VIDEO: Bush On Health Care
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Health Care, VideoHe wants tax incentives and programs for low-income children reupped.
While I think that’s a good start, it doesn’t do nearly enough to try and bridge the health care gap in this country.
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July 18th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
Bush on health care: ‘Let’s make sure Big Pharma and Big Medicine can wring every last drop of money and get every possible advantage to devise new medical bills that are in their advantage before American’s figure out what the rest of the the civilized world figured out eons ago, that universal health care works and greedy corporate driven medicine doesn’t.’
But wait! you say we have the best medical service in the world. Oh yes! you are most correct. Unfortunately that only applies to those that can afford it. For the other 3/4 of the United States our national medical plan is, “Pray you don’t get sick.”
July 18th, 2007 at 5:01 pm
“But wait!” — The median wait time for medical treatment in Canada in 2006 was 17.8 weeks. That is almost 4 1/2 months. So Jeremy, you’ll be doing a lot of waiting if you get what you want.
July 18th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
We can’t have the best medical service in the world if our service bankrupts people. And Dos, while you know that people in other countries have to wait for elective procedures, they get emergency care immediately at not cost to them. So let’s get a little intellectual honesty in this debate, okay?
July 18th, 2007 at 6:23 pm
“So Jeremy, you’ll be doing a lot of waiting if you get what you want.”
I’d rather wait 4 1/2 months to be treated than not be treated at all because I cannot afford the astronomically high price of corporation favored legislation that is passed to enrich multi-billion dollar corporations at the expense of the average American.
It only takes one major healthcare crisis to erase a middleclass families
entire life savings, it happens all the time. People in other westernized countries can receive comparable health service at a fraction of the cost without wiping out a families hard earned money.
For all the talk Bush gives to, “You’ll be waiten in lines”, “You won’t get the best care”, “Medicine from Canada doesn’t meet the saftey standards our medicine does”, yada! yada! yada!
Perhaps, what Bush really means to say is that he knows a lot of rich guys that got him elected twice that happen to think “universal” healthcare is a “real” bad idea. Is this yet another case of, “In order to save the forest we got to cuts some logs?”
July 19th, 2007 at 9:34 am
Justin, yes, lets be intellectually honest: In the US it is called the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, (EMTALA), no patient who arrives in a hospital with an emergency condition will be turned away or transferred unnecessarily. Anyone who shows up in a hospital emergency room will be screened to determine the severity of his or her condition. If the condition is deemed an emergency, the hospital is obligated to stabilize the patient. The hospital can transfer patients only when it lacks the ability to stabilize the patient beyond a certain limit; a transfer to a charity hospital merely to avoid treating the patient is a violation. So despite goofy rants, no children are dying on the floor of emergency rooms for want of health insurance.
Why is it okay for to say “evil greedy corporation” but not “lazy, irresponsible people”? Why shouldn’t people have to pay for healthcare? I do, for my entire family, out-of-pocket cash.
July 19th, 2007 at 2:10 pm
DosPeros, you say: “So despite goofy rants, no children are dying on the floor of emergency rooms for want of health insurance.”
People do die. People are mistreated. People are marginalized and sometimes just ignored. Chances are, if you’ve got the financial means you are going to receive the medical care you need. Not necessarily so for those that are not as well endowed or financially “solvent.”
DosPeros, people don’t stop being people because they are homeless, have a mental illness, are on welfare,
are unemployed or disadvantaged. We seem to have an unlimited amount of money to throw at a war which hasn’t gained us anything but the irreverence and ire of the world and a ballooning
nation debt.
“Why shouldn’t people have to pay for healthcare? I do, for my entire family, out-of-pocket cash.”
No one is saying that people shouldn’t have to pay for their healthcare. I’m merely saying that healthcare should not be a “luxury purchase” for only those that can afford it and out of reach for the mushrooming poor class in this country. I strongly believe in an America that takes care of its own people, not necessarily for free, but it is clear that there are people in circumstances which they cannot relieve themselves of.
All Americans deserve dignity and equal access to a service which we deserve. It is the American peoples’ tax dollars that go to pay for this ill-conceived war, yet we complain that we don’t have enough money for our healthcare system? A person’s net worth should never be a prerequisite to gaining access to meaningful healthcare, yet, it is.
We complain about our entitlement programs going bankrupt, yet
we have the billions of dollars to lavish on no-bid war profiteering
contractors like Haliburton, which has been caught stealing hundreds of millions of dollars (likely far more.) The idea that somehow everyone just wants to freeload and get a free ride is false. Most of the families that suffer from the skyrocketing cost of healthcare are hard working families. Statistically it is a two couple home with both partners working at least one full-time job, yet, a vast majority of these families go without or “chance it” hoping they don’t have an accident becase they simple can’t afford the premiums, co-pays and other costs of healthcare and the necessities of life.
Here’s some links you might try reading:
Police probe alleged L.A. homeless dumping
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17062674/
Woman dies in ER lobby as 911 refuses to help
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19207050/
Health Care System Leaves Poor to Suffer
http://www.soros.org/initiatives/baltimore/articles_publications/articles/healthcare_20040811
Dying For Basic Care
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13690-2004Dec20.html
* Premiums for employer-based health insurance rose by 7.7 percent in 2006. Small employers saw their premiums, on average, increase 8.8 percent. Firms with less than 24 workers, experienced an increase of 10.5 percent (3)
* The annual premium that a health insurer charges an employer for a health plan covering a family of four averaged $11,500 in 2006. Workers contributed nearly $3,000, or 10 percent more than they did in 2005 (3).The annual premiums for family coverage significantly eclipsed the gross earnings for a full-time, minimum-wage worker ($10,712).
* Workers are now paying $1,094 more in premiums annually for family coverage than they did in 2000 (3).
* Since 2000, employment-based health insurance premiums have increased 87 percent, compared to cumulative inflation of 18 percent and cumulative wage growth of 20 percent during the same period (3).
* Health insurance expenses are the fastest growing cost component for employers. Unless something changes dramatically, health insurance costs will overtake profits by 2008 (6).
* According to the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust, premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance in the United States have been rising four times faster on average than workers’ earnings since 2000 (3).
* The average employee contribution to company-provided health insurance has increased more than 143 percent since 2000. Average out-of-pocket costs for deductibles, co-payments for medications, and co-insurance for physician and hospital visits rose 115 percent during the same period (7).
* The percentage of Americans under age 65 whose family-level, out-of-pocket spending for health care, including health insurance, that exceeds $2,000 a year, rose from 37.3 percent in 1996 to 43.1 percent in 2003 – a 16 percent increase (8).
July 19th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
* National surveys show that the primary reason people are uninsured is the high cost of health insurance coverage (9).
* Economists have found that rising health care costs correlate to drops in health insurance coverage (10).
* Nearly one-quarter (23 percent) of the uninsured reported changing their way of life significantly in order to pay medical bills (10).
* Almost 50 percent of the American public say they are very worried about having to pay more for their health care or health insurance, while 42 percent report they are very worried about not being able to afford health care services (11).
* In a poll conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health, 43 percent of respondents named high costs as one of the two most important health care issues for government to address (12).
* In a USA Today/ABC News survey, 80 percent of Americans said that they were dissatisfied (60 percent were very dissatisfied) with high national health care spending (13).
* One in four Americans say their family has had a problem paying for medical care during the past year, up 7 percentage points over the past nine years. Nearly 30 percent say someone in their family has delayed medical care in the past year, a new high based on recent polling. Most say the medical condition was at least somewhat serious (13).
* A recent study by Harvard University researchers found that the average out-of-pocket medical debt for those who filed for bankruptcy was $12,000. The study noted that 68 percent of those who filed for bankruptcy had health insurance. In addition, the study found that 50 percent of all bankruptcy filings were partly the result of medical expenses (14). Every 30 seconds in the United States someone files for bankruptcy in the aftermath of a serious health problem.
* One half of workers in the lowest-compensation jobs and one-half of workers in mid-range-compensation jobs either had problems with medical bills in a 12-month period or were paying off accrued debt. One-quarter of workers in higher-compensated positions also reported problems with medical bills or were paying off accrued debt (15).
* If one member of a family is uninsured and has an accident, a hospital stay, or a costly medical treatment, the resulting medical bills can affect the economic stability of the whole family (16).
* A new survey shows that more than 25 percent said that housing problems resulted from medical debt, including the inability to make rent or mortgage payments and the development of bad credit ratings (17).
* A survey of Iowa consumers found that in order to cope with rising health insurance costs, 86 percent said they had cut back on how much they could save, and 44 percent said that they have cut back on food and heating expenses (18).
* Retiring elderly couples will need $200,000 in savings just to pay for the most basic medical coverage (19). Many experts believe that this figure is conservative and that $300,000 may be a more realistic number.
July 19th, 2007 at 2:32 pm
Concerning my statements regarding Haliburton’s stealing hundreds of millions of dollars, that is incorrect. It has been proven that they have overcharged the American tax payer in the millions of dollars though. But we have no real way of telling exactly how much Haliburton has stolen.
July 19th, 2007 at 2:41 pm
I’m sorry for all the spamming. A link to the Haliburton issue: http://oversight.house.gov/story.asp?ID=811