Some thoughts on Health-Care reform

I’ve been thinking and listening a lot to the healthcare debate lately so I thought I’d share some thoughts on the issue from my brother who I thought was very right-wing (well, his sons are! . I think he said it better than I could).

——————————————————————————————————-
I suspect you and I are probably not far apart in the health care debate in spite of your liberalism and my conservatism. I don’t think this issue fits at all comfortably in the capitalism vs. socialism worldview. I kind of feel like I’d like to write a full essay (or treatise or something) on this issue when I have time. But I want to at least respond on a few key issues. I’ve been hearing a lot of the arguments and frankly, a lot of the conservative arguments I’ve heard don’t hold water.

I’ve thought for a number of years that the insurance industry is thoroughly and totally corrupt – and not just health insurance. A lot of it hits me personally, too, because I couldn’t even consider the possibility of doing contract work or going into business for myself full-time because I couldn’t afford the health care. That is a big disincentive for entrepreneurialism. I think our current system (if you can even call it a system) is really screwed up.

So here’s a few issues.

Pre-existing conditions
The conservative argument that covering pre-existing conditions is like buying house insurance while your house is burning down is full of holes. To make that argument honest, you would have to have your existing house insurance cancelled while your house is burning down (or when the forest fire is coming over the hill). Most people trying to cover pre-existing conditions are just trying to replace insurance they’re no longer eligible for because we treat losing your job – and therefore your insurance – as though you’ve never been insured before.

Socialized medicine
Mike Rosen points out the we are a mixed economy, not a capitalist economy. He says that reasonable people can argue on the balance between capitalism and socialism. For example we socialize education and we’ve generally agreed that that is a good thing. This is me talking now. I also accept that it’s acceptable to socialize some things and don’t care about the “Socialist” boogey man argument. Plus we already have a hodge podge of government and private insurance.

Healthy subsidizing the sick
“That’s not fair,” I’ve heard. Well anyone who has a problem with that has no clue in the world what insurance is. The entire purpose of insurance is to spread catastrophic costs among a large population so that if your number comes up, you can afford the thing you’re insuring for. We’re all entered into a health lottery upon conception. And one day we’ll each reap the grand prize of death when our body can no longer keep going. From day-to-day we have no idea what the lottery has in store – a paper cut or quadriplegia, a cold or cancer, etc. So a healthy 25-year-old should subsidize the chronically ill through insurance because he may fall off a mountain or get a diagnosis of M.S. tomorrow and be the one being subsidized.

The profit motive
There are mainly two ways for a business to increase profits: increase revenue more than the cost of increasing the revenue; or cut costs. The main cost for insurance companies is paying claims. They have become very adept at cutting costs – from pricing premiums down to the most granular level possible making insurance unaffordable for many individuals and small businesses – to finding ways to cancel the policies of those who need it most. That’s where I think the insurance companies have become the most corrupt. I have a real hard time seeing how the profit motive benefits me as the payee of claims. Then you get the fact that usually one party makes the decision on what insurance to purchase and pay part of the premiums (the employer) and another party pays the rest of the premiums and gets the claims benefits (the employee). So the whole normal capitalist scenario (like the TV purchase) just doesn’t fit with insurance. Insurance companies have a high incentive to pay as little as possible in claims. Employers have a high incentive to pay the lowest premiums they can.

Universal coverage
We’re already haphazardly covering the general population. But we’re doing it in the most medically ineffective and cost ineffective way we possibly can. We cover outrageously expensive ER visits for the indigent instead of the much cheaper care that could prevent many ER visits. (Oh BTW I just discovered this summer that I don’t believe in any kind of preventative care or maintenance. But that’s only because I discovered that preventative is not a word. The word in preventive.) So what is so bad about universal coverage? When I went to work for Citigroup, I would have had the same access to insurance at the same cost if I had a totally healthy family as I would if I had made a practice of adopting children with extreme medical needs and had 10 such children with medical bills totaling in the hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. So why can’t we give the general population the same benefit? Citigroup can spread the risk over a large population. Well in the whole U.S., we have a much larger population to spread the risk over.

Cost of universal coverage
Can it really even be more expensive than our current “system” to cover everyone? Apparently a lot of countries have figured out how to cover everyone – and many apparently do it well – at much less per person than it costs in the U.S. I just read that an MRI scan costs about $1,500 in the U.S. and about $98 in Japan – and the $98 still allows for profit. And how about the armies of insurance bureaucrats trying to find ways to deny claims and cancel policies? How about the myriad variations of forms that medical providers have to wade through? What about the contract negotiations which myriads of insurance companies? And there’s the costs you mentioned – lobbying, adverstising, etc. And to bring TV purchases back into the picture, what about the cost of a TV (or any other retail item)? What I mean by that is this. The TV retailer takes credit cards. Built into the fees the merchants pay the credit card companies (and included in the cost of the TV) is the cost of bankruptcies. If roughly half the bankruptcies (give or take 10% I think) are due to medical expenses, I’m sure many come from people who transferred their medical bills to credit cards. Of course there’s the more direct medical cost of bankruptcies where the providers never get paid and the cost of passed onto the rest of us.

Me and you and our family and everyone else
I’m doing OK as far as paying medical bills right now, though they have been pretty expensive. But I’m just a job loss and a major illness away from medical bankruptcy. So are we all – including those who like their current insurance. Also, most of us have a very small choice in the doctors we can go to.

What now?
Whatever we do, I think some of the things that are wrong are: tying insurance so closely to employment that a job loss can mean medical cost devastation; denying coverage to anyone due to their current health condition; making the sick pay more than the healthy; people being unable to get medical care because they’re too poor; going bankrupt due to medical costs. We should be studying what the other industrialized countries have done and learn from their successes and failures. Some have universal coverage with private insurance. None have the restrictions on which practitioners they can go to that we have.

What if the taxes were raised in the amount that people are now paying for health insurance? Then the money that our employers and we pay for that insurance went into a government insurance fund. Then our salaries are reduced by the amount we no longer pay in premiums. That would be a wash for us and our employers. With the things I mentioned earlier, I suspect that the extra costs to cover everyone may be more than offset by getting rid of the things we do to make our health care so much more expensive than the rest of the world – which we’re all paying for indirectly anyway.

I don’t know what the government to private balance should be; but I do know that any private players should be required to abide by the rules that don’t allow the things that I mentioned in the last paragraph that are wrong. I need to know more about what’s already been tried in countries that have private insurance like Germany and Japan and those that don’t like Canada and Taiwan. We should be able to go to any doctor, too. Also forms should be standardized for all.

This is the first time I’ve really consolidated my thoughts on this so you’re the first to hear it. So I don’t think we’re too far off from each other.

OMGess, I’m Happy!

Dancing in the streets! Bouncing off the walls! Like a 13-year-old instead of a 31-year-old. Oh wait! I already admitted I’m 33, not 31. Gahhh! That doesn’t make any sense! Sometimes I feel like a 33-year-old and sometimes I feel like a 33-year-old!? Arrrgh!

Well, at least I don’t feel like a 333-year-old……..or a 3-year-old……………..hmmmmmmm…….although that one might not be so bad!

Work was good! I fixed 2 bugs in one day (even though it did take an 11-hour day!)!!

My bff is coming to live with me! It’s about time! We’ve only been talking about it for 10 years!!

Well, bouncing off the walls again …….. and zipping towards the sky and …….. dancing among the clouds! *ecstasy*!!!

Getting the Hang of it!?

At last, tonight I finally managed to solve a very difficult bug in our software that required extensive knowledge of the overall structure of the code. I think it marks a turning point where I’m finally beginning to understand the code well enough to start to become productive. I AM HAPPY! I AM ALSO :’)

The End Of An Era

Senator Edward Kennedy has died! The last of the Kennedy dynasty. The last of the truly compassionate rich. What do we have left? The selfish rich? The greedy rich? The Rush Limbaugh monsters who glorify greed and selfishness? We shall see America. We shall see!

I Gave Away My Car!

I had a car, that I’ve had for something like 13 years. It was one of my first cars. I only use it very occasionally these days. In fact, I haven’t used it in about a year. It’s pretty beat up as far as looks are concerned but I kept it very well maintained so it’s probably worth about $4,000 or $5,000 dollars. But I’ve been more and more concerned about how the rich are taking advantage of the poor in our country. I’m certainly not rich, but I make enough money to be comfortable. So I decided to put my money where my mouth is and gave my car to a woman who is single, has 3 kids and another on the way and can’t afford much of anything. I still have two cars, so it’s no huge sacrifice, but 4 or 5 thousand dollars is not pocket change either! Am I feeling proud of my generosity? Of course! Why not? At least I’m not feeling proud of hurting other people!

How many of you are willing to put your money where your mouth is? Are you willing to watch people die on Emergency Room floors or are you willing to make some small sacrifices to insure that our country isn’t the only industrialized nation in the world that doesn’t provide health care to all of it’s citizens?

The rich have conquered the United States

I don’t really have time to post anything significant because I’m ridiculously busy at work because our company has laid off too many people because of the economy which is the fault of the rich scum who have conquered the United States! Wake up American Serfs!

Pakistan’s role in the world

I sent a picture to an online friend who is from Pakistan as part of a contest she’s holding. This is basically the picture but in the one I sent, the color/s were wrong and the flags were positioned a little too high (I was on a deadline and very busy at work ) The link to her blog is at: http://momalmushtaq.wordpress.com/

I’ve never really done much art before but the world’s attention is focused on Pakistan right now because they will most likely play a very important part in the world’s politics in the next decade or more. The message I was trying to give is that Pakistan is at the center of the world and they, as well as the world have a choice to make between war and peace. The shaking hands with the United States and Pakistan flags express my hope that the US and Pakistan will come together in friendship to make a choice for peace. Although I see that it could be mis-interpreted as meaning that the US will cause war. I hope people don’t interpret it that way because it’s certainly not what I intended. Well, anyway, here it is.

Will Pakistan and the world come together in peace or war?

Why are sleeping children so adorable?

This is probably a little off topic but I did say that this blog would be about random thoughts I have. The thing that actually prompted it was a kitten sleeping, not a child, but why do sleeping children (or kittens) tug so strongly at our heart strings?

There is an emotion that it brings out, one that I think men don’t usually feel anywhere nearly as strongly, or as often, as women, that doesn’t have a word in our language. Perhaps it doesn’t have a word in any language. It’s pleasure. It’s a sense of protectiveness and gentleness. It’s that feeling that makes you say “Awwwww, it/he/she is soooo adorable!” and want so badly to pick up that baby and cuddle it or pet that tiny little kitten. It’s a parental instinct, for sure but we don’t have a specific name for the feeling itself.

We have names for anger, love, joy, sorrow, etc. but not for that feeling. Perhaps adoration would come the closest but adoration can also apply to a lover or a deity. To a “superior” rather than an “inferior”.

But …………

What if our concept of the divine was the same feeling? Not so much a feeling of “superiority” or “inferiority” but simply a feeling of adoration and protectiveness. What if God is pure love, so gentle that He (or She) needs US to protect Him (Her)? Essentially, a child. How would that change the way we relate to each other and to the world?

You too are prejudiced.

Today I’m going to talk about a concrete example of where our need to believe what we want to believe leads us astray. This post is about prejudice …. not the overt, conscious, obvious kind but the subtle, subconscious kind that most of us don’t even recognize in ourselves. We try to justify our prejudices by believing that they’re based in reality, but even if prejudice has a basis in reality, it’s still wrong because prejudice is the application of a generalization about a group, to an individual. Even if there is some truth to the generalization, not every individual in the group fits the stereotype. Furthermore, the behaviors of the prejudiced towards the prejudicee perpetuate what is considered the “bad” behaviors of the group. It’s essentially a self fulfilling prophecy. Hate creates the thing that we hate.

Once again, you must ask yourself, why is my dislike of such and such a behavior so important to me. It’s important because you BELIEVE that it’s important and, remember what I said? You believe what you want to believe. Your belief has a tendency to create reality. I’m not saying that in the same sense that some of the New Agers say it; in some kind of mystical, supernatural or religious sense. It’s just a basic fact of life. If you dislike somebody, you will tend to behave in ways that provoke the very behavior you dislike.

Let me present an example. I know somebody who works as a tech support person for a small company. He constantly gets calls from people who barely speak english. They get enough of these calls that the company laid off one of his co-workers and hired somebody who speaks Spanish fluently. This causes fear for his own job. Fear is really at the root of most if not all prejudice. Once fear has taken hold, he WANTS to believe that English should be the official language of the United States and that we shouldn’t accommodate the language of the “others”.

Because he wants to believe this, all of his thoughts are subconsciously focused on proving his belief to himself. He sees that the new worker is higher paid because of his bilingual abilities and believes that it costs the company more money. He DOESN’T see that having a bilingual worker brings more customers to the company and thus increases their profits. He believes that “they” are taking over “our” country and it scares him and he wants to stop it.

So, when a Spanish speaking woman calls in, he is rude, condescending and even nasty. Of course he’s professional and tries to hide it, but she can hear it as he transfers the call to his bilingual co-worker with a bite in his voice. And his co-worker can hear it too. Soon, his manager gets enough complaints about him that he decides to lay him off and reasons that, since he has to lay him off anyway, why not hire another bilingual person. But all my friend sees is that he was laid off in order to hire one of “them” and it reinforces his fear that “they” are taking over our country. What’s more, the spanish speaking woman who called in, noticed his rudeness, and similar thought processes cause her to conclude that “White” people are jerks.

This may affect her behavior towards other “White” people in the future or even affect her entire psyche which is already under tremendous stress because of her difficulties in adapting to an unfamiliar culture.

It takes courage to face your own prejudices but the only way you can overcome it is to be aware of it and fight it every day of your life.

The Truth Requires Great Courage!

Do you have courage?

Because The Truth requires you to have great courage!  You must pursue it relentlessly and it will take time.  The Truth will only reveal itself gradually and carefully for she is a gentle spirit.

Have the courage to pursue the truth!