Reflections on Last Week’s Health Dialogues
I hope that as many people as possible were able to listen to the June broadcast of Health Dialogues, in which I had the privilege of discussing health reform with Dr. Toni Yancey of UCLA and Dr. Tony Iton, Director of the Alameda County Public Health Department. These two public health professionals and I had very different views of who should be responsible for improving our health.
Dr. Iton is Canadian, like myself. When invited to comment on so-called “universal” health care in Canada, he stressed the sense of “solidarity” that he believes Canadians feel about everybody belonging to the same health plan, run by government. Well, to the victor, the spoils, I guess. Because the government won the fight for Canadian health care, its advocates get to write the history. However, back in 1962, when the province of Saskatchewan introduced its government-run, “universal” plan, the doctors went on strike. They caved in when the government relented on letting them practice outside the government plan. Later, when private competition frustrated government’s ability to control medicine, Ontario’s doctors went on strike in 1986, as a result of a new law preventing “balance billing” (even if patients voluntarily chose to pay the difference between government’s fees and what a doctor wanted).
For both ethical and financial reasons, the doctors’ bid for autonomy from government failed. It took until 2005 for the Canadian Supreme Court to determine that government-monopoly health care violates Canadians’ civil rights.
But if you want to call it “solidarity,” I can’t stop you.
These public health professionals do hold one idea with which I am in full agreement: that which we call the health care “system” accounts for only about ten percent of our health care. The rest is due to a complex of environmental factors. Dr. Yancey emphasized schools, which she asserts poorly serve certain communities. I certainly agree with this, but the schools are already a government monopoly in the U.S., so I hardly see how the failure of government schools, to date, supports an argument for a similar take-over of health care!
But the public health establishment poses a bigger challenge: everything in our environment has an impact on our health status. Furthermore, our competence at defining and measuring these impacts is proceeding at a far faster pace than our ability to do anything about them. If we accept that government is responsible for anything that impacts our health, then there’s nothing that it can’t control.
And people still wouldn’t be universally healthy – not even if they put us all in cages, fed us kibble and made us run on large hamster wheels for a couple of hours a day!
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AMERICA’S NATIONAL HEALTHCARE EMERGENCY!
It’s official. America and the World are now in a GLOBAL PANDEMIC. A World EPIDEMIC with potential catastrophic consequences for ALL of the American people. The first PANDEMIC in 41 years. And WE THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES will have to face this PANDEMIC with the 37th worst quality of healthcare in the developed World.
STAND READY AMERICA TO SEIZE CONTROL OF YOUR NATIONAL HEALTHCARE SYSTEM.
We spend over twice as much of our GDP on healthcare as any other country in the World. And Individual American spend about ten times as much out of pocket on healthcare as any other people in the World. All because of GREED! And the PRIVATE FOR PROFIT healthcare system in America.
And while all this is going on, some members of congress seem mostly concern about how to protect the corporate PROFITS! of our GREED DRIVEN, PRIVATE FOR PROFIT NATIONAL DISGRACE. A PRIVATE FOR PROFIT DISGRACE that is in fact, totally valueless to the public health. And a detriment to national security, public safety, and the public health.
Progressive democrats and others should stand firm in their demand for a robust public option for all Americans, with all of the minimum requirements progressive democrats demanded. If congress can not pass a robust public option with at least 51 votes and all robust minimum requirements, congress should immediately move to scrap healthcare reform and demand that President Obama declare a state of NATIONAL HEALTHCARE EMERGENCY! Seizing and replacing all PRIVATE FOR PROFIT health insurance plans with the immediate implementation of National Healthcare for all Americans under the provisions of HR676 (A Single-payer National Healthcare Plan For All).
Coverage can begin immediately through our current medicare system. With immediate expansion through recruitment of displaced workers from the canceled private sector insurance industry. Funding can also begin immediately by substitution of payroll deductions for private insurance plans with payroll deductions for the national healthcare plan. This is what the vast majority of the American people want. And this is what all objective experts unanimously agree would be the best, and most cost effective for the American people and our economy.
In Mexico on average people who received medical care for A-H1N1 (Swine Flu) with in 3 days survived. People who did not receive medical care until 7 days or more died. This has been the same results in the US. But 50 million Americans don’t even have any healthcare coverage. And at least 200 million of you with insurance could not get in to see your private insurance plans doctors in 2 or 3 days, even if your life depended on it. WHICH IT DOES!
Contact congress and your representatives NOW! AND SPREAD THE WORD!
God Bless You
Jacksmith – WORKING CLASS
I have a view very different from both your’s, and Drs. Iton and Yancey’s. All three of you are operating within the Symptom Diagnosis model of health care, which was developed to fight infectious diseases, which now account for less than 15% of health problems. A new model, based on diagnosing ones lifestyle choices, would address the causes of chronic disease – 85% of health costs.
My site, freehealthreform.com , points out the almost zero cost of upgrading our healthcare model to reflect new data and knowledge, especially in genetic expression.
You are quite correct, that medicine addresses only 10% of the determinates of health.
Therefor, a new model that addresses 100% of the causes of disease is only a cultural taboo away – the belief, left over from the 20 th century, that it is intrusive to insist on personal lifestyle change.
Then, health plans will keep people healthy, and the future healthcare bankruptcy will melt away. Yes? No?
The President’s latest speech was yet another rhetorically disingenuous tactical effort to make the case for a poorly planned and written healthcare bill that will, despite his protestations, move us inevitably to a Government controlled healthcare environment much like Canada and the UK.
It is so obvious that America cannot afford to outright pay for 40 Million people to be “insured” yet congress is moving ahead with this nuts plan anyway.
Instead, I would like to see a plan that would:
1. Increase the number of Doctors and Nurses using incentives and Government funding to help train them and equip them.
2. Require that Doctors and Nurses whose training is supported with Government incentives allocate 50% of their practices to pro-bono or inexpensive care for low-income Americans.
3. Allow private insurance to be sold across state borders. Which will increase the pool of insured and increase competition.
4. Regulate private insurers requiring them to insure anyone who applies and can afford the coverage, while making it illegal for an insurance company to drop a policy because of illness.
5. Incentivize Doctors and Nurses to stay in their jobs longer. Now, many Doctors are leaving practice as the difficulty of doing the “business” of healthcare becomes more difficult.
6. Healthcare Tort Reform must be enacted.
Doing these six things will improve healthcare for everyone.
Last comment: After reading some of the healthcare drivel on this KQED website I am reminded why I oppose government financing of public TV and radio.