Single Payer Bills in Congress: First Impressions

great place to ask questions and get them answered by a fellow commenter.

tejanarusa (8) — wish this wasn’t all so personal, you know? but it does cover the spectrum of our lives. Imagine what this place would be like without the three ladies of the lake at the top of their game because they had no insurance or the ability to pay for health care; it touches us all in some way personally. You probably were going to share something just as personal in your observation, too; we’re none of us untouched, would be the biggest return on our public investment to improve our health care system.

There are a couple of different petitions out there on this that I’ve signed in the last few weeks. One supports single-payer. The other one, which is sponsored by Howard Dean, asks that the government part of the Administration’s favored health care plan not be removed.

While I prefer single-payer as a solution, I think the best fallback position is having the option of being in a government-funded health insurance system that uses its costs as a basis for determining its price. Effectively, that provides some of the benefit of single-payer without having to shoulder the insurance companies out of the picture. The reason I mention how the price should be calculated is that I’m sure there will be an attempt to make the price similar to the price of commercial health insurance, whether it needs to be or not.

Anyway, if you haven’t signed either petition, please sign at least the one you think best, if not both.

And like Jane, and Marcy; imagine if they couldn’t afford the health care they needed to fight cancer.

Or my own family, my spouse having been treated for diabetes for 10-plus years and two oral surgeries at $15K each for pre-cancerous cell removals.

Or even my kids, both of them C-section deliveries. Our state’s Blue Cross/Blue Shield program just lowered the amount it will pay for C-sections; new mothers can expect a bill of more than $3K on the average after BCBS pays its share.

And end-of-life care, which has nearly bankrupted my formerly wealthy father-in-law.

Nikki’s story is like looking in the mirror; almost any one of us could have been in her shoes, and without a drastic change soon, any one of us might yet be.

To have to go through that without the aid of medications was hell. Once we found the ones that worked with my system, life became much more manageable, to the point that I don’t notice much of a difference so long as I get adequate rest and don’t catch a cold or other ick (the immune system issues carry over such that you can’t fight stuff off well — go figure, with a kid in kindergarten, it’s not so easy to avoid).

To watch the part of the show about Nikki and know what she went through — and know how much more manageable it ought to have been for her — solely because she couldn’t get preventative maintenance care? Unbelievably painful to watch for me.

And without Mr. ReddHedd’s insurance from work? That could be me. Just as easily.

I would have figured 20K was the number of infants we lose due to an insufficiency of prenatal health care alone; we lose a couple thousand babies to SIDS each year, and a considerable percentage of those were born to mothers who did not have adequate prenatal care. If we add other major causes of neonatal death — congenital anomalies (5,552), short gestation (4,714), maternal pregnancy complications (1,776) and placenta/cord/membrane problems (1,110) — and look at the outcomes against the availability of health care, I think the infant mortality rate alone is under-represented in National Academy’s figures.

Perhaps they were looking at situations where health care was completely unavailable versus an insufficiency or inadequacy of care, not certain. This is just neonatal mortality (under 1 year of age) which I’m looking at; the numbers are off the map when it comes to the number of adult deaths each year due to heart disease and cancer. In the age group 65 and up there are 910,000-plus deaths each year due to these two causes alone; I’m finding it hard to believe that 10K or less of these deaths were due to lack of health care.

Or perhaps the case of Nikki White in the Frontline documentary really explains it best, that the numbers are fuzzy because at some point there is health care of last resort, but by then patients are on death’s door step. They die covered by Medicaid and therefore don’t get counted as a casualty without health care.

So damned sad; there’s no excuse for this from a country like ours.

Senator Bernie Sanders Introduces Single-Payer Healthcare Reform Bill S.703

and BargainCountertenor is going to analyze for us the three single player bills that are now in play!

it’s called single payer.

we don’t have $400 billion dollars a year to keep throwing down the rat hole of insurance companies.

no more bailouts. wasn’t AIG enough? TARP? geithner’s latest plan?