best thing I've yet to read on this whole healthcare debacle
Posted: Sun Aug 30, 2009 10:19 am
This was a letter to the editor in this week's Sylva Herald and Ruralite out of Sylva, NC.
Real health care debate will never happen
To the Editor:
What Americans crave (and desperately need) is an open and honest discussion on health care. Regrettably however, thousands of lobbyists (many of them ex-congressional leaders or family members) have invaded Washington, D.C., spending millions of dollars to insure that debate never takes place.
There are three essential elements we must confront if affordable and quality health care is ever to be achieved. One is cultural, one institutional and the other personal.
First the cultural component – in ancient China (and for more than 3,000 years) the prevention of disease was the guiding principle in health care. Health was considered both an individual responsibility and the obligation of the family physician to maintain. It was the doctor’s duty to keep everyone in the household, including the servants, healthy. For his service the physician received a monthly retainer. If anyone fell ill, the physician restored the patient’s health at his own expense and his pay was withheld until he did. This was an effective deterrent to medical malpractice because doctors profited only by keeping their patients healthy.
Let’s see – we pay our doctors when?
Institutionally, the American health care system is engulfed in fraud, waste, abuse and corruption. Lobbyists representing the pharmaceutical, insurance, mental health (and other intertwined industries) flood Congress with millions of dollars in order to maintain the lucrative status quo.
This is why President Clinton failed in his attempt to achieve health care reform and why President Obama is having so much difficulty. There are just too many members of Congress financially benefitting from but not dependent on the current health care conditions that we are.
Perhaps congressmen should be required to dress like NASCAR drivers, with their sponsors displayed so we’d know to whom they truly owe their allegiance.
Hospital costs have ballooned to staggering proportions, shockingly unaffordable to average citizens, as are the insurance costs to cover them.
From my own experience, hospital care can hardly be called “quality.” I believe medical care and justice are comparable in this one aspect. Both are directly proportionate to one’s ability to pay for it.
Government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid are awash in fraud, waste and abuse. Medicaid especially often pays for services that people could do and should do for themselves. This so-called program for the “poor” epitomizes fraudulent government waste and mismanagement.
The third component of health care is entirely up to us. We can push our fat derrieres away from the table and thus assume some measure of responsibility for our own health. It is, as I see it, our obligations to practice healthy eating and to maintain a reasonable exercise plan.
Twenty-five years ago, no state had an obesity rate higher than 15 percent. Today most states hover in the 25-29 percent range and six are above 30 percent (most of them in the South). The “Bible Belt” has become the “Blubber Belt.” The known reasons – a dramatic shift in eating habits, more fast food, bigger portions and fewer sit-down meals.
Obesity contributes to a wide range of health problems from diabetes to heart disease and concurrently to rising, out-of-control health care costs.
So what is the actual cost of obesity in the United States? Pick a number and add nine zeros – it’s in the billions. I’ve seen the figure $147 billion mentioned for 2008 alone and taxpayers picked up half of that through Medicare and Medicaid. Whatever the figure is, it’s the single biggest cause for the increase in health care costs, and the one that is well within our capacity to influence.
“Houston, we have a problem.” It was not created overnight, neither will it be resolved overnight. Baby boomers (78 million strong) will begin signing up for Medicare in two years time. Illegal aliens are choosing to have their babies in the United States, making them automatic citizens. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Believe me when I say Bernie Madoff got the idea for his Ponzi scheme by studying federal entitlement policy.
But I don’t have to tell you we’re in deep doo-doo, you already know this, right?
Our number-one problem is that we are cursed with a two-party system that is arguably corrupt to its core, resulting in “taxation without representation,” for which there is only one known cure.
(I will not print this person's name)
Real health care debate will never happen
To the Editor:
What Americans crave (and desperately need) is an open and honest discussion on health care. Regrettably however, thousands of lobbyists (many of them ex-congressional leaders or family members) have invaded Washington, D.C., spending millions of dollars to insure that debate never takes place.
There are three essential elements we must confront if affordable and quality health care is ever to be achieved. One is cultural, one institutional and the other personal.
First the cultural component – in ancient China (and for more than 3,000 years) the prevention of disease was the guiding principle in health care. Health was considered both an individual responsibility and the obligation of the family physician to maintain. It was the doctor’s duty to keep everyone in the household, including the servants, healthy. For his service the physician received a monthly retainer. If anyone fell ill, the physician restored the patient’s health at his own expense and his pay was withheld until he did. This was an effective deterrent to medical malpractice because doctors profited only by keeping their patients healthy.
Let’s see – we pay our doctors when?
Institutionally, the American health care system is engulfed in fraud, waste, abuse and corruption. Lobbyists representing the pharmaceutical, insurance, mental health (and other intertwined industries) flood Congress with millions of dollars in order to maintain the lucrative status quo.
This is why President Clinton failed in his attempt to achieve health care reform and why President Obama is having so much difficulty. There are just too many members of Congress financially benefitting from but not dependent on the current health care conditions that we are.
Perhaps congressmen should be required to dress like NASCAR drivers, with their sponsors displayed so we’d know to whom they truly owe their allegiance.
Hospital costs have ballooned to staggering proportions, shockingly unaffordable to average citizens, as are the insurance costs to cover them.
From my own experience, hospital care can hardly be called “quality.” I believe medical care and justice are comparable in this one aspect. Both are directly proportionate to one’s ability to pay for it.
Government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid are awash in fraud, waste and abuse. Medicaid especially often pays for services that people could do and should do for themselves. This so-called program for the “poor” epitomizes fraudulent government waste and mismanagement.
The third component of health care is entirely up to us. We can push our fat derrieres away from the table and thus assume some measure of responsibility for our own health. It is, as I see it, our obligations to practice healthy eating and to maintain a reasonable exercise plan.
Twenty-five years ago, no state had an obesity rate higher than 15 percent. Today most states hover in the 25-29 percent range and six are above 30 percent (most of them in the South). The “Bible Belt” has become the “Blubber Belt.” The known reasons – a dramatic shift in eating habits, more fast food, bigger portions and fewer sit-down meals.
Obesity contributes to a wide range of health problems from diabetes to heart disease and concurrently to rising, out-of-control health care costs.
So what is the actual cost of obesity in the United States? Pick a number and add nine zeros – it’s in the billions. I’ve seen the figure $147 billion mentioned for 2008 alone and taxpayers picked up half of that through Medicare and Medicaid. Whatever the figure is, it’s the single biggest cause for the increase in health care costs, and the one that is well within our capacity to influence.
“Houston, we have a problem.” It was not created overnight, neither will it be resolved overnight. Baby boomers (78 million strong) will begin signing up for Medicare in two years time. Illegal aliens are choosing to have their babies in the United States, making them automatic citizens. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Believe me when I say Bernie Madoff got the idea for his Ponzi scheme by studying federal entitlement policy.
But I don’t have to tell you we’re in deep doo-doo, you already know this, right?
Our number-one problem is that we are cursed with a two-party system that is arguably corrupt to its core, resulting in “taxation without representation,” for which there is only one known cure.
(I will not print this person's name)
