The cost of drugs, doctors fees, insurance premiums, hospital stays, rehabilitation centers, assisted living facilities, and full-care skilled nursing services have skyrocketed in the past decade.
To bring an affordable health care program to the country, the pharmaceutical companies must begin to cut costs in areas where the quality of the drugs is not affected and by granting volume discounts to Medicare and Medicaid similar to those they have been giving to the Veterans Administration for decades. In the Bush Administration drug benefit bill, the government was denied the right to negotiate for volume discounts already earned by the VA and the average citizen was denied the right to buy less expensive medications in Mexico and Canada.
Why? Why did Bush refuse to allow Americans to buy cheaper drugs; simply, he was in deep debt to the Pharmaceutical corporations because of their campaign contributions. In other words, Bush gave American drug companies carte blanche to charge the consumers what the market would bear; a really sweet package as payback for their substantial support of his campaigns for president.
His attitude reflects the callous indifference of one who serves those whose money automatically gives them power and to hell with the citizens who are footing the bill. Unfortunately the vast majority of his Republican cohorts and Blue Dog Democratics in the Congress share his lack of compassion for the unfortunate, underprivileged and Middle America attempting to survive a deep recession these very legislators brought upon us.
People are paying outlandish prices for all of the above mentioned services to the point that health care costs has become the major reason why families are forced to declare bankruptcy, lose their homes, and forfeit the personal possessions they have accumulated over a life time. 62% of all bankruptcies in this country are the result of the cost of health care.
For some reason people like our Blue Dog Democrats and Conservative Republicans are willing to spend trillions of dollars to fight an pointless war and kill thousands of our soldiers and hundreds of thousands of innocent people on enemy soil, but cannot find it within their soul to pay the heavy price for the urgently needed health care to which their constituents have a right.
In the past two elections, we have seen the public rise up in protest against those unwilling to shoulder their legislative responsibility to give this country a universal health insurance program that will free the people from their persistent fear of financial disaster over their failing health which grows as their age advances.
Tom Daschle, former majority leader of the Senate, in a Newsweek article in its May 11-18, 2009 edition entitled OBAMA’S HEALTH-CARE CONUNDRUM wrote, “Opponents oftentimes use as their primary argument against a public plan that it presents unfair competition to private insurance companies. I have little doubt that we can level the competitive playing field. Nevertheless, we must realize that reforming the health-care system is, first and foremost, for the American people—not the companies that profit from it.”
On the opponent’s side of the story, Mitt Romney, 2008 candidate for the Republican nomination for president wrote, “Our divide is fundamental: Republicans believe that health care can be best guided by consumers, physicians and markets. Democrats believe government would do better. Some Democrats would have the government buy health care for us; set the rates for doctors, hospitals and medicines; and decide what medical treatment we would be entitled to receive for each illness….”
Romney goes on to argue that President Lyndon Johnson signed the Medicaid bill and estimated the cost at $500 million. “Today, it costs $500 billion.”
He then compares the Postal Service with UPS and Federal Express, apparently not comprehending that the Postal Service is not a government operated service.
However, he failed to point out the effectiveness and efficiency of Medicare and the Veterans Administration. These government-operated programs are among the most cost effective departments in the governments.
It should be obvious to all that the above identified health care providers have failed to remain loyal to the Hippocratic Oath to which many dedicated their lives and the remaining simply have devoted their lives to profits and not the welfare of their patients. All health providers and even those in Congress who have the very lives of millions of people in their hands as they consider the health care issue must follow the “golden rule” of the medical profession, “Above all, do no harm.”
However, the oath itself goes much further:
I swear by Apollo, the healer, Asclepius, Hygieia, and Panacea, and I take to witness all the gods, all the goddesses, to keep according to my ability and my judgment, the following Oath and agreement:
To consider dear to me, as my parents, him who taught me this art; to live in common with him and, if necessary, to share my goods with him; To look upon his children as my own brothers, to teach them this art.
I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm to anyone.
I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan; and similarly I will not give a woman a pessary to cause an abortion.
But I will preserve the purity of my life and my arts.
I will not cut for stone, even for patients in whom the disease is manifest; I will leave this operation to be performed by practitioners, specialists in this art.
In every house where I come I will enter only for the good of my patients, keeping myself far from all intentional ill-doing and all seduction and especially from the pleasures of love with women or with men, be they free or slaves.
All that may come to my knowledge in the exercise of my profession commerce with men, which ought not to be spread abroad, I will keep secret and will never reveal.
If I keep this oath faithfully, may I enjoy my life and practice my art, respected by all men and in all times; but if I swerve from it or violate it, may the reverse be my lot.
The increase in cost can be placed directly on the shoulders of the insurance, medical supply, pharmaceutical, private physicians and hospital market operated branches of the larger health care enterprise.
Republicans, Blue Dog Democrats and the Chairmen of the Congressional Committees that are considering this issue for their own survival in the Congress had better get the message that this time the people are more serious than they have been before. Anyone, regardless of party affiliation will be targeted in future elections for their refusal to understand that the health of our people must come before balanced budgets and your consternation over government deficits; and that we not allow you to make health care a victim of free market economics.
According to Wikipedia, “Universal health care is implemented in all but one of the wealthy, industrialized countries, with the exception being the United States.”
The following is a list of countries with universal health coverage for their citizens: Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Panama, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela all have “public universal health care and Mexico plans to accomplish PHC by 2011.
In Asia, Brunei, China, Hong Kong SAR. India, Kuwait, Qatar, United Arab Emirtes, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, South Korea, Seychelles. Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Pakistan, Thailand—all have universal health care.
And addendum to the health issue is the following: “Hong Kong is one of the healthiest places in the world.[39] Because of its early health education, professional health services, and well-developed health care and medication system, ‘Hong-kongers’ enjoy a life expectancy of 84 for females and 78 for men,[40] which are the second highest in the world, and 2.94 infant mortality rate, the fourth lowest in the world.”
Singapore has a form of universal health care that “ensures affordability, largely through compulsory savings and price controls, while the private sector provides most care.” Spending on health care consumes only 3% of the country’s GDP.
European nations with universal health care includes Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom.
It is embarrassing at the very least as I look at the impressive list of countries throughout the world that have universal health care that the wealthiest nation in the world is conspicuous by its absence. While we willingly throw trillions of dollars at banks, auto manufacturers, insurance companies, and brokerage houses the idiotic Conservative Wing of the Republican Party, and the jackass Blue Dog of the Democratic wing have resisted with every fiber of their political bodies to provide universal health care.
According to the Observer of the United Kingdom, Professor Sir Michael Rawlins, the chairman of Great Britain’s National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence, spoke pungently of the ‘perverse incentives’ that cause the disgraceful prices of new drugs. He pointed the finger at the pharmaceutical company executives who earn their obnoxiously high incomes based upon the company’s “share price” which relies on the executive’s ability to keep the profits strong.
Drug companies do not produce their products in the most cost effective manner in order to keep the price affordable to the general public, but in an ineffective manner to keep the profits high and healthy for the bonus’ the executives earn. Nobody, Dr. Rawlins insists, is looking at the reasons why drugs are so ridiculously expensive when we know that could be produced at a much more economical fashion that would be more affordable to the parties requiring the drugs for the preservation of their health.
Dr. Rawlins added: “Kidney cancer drugs could be produced for about a tenth of their current cost, Rawlins said. While developing such medicines from scratch added to these costs, as did some 'unnecessary' bureaucracy around clinical trials which should be scrapped, he said that was not the whole story. 'Part of the problem is that the pharmaceutical industry is looking at a very bad period in the future because a lot of their big earners are going off patent [allowing rivals to make cheaper versions], and many companies are looking at a 30 or 40 per cent reduction in the next five years unless they come up with new drugs,' he said. 'And so part of the cost is cushioning against that. The other thing, of course, is that the share price is very important to a pharmaceutical company.”
The bottom line is that the United States is paying a dramatically high percentage of our GDP than the other major civilized nations of the world and receiving in return fewer high quality services than the citizens of other nations are receiving.
In other words, we are being “taken to the cleaners” by pharmaceutical providers, insurance companies, medical equipment manufactures, physician’s (in many cases), cost of unnecessary sophisticated and unjustifiably expensive medical tests and a host of hidden medical costs hospitals and clinics insert into bills that they hope insurance companies will pay.
The Chicago Tribune on May 20, 2009 published an article entitled Triage by columnist Judith Graham. In response to Ms. Graham’s column in which she recommended that people utilize the services of “immediate [or urgent]-care centers” to save money and time, Marie Rutke wrote to argue with Graham’ and her premise. In this case, Ms. Kutke went to a center owned an operated by Sherman Hospital in the Northwest suburbs of Chicago in mid-March on a Saturday after cutting her finger with a knife. Her cut required only three stitches. The bill from the “urgent-care facility” came to $383.40, in which BC/BS of Illinois paid $228.10 leaving $155.30 for Ms. Rutke to pay. However, a second bill arrived from Greater Elgin Emergency Specialists charging her an additional $545. Maria Rutke was livid according to her letter to Triage. She feels that a total charge of $928.40 for three stitches in her hand is “price gauging” [my words not hers].
Ms. Rutke turned the new bill over to BC/BS of Illinois and apparently without challenging the amount of the charge the insurance company paid all but $200 leaving her with a total out-of-pocket bill of $355.30.
The columnist called the Greater Elgin Emergency Specialists and spoke with a Josh McColough in the marketing department. McColough asked Graham to have the patient call him, but as a good journalist she pushed the envelop. After the conversation between McColough and the patient, the gentlemen from the marketing department called the columnist back and said that since the bulk of the charges were being covered by insurance “there really wasn’t a problem…The charges are what they are!”
And that is the real problem. The cost of medical services are going through the roof because the insurance companies are allowing physicians and medical service units to charge whatever the market will tolerate leaving the patient to endure the cost of an overpriced service that should never be levied in the first place. What ER physician’s service is worth $545 plus the use of the emergency center?
The problem is that nobody is questioning these charges. Nobody is forcing medical facilities to cap the costs they charge in relationship to the economy of the geography where they are located.
I personally entered the Rush Presbyterian-St Luke’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago for a gastric-bypass surgery. After a six hour surgery, I was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit and the doctors discovered that I had a temperature of 103 degrees. The doctors attempted a number of tests to determine the source of the infection and finally concluded that I had a staph infection acquired from the hospital itself.
During the first night in intensive care and still unconscious, for some unknown reason I attempted to swallow my tongue thereby blocking my capacity to breathe. As death approached, the nurses issued a “code blue” and one of the surgeons in my personal doctor’s practice, there to visit his father who had just undergone heart surgery, responded to the code blue, rushed over, rescued my tongue that was blocking my breathing channel, and immediately inserted a ventilator into my throat giving me the artificial capacity to breath.
I remained in the intensive care unit for two and a half [2 1/2] weeks and was returned to the general population of the medical facility for another two and a half weeks.
According to my primary care physician, the hospital bill was Seven hundred fifty thousand dollars ($750,000) which Blue Cross negotiated down to two hundred fifty thousand dollars ($250,000).
Obama is giving his full support to universal health insurance. The Republicans are coming up with the same old clichés. It is not that the Republican Party has no ideas; it is to the detriment of the country that they have no new, good, ideas.
I would like to see the following elements in a national health insurance program.
· Computerize all medical records of every American citizen with an accompanying pin code that assures the security of their records which could only be shared with those the individual patient approves. The reduction in cost and the added convenience it will provide will reduce medical costs at the very least by 15-25%.
· An independent entity, very much like the Federal Reserve System should be established. The country would be divided up into Districts with each district operated by those appointed (on salary) to supervise and oversee the quality of medical services, the cost of medical services, the quality of medical personnel who practice in that district and the fees they charge to the public they serve.
· Each district would place a cap on the cost of all medical services including pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, physicians, and every other medically related service under the jurisdiction.
· A Federal Medical Board would oversee the entire country’s medical services, its prices, quality of service, and through the various districts control the costs for all services and medically related products in the country.
· All elements of the medical profession including doctors, hospital administrators, pharmaceutical companies, medical equipment companies would be a member of the national organization and participate in the selection of those who would oversee the organizations business.
· The National Board would report to the President of the United States and to the U. S. Congress.
· The sidebar to this plan would require a single payer insurance program to reduce the present expenditure estimated by most experts in the field by 30% for administrative costs alone.
I have written about this approach to the health care quandary before and at least one set of professors have written a book that echoes this very same matrix.
Medical costs are causing the deaths of what some medical experts estimate to be 130,000 people per year because they simply cannot afford to pay the price that good health care demands.
Approximately 50 million people have no insurance at all and are rushing to ER’s of our hospitals where according to a recent report the American tax payer is paying $1,000 per visit for every man, woman and child that crosses the threshold of an ER for medical care.
We have no recent figures of the number of elderly that die each year because of their inability to afford the $5-6,000 per month its costs to reside in a skilled nursing facility.
The neglect that our patients face in those facilities is a tragedy the government is going to have to confront very soon. I personally experienced this tragedy but a few years ago. My own mother for whom I had served as a primary care giver for five years had to be placed in rehab center after my near tragic surgery.
To make this long story short; on one occasion we found her with a massive black eye that no one on staff seemed to know about. A few weeks later, her front teeth were knocked out and again without a reasonable explanation by the staff. Because she bore the suffering of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, congestive heart failure and rheumatoid arthritis she had to be fed and provided water. During the final days of her life, she was rushed to the hospital on four occasions due to dehydration. In other words, the nursing staff failed to provide a sufficient amount of water on a regular basis for her to avoid hospitalization. The nurses at the hospital reported to me that each time she arrived; she consumed liquids faster than a dying camel in the heat of the desert.
The ambulance service that took her from the Rehab center to the hospital which was approximately five miles away, charged Medicare $500 each way. When I questioned them about the amount of the charge for such a short distance, they answered that they always charge an outlandish amount knowing that it would be reduced by Medicare.
There we go again. There is no oversight and the country is paying more for medical care than any country in the world and not receiving in return the quality of health care at an affordable price that they deserve.
To the Democrats and the Republicans in Congress, this is the year when you must put aside your narrow views of medical services and give the American people a program just as generous as the one you so happily enjoy.
The undistinguished Senator from Alabama, Republican Richard Shelby, standing before television cameras and sounding like the fool that he has always been insisted that the U. S. had the best health care in the world and that we did not want any form of socialized medicine, with the government standing between the patient and their medical care. Someone should bring Senator Shelby up-to-date. We do not have the best health care, we have the most expensive health care.
Every one of the Republicans and the Blue Dog Democrats along with many right wing commentators need a course in the definition of socialism.
“Socialism refers to any one of various economic theories of economic organization advocating state or cooperative ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods, and a society characterized by equal opportunities/means for all individuals with a more egalitarian method of compensation based on the full product of the laborer” Wikipedia
It is time for this country and its far right wing followers to learn what Socialism means and control their unwarranted fear of anything that government does. As I have said a thousand times, the founder of the Republican Party, Abraham Lincoln said, “Government should do for the people what they cannot do for themselves or do so well.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt first introduced the idea of national health insurance in the latter part of his four term presidency. The Republicans made the same arguments against universal health care then that they are making today. “Do not let the government come between the patient and the doctor.” As Senator Barbara Boxer noted recently, “It is not the government that is coming between the patient and the doctor it is the insurance companies.” We do not want Socialized medicine. Regardless of what bill passes and it damn well better pass or the American people are going to put Senators head on the block come the next election, it will not be any form of Socialism.
Stop the scare tactics and serve the people who are in dire need of universal health insurance. For God’s sake, do not tell me we can’t afford it or that the deficit is too high. Where were you people when Ronald Reagan put this country in debt to the tune of $2.7 trillion and George W. Bush, for no apparent reason, turned a Clinton surplus into a Bush debt of multi-trillions when we finally learn the real cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
