Monday, September 21, 2009
Hargrove Doctors Discuss Need For Health Care Reform
Posted by Brantley Hargrove on Mon, Sep 21, 2009 at 4:35 PM
I was at the Tennessee Tea Party rally last Friday (story to come in this Thursday's Scene) and I heard speaker Bernadette Ash voice the most laughable appraisal of our health care system. Bernadette is a sort of minor figurehead -- a common man lay person without much to add to any debate, much like the Plumber -- trotted out in front of Teabaggers as proof-positive of a flawless health care system.
Her daughter was born incredibly premature, survived and apparently is evidence of a, and I quote, "perfect" health care system. How our ability to treat severe medical issues relates to the population's overall ability to access quality health care is beyond me. But the Teabaggers deal in obfuscation and misdirection. Let's look at a few facts, according to a video created by doctors who advocate a single-payer system.
- 46 million uninsured Americans
- Cost of health care is the second leading cause of personal bankruptcy.
- Average family premium is more than the yearly wage for a full-time minimum-wage worker.
- National average is $7,000 per person, per year in health care costs.(In Nashville that number is more than $8,000)
- Our overall quality of health is somewhere on par with Cuba.
How can anyone say with a straight face that our health care system isn't in need of a complete overhaul?
Here are the problems as the Mad As Hell doctors see them (BTW, they're rallying here today):
Profit-driven models: Hospitals push doctors to administer expensive testing when it's not absolutely necessary. Doctors are also pressured to do this because of tort liability.
Expensive drugs: Drug companies claim price controls would deter research and development. That is a lie. Unlike Joe Wilson's claim, it actually is. The top five drug companies made $222 billion in 2005. Only $32 billion was spent on research and development. More than $70 billion was spent on marketing and administration.
Primary
Care shortage: The profit-driven business model in health care has
changed priorities. Specialists like neurosurgeons are paid a king's
ransom. The front line in prevention, the family practitioner, makes a
quarter of what these guys make. Instead of rewarding the family doctor
for preventing illness on the front end, we're rewarding specialists on
the back end for performing bypasses and inserting stints.
Insurance
costs: One of the biggest contributors to the obscene cost of health
care is private insurance and administration (those who deal with the
mountains of paperwork created by all the different insurance
providers). It is suggested that by going to a single-payer system, 25
percent in insurance and administrative costs would be eliminated.
The video poses an interesting question, and I'm not sure what the answer is: What does our health care system say about our society?
We've long prided ourselves for our individualism. Our economy is based
on the ascendancy of the individual. Hard work pays dividends
(sometimes). But can we apply that model to health care? Are we really
a society that isn't concerned at all with the community? Of course the
Teabaggers would find a similar root word in communism. But are we a nation only of self-interested individuals?
Comments (4)
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Loved that last paragraph, Brantley. What happened to separation of church and state? Oh, yeah, you were just trying to score a cheap point. Just so you know, plenty of Christians give to charity, including charities such as St. Jude that help with medical bills. That these Christians don't want the federal government owning one-sixth of the nation's economy is a sign of their common sense, not their hard-heartedness.
And furthermore, it's a s-t-e-n-t.
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Dropping your spare change in the St. Jude jar isn't going to cover the uninsured. Who will cover them? The private sector? There isn't much of a profit motive, so I doubt it. It does come down to hard-heartedness, because in the end they're letting ideology trump helping millions of our fellow citizens.
Nobody is stopping you or anyone who wants to help anyone else do anything, Hargrove.
All you folks who believe you are "obligated" to pay for other people's healthcare - just go on and do it.
Go on and set up your own private non-profit corporation that operates on exactly the principles you espouse. No exclusion for pre-existing conditions and no higher rates for those who have them. Mandatory coverage for all sorts of preventative procedures at no extra costs, the whole nine yards.
Then you can see if you can make it work on a voluntary basis.
First of all, many of the uninsured are young and healthy. They've decided to gamble on not needing health insurance, and that's their right. (Of course, I know that liberals such as yourself can't stand to see people spending their own hard-earned money as they see fit, but hey, ain't that America?)
Second, many of the Christians I know drop a full tithe on various charities (not necessarily charities that pay for healthcare), and I doubt most liberals ever give even 10%. At the very least, most of the studies I've seen show that conservatives tend to be more charitable.
Third, you seem to think that government can infinitely divvy out a finite amount of healthcare. Sorry, but Obama isn't Christ, and healthcare isn't five loaves and two fishes. If the government takes over healthcare, there will be rationing, there will be medical decisions made on the basis of cost rather than health, there will be billions if not trillions wasted on bureaucracy.
Fourth, just because I don't want to pay my neighbor's mortgage, car payments, utility bills, and medical bills doesn't make me hard-hearted. I'm not averse to lending a hand or a dollar occasionally, but the last thing this country needs is millions of people who are permanent wards of the state. If I wanted to live in Europe, I'd have moved there already.
