Go Ask Mother: The Lowdown on Heathcare Reform

29Aug2009 Author: Mother Jones, RN

nurse-ratched-smallest-web I hate it when I can’t get into conversations that are happening on my own blog. My job at UGH (undisclosed government hospital) has a way of getting in the way of my real life. Jeanne T. has asked a lot of valid questions about healthcare reform. She also asked me to answer some of her questions. Here we go:

Have you read HR: 3200?

I have not read all of H.R. 3200 – America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009. Reading War and Peace is more entertaining than reading a congressional bill, so I only got through about 150 pages of text before my brain cells started imploding. However, I did learn a few things about the proposed legislation. No one is going to kill your grandma or reduce Medicare benefits. This new legislation will save money by cutting billions of dollars in overpayments to insurance companies and eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse. Maybe that’s why the insurance industry is spending billions of dollars to defeat this bill.

Question: Do you currently have money taken out of your paycheck
for Social Security?  Do you believe that you will receive Social Security assistance when you pass the age of 65, 70?  What is the reason that you and I will not receive Social Security checks?

Answer: Do I have money taken out of my check for Social Security? Is the Pope Catholic? The good people at UGH take money out of my check every two weeks for Social Security, and I know that I’ll never see that money again.

I’m a nurse for life, which means I’m not going to retire. In other words, I’m going to die with my Nurse Mates on. Unfortunately, I believe that my peers are going to receive meager monthly social security checks after they retire. I know where you are heading with this question. “If the government can’t run the Social Security Administration, what makes you think that they can run a public health care system?” It’s all President Franklin Roosevelt’s fault. The social security system is the ultimate Ponzi scheme, and Roosevelt set it up as a safety net to help out old folks just before they died. The average life expectancy back when Social Security was set up was around 60 years old. President Roosevelt got messed up because he thought he we would always have more money coming in than going out. He didn’t know that our life expectancy was going to go up, and he had no idea that future administrations were going to tack on more entitlement programs. Now Roosevelt’s Ponzi scheme is out of control, not so much because of government mismanagement, but because we aren’t dying off quick enough to make the system work. Hey, wait a minute. Maybe we need to rethink those death panels. Just sayin’.

Question: Can the US government run a public health insurance agency?

Answer: Yes, I believe our government can do whatever we have the will to do. We put a man on the moon didn’t we? If those blood sucking, profit driven, insurance companies who make their money by keeping us away from healthcare providers can run insurance companies, why can’t the US government? Uncle Sam wants to keep us around until we’re too old to work so we can keep paying into the social security system. See above.

Question: How do you feel about politicians writing healthcare reform versus healthcare professionals?

Answer: I think that healthcare providers are in a better position to understand the lingo and the fine details that go into healthcare bills, but that doesn’t necessarily make them more trustworthy when they champion causes. The letters “MD” does not mean anything if the person lacks integrity. In my opinion, Dr Howard Dean is a man of great integrity. By the way, there are three nurses in Congress: Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY), and Lois Capps (D- CA). I’ve had the honor of meeting each one of these fine ladies. They rock! Johnson and Capps support public option healthcare reform. McCarthy’s website reports that she supports H.R. 3200 – America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009.

That’s it for part one. I’ll write part two later. Like I said, working at UGH has a way of getting in the way of my personal life. It’s been nice talking to you. Keep the conversation going while I’m working this weekend at UGH.

6 Responses to “Go Ask Mother: The Lowdown on Heathcare Reform”

scrcoachdm
August 30th, 2009 at 8:19 am
Good response to a stuffed comment! There was a lot to respond to, and you showed class answering the questions as they came.

I’m just wondering if we are looking at the wrong issue in this debate.

What are the core issues? Primarily compassionate access to available healthcare when needed. Think of the problems that that little phrase brings into focus:

Compassionate: A modern core value for America is that we are a giving people. And we are! Should we offer healthcare to everyone? I think we do, to an appropriate extent.

Access: Here is a keynote issue that is being mixed with the word “compassion”. Does a person who has not contributed to the common pool of monies have the right to dig deeply into that pool for their own good. There used to be mutual aid societies, where farmers could contribute annually and earn credits for traumatic expenses in their families. They grew into insurance companies. To draw from the pool you had to contribute a certain level annually. But it was really a savings account with others, with the understanding that at the end of life some were going to dip deeper than their paid in value and some were not. Why should we feel compelled to support people who are not citizens, do not contribute to the common pool of money (taxes), and only tangentially support the common good?

Available: We need strong insurance ombudsmen in every community. The kind that can take an insurance company to court quickly and decisively. Like in 24 hours. The manipulation of the denial process by insurance companies is criminal. People with benefits are being denied service because of a cruel bet the insurance company places that the lawsuits will cost less than paying for a covered procedure. This must be stopped. Government can appoint ombudsmen with this power, and should.

Healthcare: The best care in the world doesn’t have to be used for every ailment. The rules allowing tort lawsuits need to be reformed so that healthcare professionals can perform necessary tests for diagnosis but not the CYA tests for tort litigation.

When Needed: The MRI is an incredible diagnostic tool. But when they came out commercially they were prohibitively expensive and hospitals found reasons to use them. Why? To gather in enough money to justify their purchase (and profit). The government could support that kind of breakthrough financially to the level of planned use to keep the initial cost per application down and reasonable. We don’t need every high end test available to accurately diagnose and treat every disease. But we still use them. Doctors and nurses can make the decision of “When needed” to make a good decision.

It’s too bad all we talk about in the media is money, power and government structure. We should be talking about how to reform the industry for the benefit of the people who need it. We are talking about people and their health here, aren’t we?

Thanks for listening to my coffee bar rant!
judi
August 30th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
Don’t count on being a nurse for life. I was just laid off after 38 years as a RN with the same hospital- in a system with a so-called labor management partnership that “guarantees” no job loss without cause.
I have worked ICU for 35 years, but was laid off 3 years too “young” to receive social security and after I lost 95% of my retirement in last years financial melt down.
My suggestion- have a second skill set. Nobody wants to hire a 60 year old RN anymore.
Pam McCormick
September 4th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
The post on healthcare was GREAT! I work for one of the blood-sucking insurance companies after 25 years at a large hospital.The above comments were very enlightening.
Connie
September 29th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
so i’m a nursing student and i’m in Canada where we have health care for everyone – you need to go to the hospital? hit the closeset one. you don’t worry about what’s the cost. or when the bill is coming. If it’s not something very elective like plastic surgery, the government system pays for it out of our tax money. I had been considering coming to work in the US when i graduate in the spring but now as it is i’ll stay here where i can work and treat everyone not just those that can afford to pay for the treatment they need.

I really do hope that soon the US does get a new health care system in place where people taht need the help will get it not stay home and die cause they are affraid of the expense.
Nurse Vance
May 14th, 2010 at 12:15 am
Mother Jones,
You did an excellent job answering those questions on healthcare reform. It is such a sensitive topic for so many Americans but I don’t believe that many people truly understand what this reform entails or how it is going to affect them. I have to admit that I am one of those people. It is a lot to take in all at once but there is no denying that we need a change from the present system.
Larry King
August 17th, 2010 at 8:43 pm
The discussion of health care reform is indeed very good. However, there are some serious errors in the part about social security. First of all, the life expectancy (60) during the Roosevelt administration is irrelevant: a large number of the deaths responsible for that low average were due to infant mortality and childhood disease, and the decline in those deaths is responsible for most of today’s increase in total life expectancy. A 65-year-old man in 1935 could expect to live to 77; those who actually did so could expect to reach the mid-80′s. Today, a 65-year-old man can expect to live to 82 — only five years longer than his Depression-era counterpart. He can also expect to retire later, as the retirement age is now 67, and benefits don’t max out until age 70.

What they didn’t anticipate was the Baby Boom — that screwed up the statistics a bit, and as a result, a relatively large number of retirees are supported by a relatively small number of workers; by the time the majority of Boomers die off, the SS Trust Fund will be exhausted. However, the present generation of middle-aged workers will yield a smaller pool of retirees, and most of them won’t live that long due to the epidemic of obesity and obesity-related diseases like type 2 diabetes, so the program will, over time, recover. Additional actions could speed the recovery: postponing retirement to 72, or eliminating the wage cap, would go a long way, and if we abandon the fiction that SS is a pension plan and institute means testing, we’d be in the black in no time.