Anna~Anna
"Flintville Annie"
© 2006-2015
"An ethical health care system is designed to take care of patients. What could be more obvious?" *** By designing reform that primarily benefits insurers, the most productive sector of our society - middle income Americans - is going to be the hardest hit by the adverse consequences of this legislation. *** Since this is a forum on ethics, I have to conclude that our legislators, by failing to place the patient first, compromised ethics when they crafted this reform. *** Go here for more: http://www.pnhp.org/news/2009/october/the_ethics_of_health.php
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This from today:
ReplyDeleteNancy Pelosi starts clock on House health bill
By Patrick O’Connor and Chris Frates
Politico
October 29, 2009
(House Speaker Nancy Pelosi) backed down from a deal granting liberals a vote to establish single-payer government-run health care. She cut the deal with New York Rep. Anthony Weiner to break a last-minute logjam on the Energy and Commerce Committee. But, in the end, party leaders were concerned the final cost would be astronomical and the vote would fail to garner votes from even half the caucus.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1009/28884.html
Comment: By Don McCanne, MD
"What the… !?"
Dr. Don,
I ask the same question.
XOXO
Me
I do hope everyone understands what is meant by "middle income Americans". According to Washington those are the folks earning around $60K a year. I can't help but think in what world $60K is an average yearly income. In my world around $20K a year income is considered average. Average, but still very much struggling. I have an idea, since Washington can't seem to figure out what to do with the 46 million Americans who don't earn enough to pay for insurance, but make too much to qualify for Medicaid, let's enlarge the qualifications for Medicaid so that the 46 million Americans who don't have insurance will be covered. Then all the people who already have insurance who are complaining about having to contribute to someone else's insurance will REALLY have something to complain about. I honestly don't know what the problem is. It's like - How many Senators and Congressmen does it take to screw in a light bulb? One to hold the bulb while 200 all read conflicting instructions on how to screw it in. I'm becoming more convinced every day that we have a bunch of idiots running our country.
ReplyDeleteUGH
ReplyDeleteDr. McCanne is not one of those power hungry moguls Sweetie
ReplyDeleteI did the click for you, and here's the article
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Posted on October 28, 2009
The ethics of health care reform
“Making Sense of the Health Care Debate”
A round table discussion of health care reform
University of California at Irvine
The UCI Interdisciplinary Center for the Scientific Study of Ethics and Morality
October 27, 2009
Comments of Don McCanne, M.D. (from memory, edited and abridged):
I’ll be brief because I want to make only one very simple point: An ethical health care system is designed to take care of patients. What could be more obvious? If the health care system is doing its job in taking care of patients then the health care system itself is being taken care of. Special interests legitimately involved in health care delivery will do just fine.
Although this principle seems very obvious, it hasn’t been guiding the process in Washington, DC. Our politicians are designing a health care system that is taking care of the private insurance industry. Patient care is secondary, as it must conform to the private insurance model.
As Senator Joe Dunn just said, legislation is 10 percent principles and 90 percent politics. Congress is providing us with a political solution rather than a solution based on sound health policy science.
We were told that we would have health care reform that would cover everyone, and that costs would be controlled, making health care affordable for each of us. Yet when they insisted that reform be based on private insurance plans and that the budget be limited to $900 billion over the next ten years, they realized that at least 20 million people could not be insured under this proposal. Likely it will be many more, especially after four more years of health care inflation before the basics of this plan are even in place. And since there are no effective measures for controlling costs, health care will be even less affordable.
The limitations imposed have resulted in such bizarre policy proposals as granting waivers to individuals to exempt them from the fines that would be imposed for committing the criminal act of being uninsured.
A fundamental flaw of their proposal was to try to craft reform based on a package of benefits in a private insurance plan that has a premium assigned to it. That premium plus the out-of-pocket expenses must cover the average family health care costs of $16,771 (Milliman Medical Index). With a typical family income of perhaps $60,000, those costs now create a financial hardship for families, especially those at income levels where the subsidies phase out.
By designing reform that primarily benefits insurers, the most productive sector of our society - middle income Americans - is going to be the hardest hit by the adverse consequences of this legislation.
Since this is a forum on ethics, I have to conclude that our legislators, by failing to place the patient first, compromised ethics when they crafted this reform.
http://www.ethicscenter.uci.edu/
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The bill is fiscally sound, will not add one dime to the deficit as it expands coverage, implements key insurance reforms and promotes prevention and wellness across the health system.
The bill would cut the deficit by about $30 billion over the next 10 years.
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So you see, it was not written from Washington.