First of all, I am one of those people who work a full time job that does not offer insurance, and who cannot afford to pay for a decent insurance plan – the insurance I have, therefore, is of a catastrophic nature. You know the sort, only good for a very expensive emergency, with a high deductible that would put me in debt if I ever actually had to pay it. So I don’t go to the doctor. Even when I spent three months coughing my lungs up with chronic bronchitis…I didn’t go to the doctor.
So yes, I have a personal stake in this, as does every single other American. I feel strongly about this issue. I am biased. I’ll admit that, and with good reason.
I want affordable healthcare that won’t put me in the poorhouse. Is that really too much to ask?
Because you see, healthcare for the poor isn’t what’s at issue here. We already have that, the free tax-payer funded healthcare for people who are below the poverty line either through bad luck, disability, or just decide that they don’t want to work out of laziness and are content to live off of welfare.
And the wealthy, and people who have good healthcare benefits through their employer don’t have to worry either. It’s the people who are in the middle who are SOL. There’s people like me, who work for small private firms that can’t afford to give health insurance benefits to their employees (we only have two full-time employees here other than the owner). There are the people who are self-employed and have to pay ridiculously high premiums because they don’t qualify for group health insurance.
People who work hard, pay their taxes, support their families – and who can lose everything the moment they or someone dependent on them gets sick, because they don’t have insurance or have insufficient insurance.
I don’t ask for free healthcare, all I want is good insurance with a premium that I can afford to pay. I think that if you asked most people in the same situation, they would say the same. If the only way to guarantee that insurance companies will actually control costs instead of milking us for every penny they can get is to include a public option, then bring it on!
As the significant-other of a pharmacist, and neice of the woman in charge of health services for a neighboring county, I also hear a great deal about how inefficient the healthcare system in general is, how much money is spent that doesn’t have to be spent because of poor practices, inefficient communication between healthcare professionals, and just general incompetence.
I hear how drug companies now spend more on direct-to-consumer advertising than on proper research and development, repatenting and repackaging the same drugs over and over again once a generic is available so that they can keep charging ridiculous prices for them. I hear how due to that advertising, instead of doctors prescribing the best medications to treat their patients, they’re getting patients coming in requesting medications that they may not even need – and getting prescriptions for them.
So what I see with the “Healthcare Reform” is a twofold solution, something that we’ve needed for a long time. The prospect of affordable healthcare is only a small part of it. The whole system needs to be made more efficient. There needs to be better communication between healthcare professionals, better sharing of patient records so that the same proceedures don’t have to be repeated when you move from a primary care physician to a specialist.
Primary care, in general, with prevention and maintenance programs included with it, needs to be more readily available and covered, so that people don’t avoid going to the doctor until an illness gets so bad that only the most drastic (and expensive) measures can treat it.
The abuses of the system need to be cut out – the drug-seekers who go to multiple doctors to get the same prescriptions to support their addiction (or worse, to sell). The doctors who order unnecessary proceedures to fill their purses, and the insurance companies that force doctors to stay their hands rather than providing a necessary treatment.
Everyone’s afraid that we can’t afford to do this, but can we really afford not to?
Just a quick reminder before I get to some real posts… June is National Adopt a Shelter Cat Month in the US. Any of you who read this blog regularly know that while I love all animals, cats, in particular, hold a cherished place in my heart.
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