If one were to read the Constitution one would realize that the Constitution does not grant anyone freedoms, liberties, or rights. The Constitution only protects freedoms, liberties, and rights from transgressions on part of the government. A right is something that is inherent to the individual, comes from that individual, and is maintained by the individual. You are born with such rights like the right to speak freely, the only thing that can be done to that right is to have it infringed. No one can grant a right to another, only limit or impede the exercise of that right.
Healthcare is a human invention that does not exist in the natural environment. Only through the work of others and through the taking of resources from one party and giving to another does healthcare exist. You cannot force someone to give effort and resources to another and call that a right. In the absence of human intervention the individual would live their lives and succumb to the natural forces which would act upon their bodies.
Do I think we should provide preventative care and basic primary care? Sure. Do I think that we can? Maybe. Do I think that healthcare is a basic human right? Absolutely not.
Specializes in Oncology, Med/Surg, Hospice, Case Mgmt..
Back in 2005, I was working on an Oncology floor in an area hospital. One afternoon we admitted a 34 yr old mother of two elementary school aged children to our floor. Jennifer (not her real name) had been to a walk-in clinic earlier that day and the doctor there had called our Oncologist and sent Jennifer to the hospital.
Jennifer had been diagnosed with breast cancer in her 20's and had been treated at the time and the treatment worked. She had a strong family history of breast cancer, both her mother and aunt were survivors. When Jennifer was diagnosed, she and her husband had insurance through their jobs. Jennifer was supposed to go back to her Oncologist every 6 mos. or so after her treatment for follow up exams to make sure the cancer did not return. Jennifer's husband had graduated from college in the meantime and had a new job as a preacher for a small local church. They had no insurance after her cancer treatment and were not eligible for Medicaid. Because of Jennifer's medical history, they could not get any other insurance coverage. She did not go for the follow-ups.
Jennifer had gone to the walk in clinic that day because she had a cough that just wouldn't go away. She had avoided seeking any help before this because it was too expensive to pay out of pocket and she didn't want to take money for this away from her family's already tight budget. She knew they would never have been able to afford the expensive tests needed to monitor her. She put her family's needs first.
After Jennifer was admitted to our floor, she was sent for a multitude of scans. They showed that she was full of metastasis everywhere. Because of her age, it was decided to aggressively treat the cancer and she was sent home for outpatient chemo treatment. This was in May. In July, she was admitted back to our floor and we barely recognized her. She was swollen from head to toe and had lost all of her hair. She was weak, tired and in pain, everywhere. She had opportunistic infections of every kind. We hooked her up to a PCA pump and kept her comfortable. She lost consciousness and died on our floor a few days later.
Her young husband was devastated and now faced raising two young children alone. Those two children must grow up without their mother. I saw the fear on the faces of Jennifer's two sisters as they watched her suffer and die so quickly, surely fearful that this could happen to them, too.
The nurses on my floor cried over the loss of Jennifer for days. Some of the nurses kept in touch with her husband and I believe he remarried a few yrs. later.
I wish this story was a rare one, but it is not in this country. Because of the type of cancer she had, the same fate ultimately may have awaited Jennifer, but I believe she would have had more time with her children if she been covered by insurance and had been able to receive the appropriate follow-up care she needed.
Since you quoted my post, I am assuming you are talking to me..... I am a Texan and I believe we have gotten our lines crossed. I am NOT against helping out my fellow Americans. I want to live in Utopia where everyone lives happily ever after. My concern is I do not want 1/3 of Americans to work their fingers to the bone so that the rest can feast on a fat hog. I want the federal government to stay out of a lot of things I guess if I had to choose a political party I would come closest to aligning with Libertarians. I believe that the People of America have always (In my life time) been able to take care of themselves. It has only been since the special interest groups (fill in the blank Oil, pharmaceutical, religious, ACLU, etc.) have taken control of the government and leaving the mass backbone of America disenfranchised that these issues have become so overwhelming. I am not even going to say I am against a centralized insurance, however I will say that the government is too corrupt to be in charge of said entity.
And yet, Medicare is more efficient (i.e., it costs less per capita) than any private insurance.
There are problems with large organizations, whether government or private. Do you think large private companies are less corrupt than governments? Their fiduciary concern is to their shareholders, and their only real concern is to the executives and owners. Please do not construe that as a slap at capitalism. It simply reflects how humans operate in large societies. That is why regulation is unavoidable. I'll skip the "tragedy of the commons" discussion.
No one is going to get infinite coverage, or an organ transplant every day, from any insuring entity. Would you rather have an unregulated for-profit insurance company as the gatekeeper rather than, for example, Medicare?
For those who want to stick with their current insurance, whether from a large or small corporation, they will have that option under the ACA. There is no public option to choose. If your employer doesn't provide you with insurance, you can still buy your own, and it will be subsidized if your income is low.
There are a lot of solutions to health insurance throughout the industrialized world. Some of them are single-payer, some use private insurance, and some are a hybrid. None of them are as inefficient as ours, even the most socialized ones. Most of them provide far better access and far better outcomes (on the average) than our system does.
Are you saying that there is something defective in the American character that makes our government corrupt, and that we are simply incapable of doing thing that other countries have successfully done?
Thank you for sharing this story, although it makes me sad. For the woman in the story, and also because one of my close family members has recently been diagnosed with terminal breast cancer. She is going to die, according to various specialists, but of course, she is currently undergoing rounds of treatments. She is Canadian, but is a permanent resident in California. Thankfully, her husband makes good money, so they can afford her treatments. But what if he didn't, which is the case for so many people.
Back in 2005, I was working on an Oncology floor in an area hospital. One afternoon we admitted a 34 yr old mother of two elementary school aged children to our floor. Jennifer (not her real name) had been to a walk-in clinic earlier that day and the doctor there had called our Oncologist and sent Jennifer to the hospital.
Jennifer had been diagnosed with breast cancer in her 20's and had been treated at the time and the treatment worked. She had a strong family history of breast cancer, both her mother and aunt were survivors. When Jennifer was diagnosed, she and her husband had insurance through their jobs. Jennifer was supposed to go back to her Oncologist every 6 mos. or so after her treatment for follow up exams to make sure the cancer did not return. Jennifer's husband had graduated from college in the meantime and had a new job as a preacher for a small local church. They had no insurance after her cancer treatment and were not eligible for Medicaid. Because of Jennifer's medical history, they could not get any other insurance coverage. She did not go for the follow-ups.
Jennifer had gone to the walk in clinic that day because she had a cough that just wouldn't go away. She had avoided seeking any help before this because it was too expensive to pay out of pocket and she didn't want to take money for this away from her family's already tight budget. She knew they would never have been able to afford the expensive tests needed to monitor her. She put her family's needs first.
After Jennifer was admitted to our floor, she was sent for a multitude of scans. They showed that she was full of metastasis everywhere. Because of her age, it was decided to aggressively treat the cancer and she was sent home for outpatient chemo treatment. This was in May. In July, she was admitted back to our floor and we barely recognized her. She was swollen from head to toe and had lost all of her hair. She was weak, tired and in pain, everywhere. She had opportunistic infections of every kind. We hooked her up to a PCA pump and kept her comfortable. She lost consciousness and died on our floor a few days later.
Her young husband was devastated and now faced raising two young children alone. Those two children must grow up without their mother. I saw the fear on the faces of Jennifer's two sisters as they watched her suffer and die so quickly, surely fearful that this could happen to them, too.
The nurses on my floor cried over the loss of Jennifer for days. Some of the nurses kept in touch with her husband and I believe he remarried a few yrs. later.
I wish this story was a rare one, but it is not in this country. Because of the type of cancer she had, the same fate ultimately may have awaited Jennifer, but I believe she would have had more time with her children if she been covered by insurance and had been able to receive the appropriate follow-up care she needed.
This type of thing is happening all over America. We are better than this. We take care of each other better than this. Don't we? Maybe we used to.
Health care is not ONLY a human right..it is a wise business decision that makes our citizens and thus nation healthier and stronger.
That is truly a touching story. Yes reform is definitely needed. However, we must take all factors into account and we must explore any and all options. Does the insurance companies need guidelines to provide competent policies? Are pharmaceutical companies exploiting the system? Has the FDA created an insurmountable amount of regulations for R&D? Is there a way to create a group insurance for Americans? Can the individual states act in the behalf of their constituents to do what is in their best interest? The questions continue and the answers are difficult to find. I don't know the answers and yes as nurses we have seen the horrors!!!! In 1986 I was in nursing school and in the first term it was strictly spoken and enforced "As nurses; do not get involved with the patients' financial affairs. It is none of your business how they are paying! Treat all patients equally giving them the best care possible!!" I have shrived to continue with that philosophy, however it is becoming increasingly difficult.
And yet, Medicare is more efficient (i.e., it costs less per capita) than any private insurance.
There are problems with large organizations, whether government or private. Do you think large private companies are less corrupt than governments? Their fiduciary concern is to their shareholders, and their only real concern is to the executives and owners. Please do not construe that as a slap at capitalism. It simply reflects how humans operate in large societies. That is why regulation is unavoidable. I'll skip the "tragedy of the commons" discussion.
No one is going to get infinite coverage, or an organ transplant every day, from any insuring entity. Would you rather have an unregulated for-profit insurance company as the gatekeeper rather than, for example, Medicare?
For those who want to stick with their current insurance, whether from a large or small corporation, they will have that option under the ACA. There is no public option to choose. If your employer doesn't provide you with insurance, you can still buy your own, and it will be subsidized if your income is low.
There are a lot of solutions to health insurance throughout the industrialized world. Some of them are single-payer, some use private insurance, and some are a hybrid. None of them are as inefficient as ours, even the most socialized ones. Most of them provide far better access and far better outcomes (on the average) than our system does.
Are you saying that there is something defective in the American character that makes our government corrupt, and that we are simply incapable of doing thing that other countries have successfully done?
By all means, I am not saying that American's as a whole have a defective character. However, you stating that these other countries are successful does not make it so. Most of Europe is in Bankruptcy presently. Who is there bailing them out? The USA with money that we are borrowing at a huge interest rate from China. As far as medicare being more efficient.....I worked in a private orthopedic office, while I was there I found out in the year of 2000.... A patient walking into the office with a simple fx. of the upper extremity.... All patients pay a global payment for 5 ofc. visits including casting, X-rays, and follow ups. For a patient with BCBS the office would collect 468.00 For a patient receiving Medicaid the office would collect 250.00 For the same patient on Medicare the office was allotted 99.00 and the poor uninsured patient would get raped to the tune of 999.00 to off-set the losses that the office incured by taking the medicare patient. I don't see how that is an efficient system.
By all means, I am not saying that American's as a whole have a defective character. However, you stating that these other countries are successful does not make it so. Most of Europe is in Bankruptcy presently. Who is there bailing them out? The USA with money that we are borrowing at a huge interest rate from China. As far as medicare being more efficient.....I worked in a private orthopedic office, while I was there I found out in the year of 2000.... A patient walking into the office with a simple fx. of the upper extremity.... All patients pay a global payment for 5 ofc. visits including casting, X-rays, and follow ups. For a patient with BCBS the office would collect 468.00 For a patient receiving Medicaid the office would collect 250.00 For the same patient on Medicare the office was allotted 99.00 and the poor uninsured patient would get raped to the tune of 999.00 to off-set the losses that the office incured by taking the medicare patient. I don't see how that is an efficient system.
First, European states are not interchangeable with one another any more than American states are. Are Sweden, Norway, and Denmark in the same economic boat as Greece? How about Mississippi and Massachusetts? In fact, how about Sweden and Mississippi?
Most of Europe is not in bankruptcy, though some countries economic heads are being held under water by austerity measures. I invite you to see how well that strategy has worked (for example, in Ireland and Spain), versus how well countries that didn't follow that strategy are doing (for example, Iceland, Argentina, and Sweden).
But that is a digression. The subject is not global economics. It is health care. What you cannot deny is that, whether you include or exclude Medicare and Medicaid, the American healthcare system is wildly inefficient versus that of other countries. I'm not making up the numbers. They are freely available. See what other industrialized countries, all of which have universal health care, pay per capita. Almost all of them have better or far batter outcomes and accessibility. Hence, they are more efficient. A factor of two is not small potatoes.
As our healthcare system exists, inefficiencies are baked into it. The amount that Medicare reimburses for particular procedures, though, are not.
How does your office cover its losses for providing healthcare to those who have no insurance and can't afford to pay for coverage out of pocket? Or is that someone else's problem?
You're paying for someone else's problem. Currently, you are doing it in a very inefficient way. If everyone can buy health insurance (and remember, there is no federal public option, except for veterans and those on Medicare), you will pay less. The uninsured person you never see who has the opportunity to get his blood glucose level under control will cost you less in the long run. It will also have the intangible benefit of reducing the total level of suffering.
How will we be in better shape regarding our debt to China if, as a society, we pay much more for health insurance than we otherwise could? You surely don't think that the money that pays for private insurance and out-of-pocket procedures comes from nowhere.
The point is that universal coverage will cost us less than our current system. What is my evidence? Every other industrialized nation.
I will agree with whoever posted that a persons rights are whatever the society they live in decide it is.
That's all well and good, but I didn't go to Viet Nam and get my **** shot off and neither did the 58+ thousand of my brothers and sisters who died for our individual freedoms, just so SOCIETY can tell me exactly what I can and cannot do. Sure, the biggies are expected, but take NY, telling me that I can't purchase a large drink with my lunch order? That’s just pure BS. There are a number of things happening in our society today that I personally feel are infringements on our personal liberties. The passage of the Patriot Act has meant the continual deterioration of personal liberties since it was signed into law by george bush on October 26, 2001. I am not saying some of the passages of the law were not in keeping with the country safe and stable in a time of crisis, but the renewal of it was detrimental to the country as a whole and it should have been allowed to pass into obscurity instead of being renewed. Our individual rights as citizens are slowly being taken away, slowly being the operative word here; it isn’t as slowly as one might think. Did you know that each and every email you send is capable of being read by the government? How about every phone call you make being listened in on? These are not the ravings of a conspiracy lunatic; they are provisions of the Patriot Act. Did you know you could be grabbed off the street and detained, without so much as a phone call to anyone, for as long as the government chooses, without charges? Protest all you want that you are innocent, they could care less, they saw you chatting a little too long with the Arab you runs the Racetrack Gas Station, and he’s been under surveillance for months. These days, you are guilty until you proven are guilty, period. It’s a tough world out there, live with it. All thanks to the Patriot Act. AND, guess what, there’s nothing we can do about it. Welcome to the NEW and improved USA. Providing healthcare is the last thing on their mind. It may slip in occasionally, but... I kinda think they really don’t care.
Sticking to the subject of healthcare, the VA system is doing a good job now of providing efficient health care, though some politicians who claim to strongly support the military want to cut veterans' benefits. Are you in the system, FMF Corpsman?
See 37 degree C , There's a whole other issue. Most of my family is active duty, retired, or honorably discharged from the services (and yes service"s" we cover 'em all!!). I have never worked in a VA facility, however, many of my loved ones have been treated....and the answer is no; the care is mediocre at best, and as far as informed consent and second opinion or alternate options you might as well talk to the wall, and you may have to travel quite a distance to see them, and you can't go to your local pcp's and use your benefit so alot of the time if you don't have a secondary insurance you pay as an uninsured. As far as active duty it has went straight into the tubes. When I was in the service me and my immediate family were covered and didn't have to think about it at all (reminiscent of the word that's floating around "universal" healthcare) However because THEY WERE GOING BROKE!!! Now the enlisted personnel is covered but the family has to pay a premium and co-pays!!
). I have never worked in a VA facility, however, many of my loved ones have been treated....and the answer is no; the care is mediocre at best, and as far as informed consent and second opinion or alternate options you might as well talk to the wall, and you may have to travel quite a distance to see them, and you can't go to your local pcp's and use your benefit so alot of the time if you don't have a secondary insurance you pay as an uninsured. As far as active duty it has went straight into the tubes. When I was in the service me and my immediate family were covered and didn't have to think about it at all (reminiscent of the word that's floating around "universal" healthcare) However because THEY WERE GOING BROKE!!! Now the enlisted personnel is covered but the family has to pay a premium and co-pays!!
JMBnurse
82 Posts
Back in 2005, I was working on an Oncology floor in an area hospital. One afternoon we admitted a 34 yr old mother of two elementary school aged children to our floor. Jennifer (not her real name) had been to a walk-in clinic earlier that day and the doctor there had called our Oncologist and sent Jennifer to the hospital.
Jennifer had been diagnosed with breast cancer in her 20's and had been treated at the time and the treatment worked. She had a strong family history of breast cancer, both her mother and aunt were survivors. When Jennifer was diagnosed, she and her husband had insurance through their jobs. Jennifer was supposed to go back to her Oncologist every 6 mos. or so after her treatment for follow up exams to make sure the cancer did not return. Jennifer's husband had graduated from college in the meantime and had a new job as a preacher for a small local church. They had no insurance after her cancer treatment and were not eligible for Medicaid. Because of Jennifer's medical history, they could not get any other insurance coverage. She did not go for the follow-ups.
Jennifer had gone to the walk in clinic that day because she had a cough that just wouldn't go away. She had avoided seeking any help before this because it was too expensive to pay out of pocket and she didn't want to take money for this away from her family's already tight budget. She knew they would never have been able to afford the expensive tests needed to monitor her. She put her family's needs first.
After Jennifer was admitted to our floor, she was sent for a multitude of scans. They showed that she was full of metastasis everywhere. Because of her age, it was decided to aggressively treat the cancer and she was sent home for outpatient chemo treatment. This was in May. In July, she was admitted back to our floor and we barely recognized her. She was swollen from head to toe and had lost all of her hair. She was weak, tired and in pain, everywhere. She had opportunistic infections of every kind. We hooked her up to a PCA pump and kept her comfortable. She lost consciousness and died on our floor a few days later.
Her young husband was devastated and now faced raising two young children alone. Those two children must grow up without their mother. I saw the fear on the faces of Jennifer's two sisters as they watched her suffer and die so quickly, surely fearful that this could happen to them, too.
The nurses on my floor cried over the loss of Jennifer for days. Some of the nurses kept in touch with her husband and I believe he remarried a few yrs. later.
I wish this story was a rare one, but it is not in this country. Because of the type of cancer she had, the same fate ultimately may have awaited Jennifer, but I believe she would have had more time with her children if she been covered by insurance and had been able to receive the appropriate follow-up care she needed.