Politicians’ election-year lip service on health care had better lead to action, and fast. Americans are engaging in a risky kind of self-triage to save money, according to the Washington Post – going without prescription drugs, skipping doctor visits and delaying medical attention. In one recent survey, 25 percent of respondents said they had not gone to a doctor in 2008 because of the cost, up from 18 percent in 2007. Other research finds drug sales newly declining for the first time in a decade. “When the economy is in the situation we have today, people make tough choices,” said Kansas Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger, in her role as president of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. “Things are just not going to get done.” But at what cost to quality and length of life?
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10 Comments
No Universal health care. I’m sure there is other ways to care of those in need without running the financial health of those who pay for it.
Thanks Physician George for your comments on improving America’s health care situation.
I pay for it but will have no access to it should I or my husband lose our employee benefits…I see it happen all the time. A person works, pays insurance premiums for years and years, then gets sick, loses his/her job because of it, then lose their benefits, become uninsurable due to pre-existing conditions, then lose everything they’ve worked for all their life due to astronmical medical bills.
This country can do better than that.
Amazing that no one has much to say on this thread when the health care crisis is such a major issue in this country.
I wondered about that, too, “Mary_Caruso.”
Odd.
I think it’s because everyone knows how bad the health care system is in America but are afraid of the political implications.
As I’ve mentioned in other contexts, it’s a truism that good economics is bad politics and bad economics is good politics.
The CONs are so well-versed in their simplistic bumper-sticker platitudes it’s impossible to get out of their rhetorical quagmire.
A dialogue ends for them when they spew, “Socialist!” or “Canada!” or “Best health care system in the world!” with no ability or inclination to discuss reality.
Reality, after all, has a Liberal bias.
I’m starting to think socialism isn’t such a bad idea…afterall the free market system has sorta screwed us all. The cons just love to bend over for more.
Moneyhawk:The Guardian had a comment/blog on health care in Canada, England and the US, written by an expatirot journalist who has lived in all 3 countries. She went nuts over McCains’s comment about living in Canada or England as a derisive remark on health care proposals by Obama. She also noted that those who will not let a new idea approach their mind end up comforted with “unAmerican” or “Socialists” sneers.
“sursum” –
The silliest notion the CONs have to get out of their systems is the concept that health care is somehow a “market-driven” enterprise.
Like you’re gonna get universal health care coverage and decide to show up at the hospital for an appendectomy just ’cause it’s free and you have a Saturday afternoon to kill.
“Hey, there! Health care is paid by the government! I think I’ll get leukemia!”
Or…
“I can’t afford the full price for a liver transplant, how ’bout I give you a spare kidney and get a discount?”
Market-base health care is like market-based fire departments. My house isn’t on fire but I expect the red trucks a polka-dot dog to show up anyway and drench it with water because I PAID FOR IT!
What we need to get out of our system is that we need to run to the doctor every time we get a sniffle…
by the way, monkey…if your house is on fire, you only paid a very small portion of what it costs to put it out…and you don’t get billed for the balance either.