Mandatory Worker Health Care Not Working For Some
I just read this disturbing article on a mandatory health care system that shows Mass. workers working more for health care than they do for food, rent, and even time spent with young school age children they have.
Can you get by earning $500 a week and have insurance premiums that cost you $287 a week? This woman does and she has a couple of kids she barely sees and very little time for rest or sleep between shifts because of it.
This could give us all a glimpse of where the entire country will go when the federal law goes into effect.
Not to mention what kind of health shape will this woman be at in a year or two at this pace? Take a look for yourself and tell me what you think.
How Many Times are They Going to Research This?
You’ll all be surprised to know that the uninsured are in poorer health than the insured. apparently this was studied again. Did they think there was a mistake made in the first bunch of studies? Maybe they thought that things would change on their own, like maybe people who don’t have insurance would stop getting sick.
They are on Obama and his administration to come up with some way that all Americans can have some form of insurance that they can afford and that can be used when they spot symtoms of illness.
I still think part of the answer is to have more nurse run clinics for the most simple and obvious illnesses. As a matter of fact, a lot of major diseases start with the simplest of conditions. Nutrition and obesity for example lead right to heart and diabetes which lead to many other conditions. Think about that.
Well, Here We Go Already
If the federal government mandates that all Americans have health insurance, two health insurance industry leaders say that they will insure everybody regardless of disability or illness.
They further say that people will wait until they are very ill before getting insurance unless the government requires it. This is said to be in-line with what Obama wants. The only difference is that Obama wants to start slow only madating coverage for children for now, whereas the insurance leaders want it to include adults too.
Of course the insurance industry wants everyone to be forced to join them. Money, money, money! The fact remains as one of the uninsured I can tell you, I have no more money now for insurance than I did before Obama was elected. So what’s in our future now? An army of homeless, hungry, but medically insured people?
What Do You Think Of This Theory?
Please forgive me for getting sidetracked with my families health issues, but it got me to wondering why the hospital my parents are going to is so underpar, and the one we go to is so much better. Also still trying to figure out about the 2 to 3 month wait for the colonoscopy, and then it came to me.
First let me say I could be way out of line here but…here are the thoughts I have;
- We live in the suburbs of Chicago, my folks live closer to the city than I do by about 15 miles.
- The population of Chicago has been growing and changing for the last 20 years.
- The city’s hospital which was known as Cook County may have superb doctors and care but it’s a pit. I know this as a fact since my daughter had to go to the ER there a few months ago. My kids witnessed drug deals being conducted there, a pigeon flying around the room and people just camping out there for somewhere to go. They said it was filthy and disgusting.
- Because my parents live closer to the city, the population of Chicago is now in their area. Most are Mexican and I bet dollars to donuts that a great number of them do not have health insurance, and a fair amount of them are probably illegal. This is not a put down since I do not carry health insurance either because of cost. Since this population change they go to this hospital and the hospital has had to make changes to take in all these people. My parents waited over 11 hours last week for my mother to get a bed, and the only reason they got one then was because my father threatened just to take my mom back home.
So the theory is that the growing number of uninsured does not only effect the cost for everyone else but also the quality of care that they get, insurance or not. My parents have good insurance through my dads pension and I gather they cannot change their doctor, and their doctor works out of this overcrowded, overworked, hospital that is now trying to take care of twice as many people as they were meant to take care of. This possible future of health care for everyone should scare the you know what out of you, because I don’t see an end in sight. As weak as my father is, I wonder if he will survive the 2 or 3 months wait for the test. Any comments on this?
Retail Medical Centers
Retail Medical Centers are those clinics usually run by a nurse practitioner who is there to treat simple and common conditions such as colds, sore throats, and Ut infections.
From the start, doctors did not like this idea because they reasoned that first if you’re anything less than a doctor you can’t possibly be able to diagnose a sore throat or cold, and second they said that it would interfere with the relationship between the doctor and patient.
It would seem that they are wrong on both counts. First doctors do not always diagnose and treat correctly, and second the nurse practitioners go to school for years and often have many years experience.
A couple of recent studies have shown that the overwhelming majority of patients that go to these clinics have no regular doctor, no health insurance, and no regular medical care. It seems logical to me that instead of having these people running to the ER to be treated for such minor and common ailments, or even tie up a doctors time with these things, it’s better for everyone that they visit these inexpensive clinics.
On top of that, any nurse worth her salt will be able to recognize conditions that may be out of her league and will refer the patient to a doctor or hospital. In this writers opinion these clinics are sorely needed and wanted. I believe in the long run they will save the entire medical system money as well as the patient involved.
Why We Shouldn’t Detect Cancer Early
I am reading this article from the New York Times and I am blown away by what I’m seeing. I always was told and believed that detecting cancer early was a good thing so that treatment could be given before the cancer becomes so advanced as to metastasize and kill its victim.
Unless I am not understanding correctly, this article seems to be saying that some doctors and a government committee feel that some cancers can live and grow in the body, but if you are older you will probably die of something else before the cancer really becomes a health concern for you.
It further seems to say that by detecting it early you would undergo treatments that would prove to be unnecessary because you’re going to die soon anyway. WHAT?
I don’t know about anyone else but I do not want cancerous tumors anywhere in my body whether they are causing me pain or not. These doctors seem to be saying that they are affecting the quality of life by treating and testing the cancer, rather than the cancer affecting the quality of life.
Of course I have to ask once again where do the insurance companies and money fit in to all this. After all look at how much can be saved if we just all forget about testing high risk groups of people for cancer, and even more money can be saved by ignoring it and not offering treatment.
Honestly, sometimes I feel like I woke up on the wrong planet. See the whole article here and throw me a comment, I’d love to know what you think about all this.
New Report, Same Old Story on The Ill Uninsured
One third of uninsured Americans has a chronic disease that is not being medically cared for. People who are uninsured typically only see the doctor through ER visits when the conditions have gotten very bad and out of control. These patients will have complications from their conditions and die younger after being prematurely disabled.
There are about 47 million uninsured in the United States. The reports concludes that 11.4 million Americans that have at least one of seven major illnesses are not insured. They broke it down to 16.1% of 7.8 million with heart disease, 15.5 % of 38.2 million with high blood pressure, and 16.6% of 8.5 million diabetics. They also looked at other conditions such as COPD, cancer, asthma, and high cholesterol.
6.2% of insured people did not have regular doctor visits compared to 26% of uninsured who also did not. 22% of the uninsured had not gone to see a doctor in the past year compared to 6.2% of insured. 1.1% of insured people used the ER as their source of care, compared to 7.1% of uninsured.
Doctors can become frustrated because they know that almost all these conditions can be managed with minimal complications if they were given the chance to treat them early and regularly.
It would seem to me that the answer lies in insuring the uninsured, or making health care and medicine competitive and possible at lower costs.
Health Care For America Now!
has started a nationwide 40 million dollar campaign to begin a coalition for change in our health care system. They hope to be able to pressure lawmakers and insurance companies to hold them accountable and fill in the present gaps in our system. They want to change policies that affect people who are denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions and who otherwise fall through the cracks in the system. They hope to be able to drive costs down, encourage competition between insurance companies, and recruit many more supporters to force these badly needed changes.
C-Sections May Raise Insurance Rates
A healthy woman applied for family health insurance and was rejected because she had two c-sections. The insurance company says that woman who have had this surgery will most likely have it again and they do not want to cover it.
Different states have different policies on this matter, as do the insurance companies. The really bad thing about it is that this woman now has a rejection on her record which can negatively affect future insurance applications.
Of course the insurance companies don’t want to pay for this but they are saying that most of these surgeries are not necessary and are done for convenience .
I myself have had two and believe me, they were anything but convenient. With over 31% of children born this way this could become a big problem for women and their families.
Massachusetts Health Insurance Law
Massachusetts has reported that it has fined 100,000 of it’s people for “being able to afford” health insurance but not having it. They say they have raised over 9.7 million in fines which they are using to pay for this law which was estimated to cost over 900 million dollars.
Under this law you must prove that you cannot afford the insurance or be fined. They have set up some insurance plans that they say people who earn even three times the poverty level can apply for and get.
I have been around long enough to know that sometimes when you apply for state or federal assistance, they only look at your income, and maybe your rent/mortgage and utilities. That’s how they decide if you can afford it or not. They refuse to recognize credit cards, loans you may have, medical bills, school tuition’s, groceries, car gas, insurance, etc, etc, etc.
I do not know if this is the case in Massachusetts, but as an uninsured person myself, I resent the government telling me what I can and can’t afford, especially when they are responsible for taking some of my earnings to pay their own salaries so they can afford it.