Pass a health caare law of less than three pages that says: 1) All medically accepted procedures and all medically recognized illnessesare covered. 2)Coverage cannot be denied because of a previous condition, nor terminated because of illness. 3) The price of insurance premiums must demonstrate a true relationship to costs and a profit margin that cannot exceed the percent of the annual Consumer Price index plus 5%. 4) The price of drugs and medicines approved by the FDA must reflect the demonstrated actual costs to produce the drug plus the CPI plus 5%. 5) Prices for non-profit hospital services must be equal to actual costs plus an approved percent for future approved capital costsand the CPI, plus 5% for profit-making facilities. Hospitals may not charge for tests or procedures required to compensate hospital errors or to treat for hospital-based infections or physician or employee errors. 6) Physisician fees are calcualated as actual costs plus the CPI plus 5% with no allowable charge to remediate physisician error. 7) Persons without employer purchased insurance may particiate in Medicaid with a sliding scale copayment not to exceed the average statewide cost for no-profit insurance.
Jesus and His disciples tended to those in need because of the Christian belief in the love of mankind, not because a lobbyist-influenced senate committee wrote some poorly worded and overly verbose law that would garner re-election votes. After having worked in healthcare for 35 years I believe that the Senate, House and even the President are capitive of the self-serving lobbyists and egomaniacal policy wonks in DC. I believe that everybody in DC has fallen into a "Emeroror's New Clothes" trap where everyone is afraid to make it simple. I have another comment below that addresses the issues. You can't legislate the morality of providing health care for those who need it. But you can legislatively attack the vested self-interests that are interested in ensuring their their own wealth. If you think that I am wrong, then you should look at the the largest pay raise package ever known being given to the bank employees of the banks we had taxpayers just had to bail out. I don't think that the current health care bills will handle healthcare any better than the committees of Congress handled the bank bail outs.
Patients don't usually know how to do the research and consequently, they react to physician's recommendations or their own "research." Physicians are not evil; they are just sometimes not current on the research in their own field. For instance, a recent study demonstrated that outcomes for the expensive process of inserting a stent to keep arteries open that were previously blocked were not statistically significantly different than the use of much less costly medications for many patients.
Could it really be that the $50,000 back surgery was really elective unnecessary? Were all of the other possibilities not valid based on a careful evaluation? Recent medical literature indicates that many procedures are not based on results-based studies and that less costly procedures were equally effective or even more effective. Back surgeries were among the procedures that were included in these studies.
I agree with your concerns about the Obama helath care issues--HOWEVER, Congressman Wilson behaved like a grade school brat with his outburst. He may or may not be correct about Obama's personal veracity but Wilson's behavior disrespected the Office of the President. There are other and better ways to get Wilson's message without the collateral damage.
Look at the recent history of other governmental efforts. Any casual student of history will observe that Social Security is headed toward bankruptcy and actual Medicare assistance is shrinking while costs are going up. Those hoping for relief find their life-end savings being sucked into the black hole of the presciption co-pay "donut hole." To fix healthcare means that the exhorbitant and irrational pricing of prescriptions by the pharmaceutical industry needs to be directly limited. The public must recognize that the corporate purpose of health insurance is for the insurers to make money not give you healthcare. The original Blue Cross program was designed to assure that hospitals got paid, not that people got healthcare. Hospitals today need to be held accountable for costs, especially for errors and unnecessary procedures they perform. There is waste in Medicare for certain, but that is the result of the providers and institutions that prescribe unneeded procedures and medications not the patients. Much of what many physicians know about what they prescribe comes from drug company salespeople and not results-based studies, and that has to end if costs are going to controlled.
After studying the Overcash letter for several days, I have made a break-through in understanding it because I have reread the DaVinci Code novel. Overcash has brilliantly uncovered the identity of the secret members of an evil cabal--the Post Office, County Commissioners, Walmart, and YANKEES! The evilest of this group is, of course, the evil Yankees. This secret evil group funds its evil intents from the double-taxing that the Commisioners foist on us and the charges hidden in the prices of stamp. Walmart prepares styrofoam containers--Heaven, protect us!-- that the Post Office delivers to us. Of course, the whole scheme has been devised by Yankees, who are evil geniuses. The styrofoam is an attack on the virility of Southern males who will be contaminated by the poisons in the styrofoam. Thank you, Mr. Overcash. Without your insight this plot would have gone undiscovered.
I have very mixed feelings about the torture issue because I am a veteran (Viet Nam era) and spent the bulk of my working life trying to help veterans. I spent years with my contemporaries as they tried to regain their life after their service in Southeast Asia earned them only hatred, derision, charges of being murderers by their society. I spent many days with a survivor of the Bataan Death March who relived his ordeal with me. So I am torn between the feeelings of revulsion and unmitigated anger when I see radical extremists beheading innocent people in order to maximize publicity, and filled with the same feelings when I learn of the torture of prisoners in Gitmo. In the end, I am left with only the knowledge that evil people do evil things and evil must always be opposed. Like Sen. John McCain, I despise those who corrupt the best of our humanity by following their dark side. Evil must always be opposed no matter what uniform it wears or what religious justification is offered to excuse it. If the extremists earn the world's condemnation for the practice of torture, then all who practice torture are equally worthy of condemnation.
Duh?! Do you mean we actually should follow the law for everybody, without regard to perceived "political correctness or the size of their voting bloc? You had better be careful, because suggesting that we are "one nation" and that we are a "nation of laws" that apply equally to all could get you labeled as a "right wing radical."
The Post refers to a "Well-Studied Decision," but offers no information about what was really studied and presents no data that might have been used by the Community College Board. People do not typically do things that they know will not turn out well, rather the knowledge of certain negative outcomes discourages them. Expected favorable outcomes encourage an undertaking. The Post, by supporting the miguided Community College decision, does not seem to understand the idea that illegal immigrants are expecting that it will be to their advantage and their children's advantage to flaunt the immigration laws. Even if they eventually are deported they will have had the advantage of many social that they would not get otherwise. Making services availble to illegal immmigrants exacerbates the problem and does not to help fix it.
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Medley