Health Care: The Ticking Time Bomb

All I know is that I don't have any, I cannot get it, and I'm frustrated by it. The US healthcare system is broken. It needs to be fixed. I don't know who's plan is going to work. I just wish that people would stop fighting about it and do something. Have you ever noticed that the ones who yammer about this the most have health insurance?

Fuzzy

I vote for single payer health Insurance--why should insurance corporations make great profits on our health care ?
It needs to be non profit. We spend twice as much per individual as other developed countries and get less and have so many people uninsured. We're paying ,in our premium's, for the uninsured and we,re paying for duplicate admin. cost for each and every insurance company AND we're paying for profits, for every bonus and all perks enjoyed by insurance executives. Health care should be available to every U.S. citizen and should never, never be for profit. I don't know why we've let it go on this long. Our elected representatives need to take the ins companies out of their pockets.

The reason for the "yammering" is that we are already paying our own way. We don't want to pay yours as well. A novel approach to becoming insured would be to, a) buy insurance, or b) secure a job that offers it as a fringe benefit. Remember that of the alleged 47 million uninsured, 25% are here illegally, and a significant number of the others choose not to spend money on health insurance. The majority of Americans are insured. Thankfully, they are beginning to wake up and ask questions about the costs of this whole proposed mess.

Yes I support a public option. Too many people are denied health care because of pre-existing conditions. We now have an unregulated health insurance industry that increases premiums at their whim. Health care premiums have risen four times faster than wages. With the current state of our economy and unemployment nationwide at 9.5 percent soon to reach double digits more people will be losing their health insurance. This does not include our aging baby boomers. Yes health care in our country must be addressed not years down the road but NOW. No plan will be perfect but what we have now is not working. Those of us going into the medical field or presently in the medical field, doctors and nurses should remember why we are in this honorable profession, to help and care for others. This is why we should stand and make our voices heard for health care for all not just the privilaged.

The senators that are against a public health care plan use the same old excuse that a government run health care plan will not work yet they are on a government run health care plan paid by our taxes.

Actually K98, I have tried buying health insurance. I've walked into several of my local insurance companies to do so just like I would do if I were buying car insurance. They are very interested until they learn about my pre-existing conditions that I was born with. Than it's either an "I'm sorry but I cannot help you" or priced at such an outrageous amount that no one in my income bracket or the one above me can afford it. Sure I could stop working and go back on disability however I'd rather be a taxpayer.
I pay quite a few taxes for areas that I don't benefit from. Public schools for one. I don't have childern. I also don't use the city water or sewer system but part of my property taxes go to pay for that. Then there's the 1% optional sales tax to build a new events center that I'll most likely not step foot in. I will just mention briefly the tax that I pay to support my local hospital that I really don't use because their prices are so high that I cannot pay to even walk throught their doors. No I don't want to pay these taxes either <sigh>.

Fuzzy

I have been in the health care business for 20 years and I've seen some changes!! Especially physicians getting paid for doing absolutely nothing coming the hospital seeing pt for 5mins no assessment done no questions answered and charges being applied to who ever or what ever. A system is needed to be a monitor physicians. Most of them have way too many patients. If you don't know your patient by name or face and you are the primary physician you have too many. Patients stay in hospitals so physicians can have office hours and then discharge in the evening. Who pay for this? You cannot provide excellent care when you do not listen to the patient your just worried about the next one you have to see. The people that have no families OMG.

Thank heavens that President Obama is doing something about it. There has been a committee of doctors in Washington working on guidelines for it, for several years (read via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to to find out about them.

quote-of-the-day-request@mccanne.org

Lamazeteacher, I have been reading your contributions to this forum. I want to commend you on your fair and intelligent contribution on this important subject.

"You cannot provide excellent care when you do not listen to the patient you're just worried about the next one you have to see" partial Quote from Buzzy's post (apologies for compulsive responder's spelling correction to post)


Buzzy: I've been in the nursing profession for 50 years, and let me tell you I've seen changes, in attitude, goals, and reliability of doctors. The latest ones scare me to death (literally). Many of them think they're going to be monitored, paid/hour, etc. through government paid health care! Other medical practitioners only will make decisions regarding guidelines for appropriate practise, with Universal Healthcare.

Doctors have shortened their office hours, send their patients to EDs if they haven't gotten appointments and become ill (at great public expense), and recklessly neglect to treat their own patients for dire results they've received, but not read, in lab tests they ordered!

"Hospitalists" (who are Family Practise physicians with no formal preparation for that role they simply don't want the responsibility of managing their own practises), take care of patients admitted to hospital. Without paying attention
to a patient's list of medications to ensure continuity of care, they take poor histories and do worse assessments (I do more probing and thorough ones). Diagnostic tests suggested by patients' specialist physicians are ignored until it's too late to do them (in my case, a nuclear bleeding scan), which wastes time and money, not to mention lives!

The above is all supposed to be in the interest of sparing community physicians' time. Hospitalists discharge patients in a timely manner, so insurance companies don't have to pay that extra day, yet don't place their summaries in charts appropriately. When they do, it's strictly for CYA.

CHANGE IS ESSENTIAL, NOW!!!