Democratic platform: healthcare

Well, I certainly hope they do! As you say, mamajuana, the system IS broke and certainly needs fixing.

Maybe this time people will be ready to listen and demand something be done. That would mean not allowing the insurance companies to drown out other arguments as they succeeded in doing 10 years ago...

Don't count on it. This administration is most responsive to those who make nice contributions to it. To all else they are deaf.

Meanwhile, my doctor told me today of a new cholesteral med. The dosage is 3 times a day, 2 tablets each. And expensive. He doesn't know anybody who takes it.

Didn't I read that the Iraqis had health care provided?

If the Iraqis did have health care provided, I'm sure one of the changes they'll be seeing is the end of the program. Can't have that in an American-directed democracy--it smacks of socialism!

I'm new to the American healthcare system (lived mostly overseas, and when I got back I avoided the system until lately) and it horrifies me. The doctors seem very competent but very one-track (Merck-track), unable (unwilling) to listen to patients carefully, skeptical of health approaches which vary from the party line. If I had the choice right now and were choosing a country in which to be old and needing increasing health care, it wouldn't be the US, not by a long shot. And I'm not even talking about the financial aspects of it. But then, most of the people I've met here are pill-poppers and buy into the system (literally and figuratively). I would like a system in which the patient decides what kind of health care he or she wants, and co-pays accordingly. Two years ago I almost died (they said, dramatically) in a serious regional pneumonia epidemic and it left me feeling like a noodle and with a chronic lung ailment. I left the hospital with bottles and respirators and all kinds of gear which I then mostly dumped and went on an exercise rehabilitation program (including pulmonary) which has made an enormous difference and which has kept me off expensive drugs for the most part. IT WORKED! I WORKED!! But I PAY for the program -- which is, of course, cheaper than medications and has no bad side effects. Does that make sense? Does it make sense that at the center where I do my exercises they have occasional occasional programs on heart disease and high blood pressure and stuff like that, programs arranged and delivered by doctors, in which the doctor bows ceremoniously at "healthy life stye" but then introduces drug reps to tell you about available pharmaceuticals?

I refuse to call what we have in this country a health care system, unless we clarify that we mean very healthy for the pharmaceutical industry and a scam for the rest of us.

Points well taken, Tartarin, and your experience speaks to some of the problems in our current health care system. As an employee of said system (but not an M.D. or clinician in any other way), I have the dubious advantage of having an inside view of some of this stuff. Fortunately, I work for an inner-city hospital that tries to do the right thing and, to some degree, succeeds.

But our national "system" is so dysfunctional that it's harder and harder to do so. Everyone is getting squeezed--and that includes the doctors. So I'm sure there is a lot of "take these pills and don't call me in the morning" going on. Until we have universal health care in this country, the system will be largely run by bean counters in the private sector.

And those who reject the idea of universal health care as some state-run boondoggle might be surprised at the extent to which the feds already do manage the "system"--and really badly.

Well, that's it, isn't it? Managed care systems were brought in to help provide more available health care to those who were robbed of it by their selfish, money-hungry physicians! With that system already a privatized one, what more could the HMOs do except manage costs and care so they could show increasing profits to shareholders and all? So there was a blatant disregard for health needs of the country as a whole, and an ever-increasing path towards greater privatization bringinging greater monetary rewards to those managing the system - which includes the pharmas and the insurance companies.

And this is where we are today. HMOs don't work. In order to show their profit, they shut down services, make medical decisions by businessmen, make doctors into interns. This is not a health care system; it is a business that is going south.

Putting aside such silly worries as the care of the sick, the preventative and curative steps needed for the children, the worry about elder care...I should think a properly oriented CEO minded group would worry about the actual business practise.

We need a system in place that will take care of more people as needed. We have some of the best medicines and techniques in the world - but sometimes the proper place for them is museums. They do very little good, and do not help the community at large. Sometimes less is more.

It's a broke-down plan, and what is needed is a courageous soul or two who will speak the truth. Because when you take a look at some of these "privatizations" ----what are they? With government steering and protction some of them limp along. But they don't do it alone. There's always a hand-out from big brother to help the private company. (Like Haliburton and Bechtel in Iraq...without the govenment handing them these no-bid jobs, oter private companies can come in and bid.)

One way to save any health care plan for the country is to put it on a basis where it is not being run for profit, The money that is paid into increasingly higher premiums with increasingly lower benefits could be a geneal tax, in return for which you get a service. That way, more people would derive some sort of care.

What a country. When its people have to go begging for some elemental health care, while being expected to cheer a budget that is required to pay for a war that wasn't declared, that is hazy, that benefits us in no way except to swallow whatever propaganda is put forth that day, which costs far more than taking care of the sick.

Very true. There is another side to this issue which I hesitate to raise, but which needs to be raised. And that's the demand on the part of the "healthcare consumer" that he get what he wants when he wants it -- one of the things which has made antibiotics ineffective. Or the latest, hottest allergy medication as picture on inserts in People magazine. Or those incredible imaging scans for slight earaches or just to satisfy the wish to know how one's organs are doing. It's like wanting a bigger and bigger TV screen -- why, you're nobody if you haven't been through every "state of the art" medical procedure. So the consumer is, as usual, the supportive bottom of the health pyramid, egged on by pharma marketing, indulged by harassed medicos, making it possible for the scam artists at the top to exist.

Put another way, tartarin, it's the classic push-pull ad ploy. Create the image, at over-priced cost for tired graphics, plaster all over all media. (Some of those advertised pills don't even give information on what they're supposed to be used for.) Then send the sales reps out with millions of samples to doctors who quite often don't have time for them anyway. (Around my way, a lot of doctors use the free samples for their patients who can't afford a lot of the meds - one of the known secrets.) In this way, hopefully a demand is created for these meds.

I like my doctor very much. He doesn't believe in any more meds than are necessary, sometimes none. He believes in time. And he takes time to discuss, to talk. I don't think he's such a rarity, I think a lot of patients feel harried because the paperwork demanded of the doctors by the HMOs sometimes takes more time than the care.

In this way, too, the system is broke. More attention is paid to the product than to the patient.

There ARE some good doctors out there, but they're good despite, not because of, the current "system."

As for how we allocate our scarce health care resources, you've both hit the nail on the head. There's a statitistic that I don't have at my fingertips right now regarding how the vast majority of money spent on an individual's health care is spent during the final months of his or her life: Old people hooked up to IVs in ICUs...

I'm not advocating euthenasia for any sick person over the age of 80, but the fact that we have horrible prenatal care in many parts of this country is a scandal. There needs to be some sort of rational oversight for all this...

I think euthenasia is a fine idea and deeply resent the intrusive laws which prevent helping people who want to die. That's a freedom I'd really fight for (and have been).

I also support the right to die, if that is a genuine desire. And being kept alive by tubes, and connected to a wall socket to barely maintain brain function seems a cruel and heartless way to practise medicine.

The urge to privatise in this country is a book I'd like to write someday. It's like a national characteristic. Not based on any feeling of humanity, but rather on the theme of who has the most gold controls the power, and you sure don't get that by sharing if you don't have to.

I've been accused of being a socialist, but I don't see why that's such a bad thing. Socialism can be tempered by some other beliefs, and then put together to form a just an equal society.

Which right now would only work if they were all Wasps and named Cheney or Rumsfeld or something.

Well, I'm off to have op-Eyes's chicken with the family, but I'll be back later.

A votre sante.

POPEYE'S CHICKEN??

Call EMS!

When are the Dems going to muzzle both the lawyers and the insurance companies?

How much more are the taxpayers going to be forced to pay for health insurance?

Re euthenasia: I mistyped a key word. What I meant to write is "I'm not advocating euthenasia for EVERY sick person over the age of 80..."

I certainly think people should have the right to request physician-assisted suicide, as they do in Oregon...

What's the relationship between killing off those over 80 years and good pre-natal care?

Kill off the cow,so you don't have milk?

The relationship is, if there are finite resources, then we have to decide where the money goes. Seems like a basic concept, applicable to most other financial situations, no?

IMO, there's a sliver of good news to be found in the debate Gephardt raised. I think it was said well by David Broder, in an op-ed piece in today's Washington Post:

Time and again New Hampshire's independent-minded voters have shown a preference for substance over slickness. In 2000, George Bush came riding in on a wave of endorsements and a great family name, only to see John McCain challenge him on taxes and on campaign finance and soundly defeat him. In that same year, I have a vivid recollection of Al Gore standing for three hours in a high school gym in Claremont, delaying his departure and a TV interview until the last question had been answered. That was the price he had to pay to turn back the challenge from the serious, almost scholarly Bill Bradley.

And, of course, in the last previous Democratic contest here, it was Paul Tsongas, with his position papers, who set the pace and forced Bill Clinton to go beyond the charm offensive and rush into print a campaign manifesto of his own, "Putting People First."

That is what Gephardt has done by laying out a detailed plan that would recapture the revenue from the Bush tax cuts and use it to subsidize employers, state and local governments and individuals so that virtually all Americans would have health insurance.

Much is debatable in the plan, but it is now certain that within weeks, every other Democratic hopeful will have to produce his own counterplan, and the pressure will rise on President Bush to address the lack of health insurance for 41 million Americans. A debate that has languished in Congress for nearly a decade will be joined -- in a place where the voters, thank goodness, take their responsibilities seriously.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57204-2003Apr29.html

I hope Broder is right, Snood. Given the glacial pace of Congress approaching something as basic as the Medicare drug plan, I'm not too optimistic. But if the Democratic candidates push for universal health care, as Gephardt has done, and if the public shows enthusiasm, who knows. Could be a miracle!

Too late - I ate that chcken, crispy skin and all. But we did have a salad. And then we played poker.

I hope Broder's right. If Gephardt's plan presentation can force other candidates out with plans, we might have the beginnings of something. It is almost incredible that we should be the only industrialized nation with such a poor record in pre-natal care, in infant mortality, in not only the non-provision of health care to citizens but the actual diminishment of it. I would go further. I would take away all Congressional privilege when it came to health care, and require them to be under the same conditions as the rest of the population. Never happen, of course; rank has its priveleges.

And if it weren't for medicare, how many more millions would be without any health insurance?

There is much the democratic hopefuls can make a stand about. But it takes some courage and determination. and I'm waiting to see who has it.