clinic they were previously attending cut there psychiatric funding.
Many people without health care only visit the doctor's office when they have a major emergency and they have a small sum of money they can use. Most of these families still owe money after these visits. Unfortunately, Carlos would need to visit the doctor's office more than once and their family is just unable to scrape up that sum of money.
Fortunately, Carlos will get the medications he needs.

Carlos’ therapist says taxpayers will pay the price for Carlos either now while he's is in treatment or later on if he doesn't get help.

Obama Keeping the Peace

The health care issue for President Obama must be an incredibly stressful experience. Not only is he trying to satisfy both political parties, neither party seems willing to make any exceptions. Instead of understanding that the President is trying to lessen the problem of health care by lowering premiums and blocking insurance rip offs, it seems as though America wishes for the health care issue to add more problems to our already suffering country. President Obama even obliged to give the Republicans 4 of their own initiatives. It seems as though the conservative party was ungrateful towards the Presidents gesture as they seem to want it their way or the high way. Of course the more liberal party is not the easiest to deal with either. They seem to be able to be a little more loose with their demands, but the attitude towards the Republican's ideas is unsettled. Hopefully at the conference the two sides will be able to come to some sort of conclusion and the probability of reconciliation is likely.

A New Take On Helping Deal with Health Care

Barbara Kiviat recently wrote a blog post about the cost of health care and and what she thinks could help us deal with the debate. She has the idea that if everything, (x-ray scans, doctor visits, MRI scans, etc.) had a price tag on it then the public can know how much everything is costing and if there is a cheaper way to deal with the problem.

My colleague Kate Pickert tells me that some 30% of health-care costs are attributable to waste. I am happy to know I am now doing my part to cut down on that.

If the public were able to price everything on the spot and decide whether or not their issue is worth it, the cost of health care could possibly be helped, at least for every individual. This idea formed when Ms. Kiviat had a change in her health insurance, prior to the change she paid a flat fee every time for any type of visit; with her new plan, she now pays 10% of whatever the treatment costs. Although she now pays more for her visits, she decides what is truly an urgent matter, and what can simply be fixed with a little ice and rest.

Of course, this is a controversial view, on one hand this can be useful and certainly money-wise; but what about the people who have serious issues, such as internal bleeding, and make the decision to forgo the X-ray because of the cost but in reality need medical assistance? It seems to me that either decision is going to be easily debatable and hopefully President Obama will help to alleviate the health care stress.