ObamaCare, the metric system & me
Posted by: shessel on: January 3, 2012
I would put my trust in a single-payer healthcare system, not in insurance companies, the original death panels. Source for cartoon: http://www.examiner.com/liberal-in-anchorage/two-unlikely-supporters-of-death-panels-palin-and-gingrich
On this day of the Iowa caucus, I have a few things to say.
The Republican candidates have tried to outdo each other in condemning Obamacare, as they call it with disdain. Despite it being modeled on the Massachusetts model of Willard “Mitt” Romney, that candidate claims he had nothing to do with it.
In 2008, Newt Gingrich said in a speech, “The third thing I think you have to do, which is for a conservative a little controversial, is I think you’ve got to require everybody to either have insurance or to post a bond.” In other words, he supported the individual mandate before he opposed it.
And then there’s Rick Santorum, who responded to a question about health care and Christianity, with this statement, “The answer is not what can we do to prevent deaths because of a lack of health insurance. There’s — I reject that number completely, that people die in America because of lack of health insurance.”
He clearly has never had to worry about his healthcare plan, or tried to battle an insurance company to get the benefits for which he is entitled.
The biggest problem with ObamaCare – the Affordable Healthcare Act – is that it didn’t go far enough. We need a single payer plan like other industrialized countries have.
And I use ObamaCare with pride – he had the guts to try to do something about our healthcare problems.
And don’t throw waiting lists at me for Canada and Britain – if it is life threatening, care is immediate just like in the United States. And if it is not life threatening, there are waits like we have in the United States. But no one goes bankrupt in those countries because of a medical diagnosis like we do here.
Why we still have a profit-based, employer-based system is insane. It is the profit demands of private insurance companies that kill people. Corporations will fight to the death of their subscribers – not stockholders – to pay as little as possible. Their way of saying good morning is “claim denied.”
If you have the strength to do so, you fight it. I’ve had to do that a lot with my cancer care even thought we had private insurance through my husband’s employer. You have to be persistent and determined.
I’d like to know how much money insurance companies invest in the infrastructure to turn down legitimate claims. That money could be used to provide actual care to subscribers. I’d like to know how many people die waiting for prior approval from an insurance company or while battling for payment.
If you think that cannot happen to you, then I have a Republican candidate in Iowa you can buy.
Think about the lost creativity and inspiration from folks who are afraid to leave their jobs with insurance to create their own products, then you can see the real cost of our healthcare system now.
What does this have to do with the metric system, which seems so reasonable compared to the odd measurement system that we have? We were supposed to change into the metric system in the 1970s, but Americans could not go the same way as the rest of the world. Inherently, we believe we are better at everything whether it is healthcare or measurements.
It’s nuts.
Wendell Potter, former head of CIIGNA insurance, wrote an article posted on www.PRWatch.com in which he notes we have the most expensive healthcare system – not the best. Exceptions are that we are number one in five-year survival rate for breast cancer (thank you very much) and the second highest survival rate for colon cancer after Japan.
To those who think we have the best healthcare system, he wrote, “Well, those guys need to get out more. Out of the country, in fact. They need to travel to at least one of the many countries that are doing a much better job of delivering high quality care at much lower costs than the good old USA.”
http://www.prwatch.org/news/2011/11/11152/best-health-care-system-not-usa-despite-constant-spin-make-us-believe-it”
He mentioned specifically Speaker John Boehner’s comment that the plan would kill jobs and is unnecessary because we have the best system in the world. “I’ve heard GOP candidates for president say the same thing in recent months, charging that we need to get rid of a President who clearly is trying to fix something that doesn’t need fixing, something that isn’t broken in the first place,” Potter wrote.
He referred to two students, including the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) study of healthcare systems in 40 countries. Its findings included:
- The U.S. spends an average of $7,960 per person – two-and-a-half times as much as France, considered by many one of the best health care systems on the planet. The U.S. spends a third more than Norway, the second highest.
- Hospital spending is 60 percent higher in the U.S. than the average of five other relatively expensive countries (Switzerland, Canada, Germany, France and Japan).
- Spending on pharmaceuticals and medical goods is much higher here than in any of the other countries.
- We have the most expensive knee replacements of any of the countries and are just behind Japan in the number of MRI tests per million people.
- We are 29th in hospital beds and 29th in the average length of stay.
- We are 26th in the number of physicians, especially primary care providers, for each 1,000 people.
- We are 28th in life expectancy – just behind Chile?!, The average age of death in the U.S. is 78.2, well below the average of 79.5 years in the other OCED countries.
He also mentioned the Commonwealth Fund study, which found we are 16th in deaths that could have been prevented y timely and effective medical care. That study was out of 16 countries. It gave new meaning to the term, dead last.
“A big reason for the dismal results is the fact that more and more Americans are falling into the ranks of the uninsured and underinsured. As of last year, according to the Commonwealth Fund, 81 million adults in the U.S. — 44 percent of all adults under age 65 — were either uninsured or underinsured at some point during the year, up from 61 million as recently as 2003,” Powell wrote. “So the next time you hear a politician claim that the U.S. has the best health care system in the world, be aware that he or she is trying to get you to believe something that is demonstrably not true, undoubtedly for no reason other than to advance their political agenda. We deserve better – in both rhetoric and results.”
The Neo-Cons speak of American exceptionalism – which is supposed superiority of Americans over all. We have done wonderful things in this country – particularly in World War II, in development of our economy in the second half of the 20th century and in helping other countries. But we also are like the conceited kid in the most popular clique in school, who is out of touch with reality/ thinks he/she will be in that powerful role for every and wants the rest of us to do whatever he/she says.
Romney’s slogan is “Believe in America.” I do believe in America, but certainly not in Romney. I believe in both the metric system and in a better healthcare system that began with ObamaCare.
Admitting we are not the best at everything and then working to improve our rankings would be true American exceptionalism, not how the Republicans use that term to profess we are the best at everything in the world. American exceptionalism is not the who-gives-rats-ass-about-our-neighbors philosophy of those candidates running around in Iowa today – and New Hampshire and South Carolina tomorrow.
It is working to better our country for all.
