The Real Reason America Doesn't Have Universal Health Care

On This Day, March 25, 1966

How completely timely is that, given the Republicans attempts, once again, to keep health care only for the wealthy, to keep it unattainable for the middle- and lower-classes?

It was true then, in 1966, all those many years ago and it's become ever more true, with every increase in pharmaceutical prices and health care insurance premiums and especially with the Republicans' attempts to repeal the ACA, "Obamacare."

The Reason Our Healthcare Is So Outrageously Expensive

We're just not very bright.  We put companies and corporations and profit and profits ahead of people and people's needs.

What We've Come to In America

This posting comes from an article yesterday in the Springfield, Missouri News-Leader newspaper. It's a horrible indictment of our health care system, how we treat our Veterans and our nation, overall, generally.

Old man wanted more than money in Branson bank robbery

Joseph Cyrus could barely get the words out.

He knew what he wanted to say, but he didn't want to break down in the courtroom.

Cyrus' lawyer told him it was OK. He could wait until the sentencing hearing in a few months if he wanted. But the 77-year-old Cyrus couldn't wait.

A proud man, Cyrus couldn't go another day without explaining himself.

"I wanted to be caught, your honor," Cyrus said from his wheelchair last month at the federal courthouse in Springfield. "I wanted to get some help from the United States government."

A masked Cyrus robbed the Central Bank on James Epps Road in Branson on Oct. 16, pointing what he says was a plastic BB gun at the tellers.

The reason he committed the crime, he said, was to get access to healthcare in the federal prison system.

Cyrus turned himself in to police a few days after the robbery and pleaded guilty on Nov. 10.

Cyrus gave an emotional speech in the courtroom after pleading guilty, saying he has bad feet and is losing his hearing. He told the judge he recently lost his job and was turned away by a Veterans Affairs hospital.

Cyrus said he woke up the morning of the robbery in his trailer at the Yacht Club Mobile Home Park in Hollister with roaches crawling all over his body.

He asked himself a question as he was eating breakfast that morning.

"I turned around and looked in the mirror, into a mirror that I had in my apartment, and I said 'Why am I doing this?'" Cyrus said. "So I grabbed that mask (and) turned the license plate upside down."

Cyrus drove his pickup truck to the bank, hobbled in, pointed what looked like a pistol at the tellers, ordered everyone into the lobby and made out with almost $31,000 in a reusable grocery bag.

Witnesses at the bank said Cyrus was "hunched over" and appeared to be in pain as he walked out of the building.

Two hours later, Cyrus paid his rent in cash, put a "for sale" sign in his truck and left town. He would later come back to Branson and turn himself in...

...Cyrus said in court he has 16 grandchildren. He said he didn't want them to see him as an old, deaf man too sick to drive a car...

...Kristie Breshears, public information officer at the U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, said Cyrus' case is not totally unique.

"I don’t want to give the misconception that there are all of these guys lined up to go to prison to get free healthcare," Breshears said. "But do I believe it exists? Absolutely."

Congratulations, America. This is who you are. This is what we've become.

Can we not do anything about this?

America's Actual Health Care Problems

The news has been breaking lately--

Employees' Share of Health Insurance 

Costs Rising

So naturally, too many people are blaming it on Obamacare. 

The fact is, the culprit and problem isn't Obamacare, the actual problem is that we still have our health care costs tied to profit and profits.  It needs to be pointed out, yet again, that NO OTHER INDUSTRIALIZED NATION IN THE WORLD does this. No other nation ties health care to profit. 

It's why we have the most expensive health care system in the world. It's how we got where we are today. To now blame Obamacare and President Obama for the health care costs rising just gives further license to these corporations to raise their rates and premiums and prices all the further. It's insane. It's how we're getting things like this:

U.S. Health Care Costs Rise Faster 

Than Inflation

We have to end our current system of health care and go to a single payer plan, once and for all.

Quote of the day -- on America's health care system

America's heath care system

We Americans aren't very bright, allowing our health care and health care system to be tied to profit.

No other country in the world does this.

The result?  The runaway most expensive health care system in the world, bar none.

How badly our health care needs attention

The 8 years we already forgot

 

Oh, and it was Dubya's administration that made it illegal--ILLEGAL, mind you--for our own government to be able to negotiate lower costs for our--for you and me out here in America--prescription drugs from the pharmaceuticals.

And people think the current President is out to do bad things to the public NOW, by making the most expensive health care system in the world more affordable for us?

Sheesh.

More proof of why we badly need "Obamacare"

And from where else today but The New York Times?

In Need of a New Hip, but Priced Out of the U.S.

Our health care system, being beyond question the most expensive in the world, is forcing some of us to have to go outside the country, to other nations that have--oops--universal health care and far less expensive systems.

A bit of the article:

WARSAW, Ind. — Michael Shopenn’s artificial hip was made by a company based in this remote town, a global center of joint manufacturing. But he had to fly to Europe to have it installed.        

Mr. Shopenn, 67, an architectural photographer and avid snowboarder, had been in such pain from arthritis that he could not stand long enough to make coffee, let alone work. He had health insurance, but it would not cover a joint replacement because his degenerative disease was related to an old sports injury, thus considered a pre-existing condition.        

Desperate to find an affordable solution, he reached out to a sailing buddy with friends at a medical device manufacturer, which arranged to provide his local hospital with an implant at what was described as the “list price” of $13,000, with no markup. But when the hospital’s finance office estimated that the hospital charges would run another $65,000, not including the surgeon’s fee, he knew he had to think outside the box, and outside the country.

“That was a third of my savings at the time,” Mr. Shopenn said recently from the living room of his condo in Boulder, Colo. “It wasn’t happening.”  
     

$65,000 here in the States vs. a mere $13,000 in Belgium.

 Round trip flight included.

The isn't working, folks. The health care system we have is broken. It doesn't work for the people. The companies and corporations are getting rich--filthy, stinking--on our backs. It's good for them but it's keeping the rest of us either broke, sick, in pain or even dead prematurely.

We need the Affordable Care Act. 

We need "Obamacare."

And badly.

40 ways "Obamacare" is already working for Americans

This past week, our own US House of Representatives voted yet again, for the 40th time, to repeal the Affordable Care Act, "Obamacare."

The 40th time.

It's been estimated that all these votes have cost the nation fifty million dollars.

It's crazy.

So, herewith are 40 ways Obamacare is working, already helping us, Americans, and it hasn't even taken full effect yet:


1. Say goodbye to lifetime limits: Insurance companies will no longer be able to place an arbitrary cap on coverage.

2. Children can no longer be denied health insurance because of a pre-existing condition.

3. Starting in 2014, adults will no longer be denied health insurance because of a pre-existing condition.

Free preventive care, including:

4. Annual check-ups

5. Contraception

6. Vaccinations

7. Gestational diabetes screenings

8. Mammograms

9. Screening and counselling for HIV

10. Cholesterol screenings

11. Colonoscopies

12. Blood pressure screenings

13. Cancer screenings

14. Osteoporosis screenings

15. Young adults can stay on their parents' insurance plans until the age of 26.

16. If insurance companies aren't spending your premium dollars on your health care—at least 80 percent—they've got to give you some money back.

17. Insurance companies can't raise your rates by double-digits without justification.

18. Insurance plans can’t require higher co-payments or co-insurance if you get emergency care from an out-of-network hospital.

19. Women will no longer be charged more than men just because they're women.

20. The health insurance marketplace will be ready to go in every state starting October 1 of this year.

21. No-hassle comparisons: The online marketplace provides easy access to information on all available plans, so you can do a side-by-side comparison and find a plan that works for you.

22. Many Americans will be eligible for financial assistance to help them buy health insurance on their own, so you can afford a plan that will be there if you get sick.

23. When you buy insurance through the marketplace, premiums can be determined based only on these four factors: where you live, how old your are, how large your family is, and whether or not you are a smoker.

24. In the marketplace, you can choose a plan that matches your budget and needs: Platinum, Gold, Silver or Bronze.

25. By 2020, the Medicare prescriptions drug "donut hole" will be closed for good.

These are the essential benefits that all health plans in the marketplace must cover:

26. Ambulatory patient services

27. Emergency services

28. Hospitalization

29. Prenatal care

30. Neonatal care

31. Mental health services

32. Prescription drugs

33. Rehabilitative services and devices

34. Laboratory services like bloodwork

35. Preventive care

36. Wellness services

37. Chronic disease management

38. Pediatric services, including oral and vision care

39. Lower prescription drug costs for people on Medicare.

40. These states are already foreseeing dramatic drops in premiums: New York, California, Nevada, Connecticut, Oregon.

There you have it. 40 ways Obamacare is helping and will help Americans—benefits the House of Representatives is about to try to take away for the 40th time.

If you're sick and tired of repeal votes, add your name to stand up to the people trying to tear down Obamacare.

One man's personal testament to the great good and improvements of "Obamacare" (guest post)

Obamacare confession. ~ July 24, 2013 By JT Eberhard 

This is my father’s facebook status from last night:

"The hammer has dropped. The sky has fallen. I have been a staunch defender of the ACA. I have defended Nancy Pelosi’s much maligned (and taken out of context by the right) statement to pass it so we would know what was in it. 

Well.

Today, I got a letter from my current insurance company inviting me to call them and find out what the exchange could do for me. The letter informed me that I could keep my current $600 per month, $10,000 deductible policy since it is grandfathered in, or I could get a new policy starting Jan. 1.

For a total of $105 per month, I will be able to get a new silver policy. My current policy equal to a bronze. For a total of $300 per month, I will be able to get a gold policy. The higher your metal, the lower your deductible, your copay, and the higher the drug benefit.

So, instead of $7200 per year for catastrophic insurance for Carol and I, plus paying out about $10,000 out of pocket each year due to the high deductible and pre-existing conditions………we will pay either $1200 or $3600 per year for a damned sight better coverage and much fewer out of pocket expenses.

So, for all the conservatives who have been desperately straining for years to scare me out of this, and to the Republicans in the House who have voted 37 times to repeal the ACA……kiss my country ass. You’re a bunch of lying, fear mongering and ignorant demagogues, and you should be ashamed of yourselves."

Link to the original blog post: 

Obamacare confession. - Patheos

How is that, exactly?

Quote of the day--on America's health care

Writer T.R. Reid on the difference between the American health care system and most of the rest of the world:
"The key difference is that foreign health insurance plans exist only to pay people's medical bills, not to make a profit. The United States is the only developed country that lets insurance companies profit from basic health coverage."

From the article:

Five Myths About Health Care in the Rest of the World

Our broken--badly broken--health care system

 

A friend of mine was sick last week, over his holiday vacation.

That stunk for him, of course, poor guy.

He called in to his doctor, to get something for it.

His doctor concurred and prescribed Tamiflu for him.

He got ten pills of this little "wonder drug."

Now, he has health insurance but even with that, do you know what that one little--very little--prescription cost him?

$111.00

One hundred and eleven dollars for ten pills, even with insurance.

America's health care system.

We're number one.

In cost.

Notes to Missouri and Kansas governments

It takes an "expert" to tell our governments and representatives what we already know:

Expert: State stances on Obamacare may backfire

Washington may wind up with control of health care exchanges, expert says

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A health care expert said states like Kansas and Missouri who reject Washington's call to set up health care exchanges under the nation's new health care reform law may see their plans backfire.

Thomas McAuliffe, a policy specialist for the nonpartisan Missouri Health Foundation, said the health care exchanges allow people to pick health insurance plans, similar to using the Internet to compare prices for airline tickets.

"When you choose an insurance package, you will know what's in network, out of network and how much it costs," he said. "But the biggest thing is, you can compare prices and actual insurance products."

He said the law requires these descriptions to be written in understandable language and not insurance jargon.

Places like Missouri and Kansas, which have rejected calls to set up their own exchanges and their own websites with information, may end up with more Washington control than they want.

"By ceding control to the federal government, they have, by example, ceded all state control of setting up the exchange, setting up prices catering to the resources in our state to the federal government," McAuliffe said.

He said many people, particularly Missouri Republicans, still oppose the new health care law that many refer to as "Obamacare," but they like many of its elements when they are explained separately.

Many major elements of the new health care law will take effect in the next two years. States are making decisions on how to work with the new law now that the election is over.

Maybe now they'll listen.

I doubt it but it could be.

Here's hoping.

Read more: http://www.kmbc.com/news/kansas-city/Expert-State-stances-on-Obamacare-may-backfire/-/11664182/17478660/-/1394932/-/index.html#ixzz2Cj0z92xW

Read more: http://www.kmbc.com/news/kansas-city/Expert-State-stances-on-Obamacare-may-backfire/-/11664182/17478660/-/1394932/-/index.html#ixzz2Cj0lWTga


Link: http://www.kmbc.com/news/kansas-city/Expert-State-stances-on-Obamacare-may-backfire/-/11664182/17478660/-/1394932/-/index.html?absolute=true

Here's Libertarianism for you

If you've been following the news lately, you may have, likely have heard the story about the people who've been exposed to and some even killed by, having received medication from what we now hear is a "compound pharmacy":

‘High risk’ drug making is at center of meningitis inquiry

Federal officials are investigating practices at New England Compounding Center in Framingham, a compounding pharmacy that has been linked to an outbreak of fungal meningitis. The outbreak has been blamed in 24 deaths.

Inside its sprawling red brick offices, New England Compounding Center engaged in the most hazardous type of pharmacy drug making. The company bought unsterilized powders and turned them into liquid steroids and other medicine supposedly pristine enough to inject into a patient.

It’s called “high-risk compounding,” and doing this safely, industry specialists say, requires elaborate and expensive manufacturing processes, sensitive tests for sterility and potency, and exacting attention to detail.

At the center of the federal and state investigation into New England Compounding, whose steroids were contaminated with a fungus that led to an outbreak of meningitis that has killed 24 people nationally, is whether the company violated these procedures.

My point?

My point is, this is yet one more example, like the BP oil blowout and spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the 2008 financial collapse that nearly took down the nation's and world's economies, that we need at least some government oversight and--gasp--regulations.

Without government and without that oversight and without regulations the Libertarians and so many Republicans and Right Wingers and "Conservatives" abhor, we--the people--are left exposed to the greed of we-don't-know-who.

No, thanks.

Leave me out, please.

I'll take some regulation, thank you.

Links: http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/healthcare/PA-lacks-patient-protection-against-sterile-compounding-errors.html

http://bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/health-wellness/2012/10/25/framingham-pharmacy-engaged-high-risk-compounding-higher-chance-contamination/BxwAtkfmCg9rW7EsJqv7HM/story.html

http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/healthcare/PA-lacks-patient-protection-against-sterile-compounding-errors.html

http://www.npr.org/2012/10/25/163641002/after-meningitis-deaths-a-look-at-drug-safety

Debt? You're worried about debt?

"We do have a serious deficit, but it is not because $1,200 a month Social Security checks earned by senior citizens are too generous. The problem is that we gave $1 trillion in tax breaks to the wealthy and profitable corporations who don't need them while ‘forgetting' to pay for more than $3.4 trillion on two wars and an overly expensive prescription drug program written by the pharmaceutical and insurance companies."

--Senator Bernie Sanders, Independent, Vermont

Link: http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=7049D017-0849-4938-A657-0AB1CE5FE128

About this health care reform Republicans hate...

Facts:

"The Republicans have made the individual mandate the element most likely to undo the President’s health-care law. The irony is that the Democrats adopted it in the first place because they thought that it would help them secure conservative support. It had, after all, been at the heart of Republican health-care reforms for two decades.
The mandate made its political début in a 1989 Heritage Foundation brief titled “Assuring Affordable Health Care for All Americans,” as a counterpoint to the single-payer system and the employer mandate, which were favored in Democratic circles. In the brief, Stuart Butler, the foundation’s health-care expert, argued, “Many states now require passengers in automobiles to wear seat-belts for their own protection. Many others require anybody driving a car to have liability insurance. But neither the federal government nor any state requires all households to protect themselves from the potentially catastrophic costs of a serious accident or illness. Under the Heritage plan, there would be such a requirement.” The mandate made its first legislative appearance in 1993, in the Health Equity and Access Reform Today Act—the Republicans’ alternative to President Clinton’s health-reform bill—which was sponsored by John Chafee, of Rhode Island, and co-sponsored by eighteen Republicans, including Bob Dole, who was then the Senate Minority Leader.

Link to original story: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/06/25/120625fa_fact_klein#ixzz1yDVrKXKX

Another comparison of American health care

And another reason why we--America--need health care reform. Breaking news yesterday: France best, U.S. worst in preventable death ranking "France, Japan and Australia rated best and the United States worst in new rankings focusing on preventable deaths due to treatable conditions in 19 leading industrialized nations, researchers said on Tuesday." And what does this mean to you and me? This: "If the U.S. health care system performed as well as those of those top three countries, there would be 101,000 fewer deaths in the United States per year, according to researchers writing in the journal Health Affairs." But no, Republicans, we don' need no steenkeng healthcare reform, do we? Dolts. Link: http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/01/08/us-deaths-rankings-idUSN0765165020080108