Wow.... Elmer Gantry. Incredible movie that not only stands the test of time, but demands you treat the main character as a human with real problems. I cannot say enough about how great the acting was by Burt Lancaster and Arthur Kennedy was, it is now in my top 10 movies of all time.
I have thought a long time over the question " Is Health Care a basic human right." My answer has become an unenthusiastic yes. I will tell you how i came to this conclusion after many months of questioning, but the tipping point of this all is that in no other industrialized country are people declaring bankruptcy from medical bills other than us. How many did we have last year alone.... over 70,000 people said i dont have enough money to either pay for insurance to cover myself or i do not have enough money to pay for an operation or visit to keep me healthy.
Can we create a system that not only covers more people but also reduce the cost for us all? If we can how would either side say no to it? This is my plan....
The first part of the problem is the financial quagmire we are stuck in that is a product of our current and last administration. How will we pay for this? The only answers we are given at the moment are increasing taxes on the top wage earners or making insurance mandatory for all. With one we are increasing taxes on an already highly taxed group and the other is considered unconstitutional by some for taking a choice away from a citizen. What i propose is something altogether different, we could keep our choice of health care insurance or not as well as afford to not increase our taxes on the higher earning americans. We keep the health care industry a for profit but make the health insurance industry non profit. The part of the equation that we want to keep on the leading edge of innovation and technology stays motivated by being private for profit entities and give us actual tangible benefits of the care itself, but the insurance companies whose motivation should be approving claims not finding new ways to deny them would become non profits. We are the only country in the world where insurance companies profit off basic health care.
The immediate positive would be taking 20% of every dollar we spend on health insurance would go from marketing, paperwork and claims adjusting and decreasing it to the average of 5% on every dollar. That would save Americans 300 billion a year right off the bat on health insurance costs which could be used for not only covering anyone without coverage(because of pre existing conditions or not enough money) but decrease the cost of health insurance for everyone. How is it that other countries are running such efficient models of health care which is a giant part of our budget and we are not? Germany, Canada, Taiwan, Japan, and the Netherlands all run with not only less overhead to lower costs but also save money by not having an entire division of their insurance companies dedicated to denying claims.
Americans have a habit of taking constructive criticism personally, on a national and individual level. Hearing that we are not the leader in anything stirs up passion and pride in a country that we love which is a great feeling. We can take this as a challenge to better ourselves and our nation or let our passion and pride take us down a road that is filled with the status quo. We are going to have to pay for anyone that goes into the hospital for care if they have insurance or not, so why not let us create a system that is the most cost effective and benefit as a country instead of going the way of the automobile and see other countries leave us in the dust.
1 comment:
That's a great solution, but I have a better one. Why don't we make our streets walkable? Perhaps the reason other countries have healthier people isn't because of insurance or innovations but rather because they walk three blocks to the store instead of taking the Land Rover.
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