Let's talk about the basic facts about the health care reform bill...

Nurses Activism

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I do not like politics. I am neither a liberal nor a conservative so I don't like arguing about political sides.

I do want to know about this health care bill. So far, I know that it is saying that health insurance companies will be more regulated and people will be forced to purchase health insurance but....

- How are people going to purchase health insurance if they can't afford it now?

- How is this going to affect patient care?

- How will nurses be affected by this?

I want to know any basic information about this bill but I am a nursing student so... as is most likely shocking to all of you... I don't have much time to research it, lol.

Thanks and lets try and keep it friendly folks!

-Joseph

Specializes in OB, NICU, Nursing Education (academic).

The basic facts are.....that the basic facts (of the health reform bill) are few and far between. Those who claim to know the "facts" are only kidding themselves.

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The only way insurance companies can survive is if they raise premiums. And they will.

Even faster than they already are? - like the 39% increase that Anthem-Blue Cross announced in California this year? I find it comical that some folks actually think this is hard on the insurers. For the best take on that, follow the money and the fact that health insurance stocks are up 74% on average this year. This is very good for insurers and the big investors know it. My biggest beef with the new law is that it's way too generous to insurers. I'd rather they went away altogether.

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My biggest beef with the new law is that it's way too generous to insurers. I'd rather they went away altogether.

You seem to hate capitalism. Yet you are a capitalist who sells your nursing skills to a hospital. Should you profit from nursing? Or is it unethical for you to expect pay for helping your patients? Your nice car, nice home, and everything else you own was funded by sick patients that you treated. Should you be ashamed of yourself? Or is it okay to profit from helping patients?

You want crooked politicians to run healthcare. Do you want crooked politicians to run supermarkets too?

And yes, Anthem will raise premiums A LOT MORE now that Obama is forcing them to cover preexisting conditions.

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Specializes in being a Credible Source.
You seem to hate capitalism. Yet you are a capitalist who sells your nursing skills to a hospital. Should you profit from nursing? Or is it unethical for you to expect pay for helping your patients? Your nice car, nice home, and everything else you own was funded by sick patients that you treated. Should you be ashamed of yourself? Or is it okay to profit from helping patients?
To me, the question is simply whether something as essential as healthcare should be operated under a for-profit model or whether the public would be better served by a not-for-profit, public service model. When we are talking about people's lives and health, I do not believe that the a for-profit model is the best choice.

This is particularly true given that the product in question is so tightly controlled that one simply cannot avail oneself of it without entering the system... which can only be done by having substantial resources. I don't believe that medical/surgical care should be available only to the "haves." I do not believe that our country is best served by that approach.

Interesting that of the G-20 countries, only China and the US seem to agree on this.

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You seem to hate capitalism. Yet you are a capitalist who sells your nursing skills to a hospital. Should you profit from nursing? Or is it unethical for you to expect pay for helping your patients?

You want crooked politicians to run healthcare. Do you want crooked politicians to run supermarkets too?

And yes, Anthem will raise premiums A LOT MORE now that Obama is forcing them to cover preexisting conditions.

Actually, I just live in reality in instead of an imaginary alternate reality.

As Steven Colbert said, " Reality has a well known liberal bias"

Capitalism does a wonderful job of producing consumer goods, and a really terrible job of organizing and financing health care.

Facts: of the twenty richest countries in the world, only one relies on private, for-profit insurance for a major part of it's health care system. That one pays twice as much for health care as the others and produces no better results. Some people say that the US couldn't replicate the much better deal that other countries get on health care with single-payer systems, but I'm enough of a patriotic American to believe we could do just as well as all those other countries do, if only we were able to get rid of the entrenched big money interests that buy our politicians.

Oh and on definitions: a person who has money and invests it to make more money is a capitalist. Someone who works for wages - as most nurses do - is a worker, a very different thing indeed.

Nurses, doctors, makers of medical devices, suppliers of everything from catheters to paper towels all add value to the health care system and deserve to be paid fairly for it. Insurance companies add nothing much except excess cost and need to go away

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To me the question is simply whether something as essential as healthcare should be operated under a for-profit model or whether the public would be better served by a not-for-profit, public service model. When we are talking about people's lives and health, I do not believe that the a for-profit model is the best choice.[/quote']

Isn't nursing care essential? How dare you profit from being a nurse. You should donate all your profits to charity, right?

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Specializes in Case mgmt., rehab, (CRRN), LTC & psych.
How does adding more patients going to help the hospitals if they're still getting less money for those patients and using more supplies?
This phenomenon started occurring well before the conception of the health care reform bill.

I recently completed an RN program in Oklahoma. During the past year of completing clinical rotations at various hospitals in a mid-sized city located in a state with an unemployment rate that is lower than the national average, I noticed that virtually all of the patients were uninsured (charity care), Medicare, or Medicaid. Very few patients had employer-sponsored insurance or were privately paying. This is the trend that I personally noticed.

Hospitals have already been receiving less money and lower revenues over the past few years due to accepting uninsured clients, charity plans, and Medicare/Medicaid. At the present time, people aged 65+ consume the vast majority of healthcare services, partly because they are insured through Medicare, and partly because one's health declines with age. Since older Americans are insured, they are getting healthcare while others do without.

While I am not a fan of some aspects of the health reform bill, I agree that something needs to be done about the shape of our current healthcare system.

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Nurses, doctors, makers of medical devices, suppliers of everything from catheters to paper towels all add value to the health care system and deserve to be paid fairly for it. Insurance companies add nothing much except excess cost and need to go away

Incorrect. Insurance companies provide a service. They INSURE you from financial catastrophe. If you pay $500 a month for insurance, and then get sick and receive $500,000 in benefits, that sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

If you think insurance companies serve no purpose, why do you own insurance?

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While I am not a fan of some aspects of the health reform bill, I agree that something needs to be done about the shape of our current healthcare system.

Of course! But Obamacare is not the solution.

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Specializes in being a Credible Source.
Isn't nursing care essential? How dare you profit from being a nurse. You should donate all your profits to charity, right?
An individual is not the same as a corporation... working for a wage is not the same as seeking to maximize shareholder profits by actively seeking to exclude potentially costly people from the insurance pool.

Individual wages ≠ corporate profits.

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Specializes in Case mgmt., rehab, (CRRN), LTC & psych.
Of course! But Obamacare is not the solution.
Well, leaving the currently flawed healthcare system intact and untouched is not the solution, either. When the loss of human life occurs due to a lack of healthcare coverage, it is indicative of a flawed and unethical system.
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An individual is not the same as a corporation... working for a wage is not the same as seeking to maximize shareholder profits by actively seeking to exclude potentially costly people from the insurance pool.

Individual wages ≠ corporate profits.

Actually, most insurance companies are PUBLIC companies, which means they are owned by individual citizens who bought stock. Do you own any mutual funds? If so, you own corporations and profit from them. Does that make you greedy?

Also, I agree that insurance companies should be banned from canceling CURRENT policies.

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