National Health Care, Your Thoughts

Published

As the 2008 presidential race draws nearer, health care is fast becoming a hot topic for debate. What are your thoughts on a national health care plan proposed by Hilary Clinton and other democrats? If this becomes law, how do you think it will effect you as a nurse?

I am personally against a national health care plan. I feel like it is putting too much power in the hands of government. It will lead the way to America becoming a socialist country.

Specializes in OB, HH, ADMIN, IC, ED, QI.
As the 2008 presidential race draws nearer, health care is fast becoming a hot topic for debate. What are your thoughts on a national health care plan proposed by Hilary Clinton and other democrats? If this becomes law, how do you think it will effect you as a nurse?

I am personally against a national health care plan. I feel like it is putting too much power in the hands of government. It will lead the way to America becoming a socialist country.

NEW MESSAGE:

As a former Canadian nurse working in Public Health in the early '60s in Windsor Ontario, when 7 doctors conceived a health plan they called "Windsor Health". I had $17. removed from my $350.+/-paycheck monthly, and never knew any hardship regarding access to healthcare. That was then. Although money was taken out of paychecks, no one thought the program was "government" run. We all knew the involved doctors, and applauded their efforts.

Their plan was the first of its kind in Canada, and was picked up by all the other provinces. As a Public Health Nurse, my assignments weren't changed as a result of the plan. I was still responsible for health education, making home visits for all postpartum women and their babies, within the first 24 hours following their discharge from hospital at 5-7 days; and people who had contact with active Tb; and those who had required psychiatric hospitalization. I staffed 3 well baby clinics monthly, and was school nurse at 4 schools, 2 private Catholic ones, and 2 public, in my 25 square mile rural area called Yakee Bush, that had 5,000 families. Each fall, children in whom I'd found lice in the hair check of all school kids, weren't treated by their families if their assistance harvesting tomtoes for canning was needed. That was actually my worst problem, and I never felt overworked.

Now, I'm a good deal older, with relatives on both sides of the Ontario Healthcare Insurance Program - OHIP(healthcare providers and patients). As a senior, after spending 44 years in California without many health problems, I've had 2 "critical" illnesses in the past year.

Employers aren't allowed by their healthcare insurance providers, to let Medicare be the primary insurance, so they have to pay high premiums (over $1000./month) for senior employees. So I've had difficulty keeping jobs, once my age is known by the insurance carrier, who makes it known by the excess premiums. 2 weeks before health benefits would start, I've been fired summarily, although I'd been praised for my work.

Somehow, I'd thought that I would work as long as possible, as I love being a Nurse. I never thought the end of the line would come due to age, because there's a law against that! How naive!

My genetically acquired depression deepens and the financial ramifications of not working create susceptibility to stress related illness (which is all illness). I can't afford my medications, and have to beg for samples. (Medicare "D" is a bad joke, as the monthly premiums for each manufacturer of my ($9./capsule, iiiqd) antidepressants; my $375./month proton pump inhibitor which is the only one that works for my GERD; and my diuretic (which I can pay for). When the Canadian dollar was less valuable than it is now, and before the pharmaceutical companies backlashed Canada for providing medicine for Americans, I purchased them through my sister's neighborhood pharmacist. I can't afford "supplemental" health insurance (which I had thought Medicare "B" was, until I was rudely awakened, to realize that since doctors' fees had increased greatly, that plan was compulsory, and its premium removed from my social security check.

So be warned my younger colleagues, unless we have a "national" or "state program", you could end up like me - which could be worse. If you have DM or any other chronic illness, the expense of frequent hospitalizations and procedures will take all you have, except your home if you own it. But repairs, maintainance and replacement of worn faucets, etc. will not be possible.

Bearing the cost of healthcare for those less fortunate than you are now, isn't severe, due to the high number of employed people contributing to the program. Who took the "care" out of healthcare, anyway? Why have we become so selfish that we begrudge the same amount or much more, that our taxes pay for poor, unfortunate peoples' healthcare now?

Government is just the cashier of the Canadian programs, which are run by doctors who don't have to curb diagnostic studies, or have regulations on what medications may be prescribed. Nor is there any demand for a certain number of patients a doctor must see daily. They practise as they always have, freely, but chafe at their lower incomes than American doctors still receive. However, their lifestyles are comfortable, financially, and their status among others, is high. Oh, and hospital lobbies don't resemble those of deluxe hotels, but their equipment is "state of the art".

Read the references HMViking has generously researched and shared, in the MM thread. The content of those sites gives me hope for my children and grandchildren's welfare. It appears that we have concerned socially conscious doctors working away at a very acceptable program, here.

I'm even hopeful that pharmaceutical companies might once again be manufacturers of medicines, not entrepreneutial money grabbers who "double dip" grants with high prices for products whose research they they house. However, severe adverse side effects are often belittled as billions are spent to market them (think HRT, and ED prescriptions easily attained by men seeking greater thrills, who don't have ED). The costs of heart disease are multiplying far beyond that before the ballyhoo. Soon we'll know the effect on lifespan caused by those previously misreported/hidden effects!

While I'm ranting, I have to say how impotent HIPPAA was in New Jersey, with gossip rampant with confidential info shared on George Cooney. A month of suspended duty, at the cost of using travel nurses will be borne, which may change the guilty ones' behaviour - or not. The only difference that waste of paper patients sign, on the mistaken assurance that their private lives will remain private, only allows government agencies, insurance companies, etc. to access their health information, without so much as a patient's knowledge that it has been released! The substitution of a phrase which aknowledges receipt of the whole law, is a disgusting deceit. Hopefully a clean sweep of healthcare will abolish it.

Whew! If you read all this, I hope you gained gumption to be part of the solution.......

So despair not, hope and healthcare is at hand.:balloons:

Up Vote Up Vote ×

medicare drugs cost excess $15 billion, report says (correct)

by lorraine woellert and avram goldstein

(corrects estimate of savings cited by trade group in 13th paragraph.)

oct. 13 (bloomberg) -- insurance companies offering medicare-funded prescription drug plans are costing u.s. taxpayers almost $15 billion a year in excess administrative fees and pharmaceutical costs, a congressional study found.

the study released today also found insurers fail to pass on $1 billion a year in discounts from drugmakers to participants in medicare, the u.s. health program for the elderly and disabled.

``the use of private insurers to deliver medicare drug coverage is driving up costs and producing only limited savings on drug prices,'' said representative henry waxman, a california democrat and chairman of the house oversight and government reform committee. the panel's democratic staff prepared the analysis.

accessed today at http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=alucd6nvhbbu&refer=us .

medicare part d is nothing more than a corporate giveaway.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in ER, ICU, L&D, OR.
medicare drugs cost excess $15 billion, report says (correct)

by lorraine woellert and avram goldstein

(corrects estimate of savings cited by trade group in 13th paragraph.)

oct. 13 (bloomberg) -- insurance companies offering medicare-funded prescription drug plans are costing u.s. taxpayers almost $15 billion a year in excess administrative fees and pharmaceutical costs, a congressional study found.

the study released today also found insurers fail to pass on $1 billion a year in discounts from drugmakers to participants in medicare, the u.s. health program for the elderly and disabled.

``the use of private insurers to deliver medicare drug coverage is driving up costs and producing only limited savings on drug prices,'' said representative henry waxman, a california democrat and chairman of the house oversight and government reform committee. the panel's democratic staff prepared the analysis.

accessed today at http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=alucd6nvhbbu&refer=us .

medicare part d is nothing more than a corporate giveaway.

that is only because pharmaceutical companies are ripping us off usuriously

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in OB, HH, ADMIN, IC, ED, QI.

Take a look at the article from Bloomberg on this thread about Medicare Part D - a government endorsed plan that was doomed from the start because "the fox is in the henhouse". Those grandiose pharmaceutical companies, with their huge tax deductable marketing programs have done the thing they do best - padded their administrrative costs and passed them on to the recipient of their medicines.

It's time that negotiating skills was added to the schools' curriculum, so that someone who later becomes employed by a healthcare system learns to say "no!" to those companies that impoverish and cause medical "plans of care" to fail.

If you'd like to see the acuity of patients drop, preventive consistent care is the way to getting that. Our healthcare programs, even though they give "lipservice" to prevention, don't monitor compliance. Once it becomes obvious that a patient needs homecare for medicine management, B.P. monitoring, kidney function, DM treatment, etc. illnesses will continue to worsen, and our morbidity and mortality rates will continue to rise. Our present state of the art care is most embarressing, compared to other countries. Be part of the solution!

Whoever said the Canadian and UK healthcare systems aren't efficient, needs to learn more about them, and the standards our private insurance companies and medic-aid/cal set. They're the same, although here, we think we're getting what we pay for; that couldn't be farther from the truth!

Becoming educated, especially through the websites HMViking shares, would help those who speak/write from their gut. Kudos to you, HMViking!

Up Vote Up Vote ×

Blush......

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in OB, HH, ADMIN, IC, ED, QI.

We already have private insurance company rationed healthcare, as well as job difficulties for anyone whose age is over 55, since employers' insurance carriers charge an additional premium of over $1000 / month for them. Those carriers won't allow Medicare to be employees' primary coverage, either, so they can continue to charge superpremiums. I've lost 3 jobs because of that, each 2 weeks before the healthcare benefit would begin! That is also known as "Age discrimination"!

Up Vote Up Vote ×
+ Join the Discussion