Tag: health care

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The Top Ten Immediate Benefits You’ll Get When Health Care Reform Passes

As soon as health care passes, the American people will see immediate benefits. The legislation will:

  • Prohibit pre-existing condition exclusions for children in all new plans;
  • Provide immediate access to insurance for uninsured Americans who are uninsured because of a pre-existing condition through a temporary high-risk pool;
  • Prohibit dropping people from coverage when they get sick in all individual plans;
  • Lower seniors prescription drug prices by beginning to close the donut hole;
  • Offer tax credits to small businesses to purchase coverage;
  • Eliminate lifetime limits and restrictive annual limits on benefits in all plans;
  • Require plans to cover an enrollee’s dependent children until age 26;
  • Require new plans to cover preventive services and immunizations without cost-sharing;
  • Ensure consumers have access to an effective internal and external appeals process to appeal new insurance plan decisions;
  • Require premium rebates to enrollees from insurers with high administrative expenditures and require public disclosure of the percent of premiums applied to overhead costs.

I’m not seeing listed is Rush Limbaugh leaving the country…. but these all benefit the country and the well being of the American people… even if it’s not the perfect bill (no such thing), get some positive out of this year long process.

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Healthy Body Empty Pockets

The healthcare debate seems to have quieted some since the holidays. I understand the Senate and House are trying to reconcile the two bills passed, however, based on the diverse versions either has introduced I’m concerned the end result will be too weak of a bill to amount to any real reform. As someone that currently doesn’t have proper health coverage (Cobra is quite expensive for what I actually receive), I’m again distraught with the modern political process to get anything meaningful passed for the people of this country.

The National Geographic Blog had an interesting graph posted on the difference in just costs of healthcare vs. life expectancy for many world countries (FiveThirtyEight.com also posted a similar graph today but the NG one is clearer to me). Most countries have some form of universal healthcare coverage which can’t be said for the US. Regardless of quality, if you live in another country you’re going to get some help without the fear of having to loose your house to get patched up.

The U.S. has a fee-for-service system—paying medical providers piecemeal for appointments, surgery, and the like. That can lead to unneeded treatment that doesn’t reliably improve a patient’s health. Says Gerard Anderson, a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who studies health insurance worldwide, “More care does not necessarily mean better care.”

T.R. Reid a foreign correspondent for The Washington Post and author of The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care. had a good discussion with NPR on Fresh Air about the differences between what’s offered here in America verses other countries such as France, Japan, Britain, Germany, Canada, Switzerland, and other western countries as compared to what’s offered in communist countries or other less industrialized countries. A big reason why our healthcare is so expensive is that we have all 4 types of healthcare vs. these countries only offer one type of healthcare. Having a system that requires four types of services (4 types of forms etc.) which alone is an administrative nightmare.

I recommend going to the NPR site and downloading this 30 minute podcast to listen to on the way to work or at the gym to just get a brief idea of what’s actually offered in the world. To get more, read the full book.

photo365_2010_004
Central Park NY during the fall 2009

Operation Ivy – Healthy Body
[audio:https://austinvegas.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/25-Healthy-Body.mp3]

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The Laboring are Revolting Against the Learned – 9.12 DC Tea Party

“The mass of our citizens may be divided into two classes — the laboring and the learned. The laboring will need the first grade of education to qualify them for their pursuits and duties; the learned will need it as a foundation for further acquirements.” —Thomas Jefferson to Peter Carr, 1814. ME 19:213

“He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense.” —Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim, 1900

Freedom. WMD. Terrorist. 9/11. Bring em on. Maverick. Hope. Change. Yes We Can. You Lie.

What ever happened to: Life, Liberty and The Pursuit of Happiness?