The Amazing Maze of US Health Care

By SANDEEP JAUHAR, M.D.  March 29, 2010

“I’m tired of paying for everyone else’s stupidity,” is a comment I read on the Internet last week after the health care bill was passed. It summed up the views of many Americans worried about shelling out higher premiums and taxes to cover the uninsured. Why should we pick up the tab when so much disease in our country stems from unhealthy behavior like smoking and overeating?

In fact, the majority of Americans say it is fair to ask people with unhealthy lifestyles to pay more for health insurance. We believe in the concept of personal responsibility. You hear it in doctors’ lounges and in coffee shops, among the white collar and blue collar alike. Even President Obama has said, “We’ve got to have the American people doing something about their own care.”

But personal responsibility is a complex notion, especially when it comes to health. Individual choices always take place within a broader, messy context. When people advocate the need for personal accountability, they presuppose more control over health and sickness than really exists.

News Analysis – With or Without Health Reform, We Pay for Others’ Bad Habits – NYTimes.com

Some reflections on health care reform, plumbing and plumbers.

There when you need it

First

A friend recently sent me this letter that appeared in the Atlantic City Press earlier this month.

Years ago, I became a member of Local Union 121 Atlantic City Plumbers and Pipefitters Union. At that time, the union membership was devising a health care plan for the membership and their families.

It is absolutely amazing. A bunch of plumbers get together and draw up a health care plan. Now get this: At the regular union meeting, they elect a plumber from the group to administer the health care plan.

The best part of this story is that the health care plan works. I owe my healthy life to my Union Health & Welfare Fund. I am 83 years old and I swim a quarter of a mile every morning at the Crest Haven Swimming Pool. My father was a plumber and he passed away at age 52. He did not have a health care plan and could not afford the medical expenses. The hospital sent him home to die.

To establish a good health care plan, we have to eliminate all of the phony politicians and send a bunch of union plumbers to Washington to get the job done. Single payer health care – everybody in, nobody out.

RICHARD NEILL

Cape May Court House

As someone whose experience with health care was shaped by my own participation in the benefit funds of UA Local 520 in Harrisburg, PA I understand full well what Brother Neill is referring to.

The multi-employer model that he knows is a model for a national health care system.  Employers pay while people are working to provide benefits during transitional periods of employment. Read the rest of this entry »

AP / Lauren Victoria Burke

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., holds a large gavel as she crosses Independence Avenue en route to the Capitol before Sunday’s House vote on health care reform. Immediately right of Pelosi is Rep. David Obey and immediately left, Rep. John Lewis. Next to Lewis is House Democratic Majority Leader Steny Hoyer.

By Bill Boyarsky Mar 24, 2010

Now that President Barack Obama has signed health reform into law, insurance industry lobbyists will turn their attention to trying to cripple it. This will be done under the pretense of improving the reform proposal—or, as they say in the lobbying business, loving the law to death.

The passage of health reform was a great event. The Republicans who talk about repeal are misreading the public. At the moment, public opinion polling is mixed, but two days after passage, a USA Today/Gallup Poll reported that 49 percent of those surveyed found the measure was “a good thing.” A total of 40 percent said it was bad.

And support will increase as the reform law begins to kick in later this year. Consider these provisions going into effect in 2010:

Bill Boyarsky: A Healthy Start … With Loopholes – Bill Boyarsky’s Columns – Truthdig

TPM, like the MSM, looks at the health care vote as – well as another vote.

This space asks the question – do they truly represent the interests of the residents in their districts.

Earlier I looked at a list of 85 Democrats who had not committed to supporting their party’s health care reform proposal.

Two -thirds represent districts with a health status index lower than their own states average and over half were below the national average.

So when the vote came on Sunday, did the wavering Democrats representing sicker districts vote for health.

Not exactly.

Three quarters – 75% -of the final 34 Democrats who voted NO on health care reform represent districts with a health status index below the national average and the same percentage represent districts with a health status index below their state’s average.  When you combine the two, fully 85% of the Democrats voting no on health care reform are representing constituents with an average health status index below either their state or national average.

You have to wonder who are the Sickos.

The health status index is taken from the book, Measure of America, which uses a methodology developed in the United Nations to compare the well being of all Americans.

Numbers worse than state averages are shaded

By E.J. Dionne

Here is the ultimate paradox of the Great Health Care Showdown: Congress will divide along partisan lines to pass a Republican version of health care reform, and Republicans will vote against it.

Yes, Democrats have rallied behind a bill that Republicans — or at least large numbers of them — should love. It is built on a series of principles that Republicans espoused for years.

PostPartisan – Why Democrats are fighting for a Republican health plan