The Heated Debate Over Healthcare Reform

For Americans trying to understand the debate over healthcare reform it's important to ignore the persistent detractors determined to railroad this issue on political and partisan grounds.

As a fifty six year old women in reasonably good health, but knowing that I'm considered part of the baby boomer generation who will be negatively impacted by the problems within our current .healthcare systems, I want to know who to believe and how my vote should be cast on this issue. I don't care if it's a Republican plan or a Democratic plan, or if it's the President's plan or Nancy Pelosi's plan.

So let's look at some plain talking on this issue, okay. Enough with the flaming rhetoric from both political parties. Who is a concerned American to believe on this issue?

First of all, what are the problems? We've heard for several decades that we have to fix the system. Why? What's wrong with it? How's it work for you and if it is working for you, who cares if it isn't for many others. Right? I'd like to think that most Americans had more heart, compassion and common sense than that.

I read that 46 million Americans are uninsured and are just one illness or accident away from losing everything. I would believe that if they have no insurance. I was hospitalized, like many of you, for a week last year. I contacted an infectious bacterial disease at the nursing facility I was working at from a patient. When I reached the hospital four days later, I was almost in cardiac arrest with sepsis and infection throughout my body.

My hospital and doctors bills totaled 58,000 for less than one week there. Our insurance paid everything but a little over $1200. My husband works for the city and our insurance is a state employee insurance. It's good stuff. $58,000 is a lot of money, but we could have worked out a long range payment plan and paid on it the rest of our lives if we had not had insurance.

But what if I had cancer and was looking at that amount, times 10 more weeks or months of care? We would have been broken and bankrupted, losing everything we've worked for. That's what 46 million Americans face every day, and the number is growing. Even Americans with insurance find themselves paying more and more for deductibles and premiums and health care out of pocket costs. In the past decade alone, our premium for that great policy has doubled while our wages have not.

We read that last year, half of Americans skip medication or postponed medical because they couldn't afford it. I know people who have done this. I know there have several times when I have said " I'm not going to see the doctor for that. I'll just go to bed and get over it." Millions of American families are going to bed to get over it, because they have no insurance and no money to pay outrageous doctor bills. We know it's not the doctors who are getting rich on this system? Who is it? Drug companies, insurance providers? I don't care who is, but it's hurting all of us.

What does our great insurance cost our family? About $120.00 a month, and that is almost double what it was five years ago. But we can afford that. We're both working. We have jobs and insurance and savings accounts. But those savings accounts can be rapidly depleted and jobs disappear along with the insurance. When Americans have to default on their medical bills who pays for it? We do, the American taxpayer.

Katherine Sebilius, writes in an op-ed today that that she believes key committees in Congress are close to reaching a consensus on how to control those skyrocketing costs, guarantee coverage and provide more choices for each of us. America's doctors and nurses want this plan. Hospitals and drug companies want it and even some insurance companies have agreed to do their part to help control and regulate cost and increase services.

Sounds like it should be a walk in the park then, right? No, not that simple. Conservative and Republicans are always slow to change, preferring to hold onto a past and the status quo, rather than make the changes needed.

From Ms. Sibelius's article:

"One Republican Senator said, "If we're able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him." A leading political strategist urged fellow Republicans to "resist the temptation" to be "constructive or, at least responsible," and instead work to "kill" health care reform."

Is this an attempt to make political points, to refuse to accede that if President Obama is able to finally bring about healthcare reform, he will have accomplished something that presidents have been trying to do for decades. Is that the real reason behind the partisan infighting over healthcare reform?

Do they really understand what is at stake here? Do we? Health care spending consumes more than 30 percent more of state and local budgets than just 20 years ago. Governments are cutting services and raising taxes.

Opponents are trying to scare us into believing that we'll lose what we already have.

If, like our family, you're happy with the insurance and your doctor and your whole healthcare plan and coverage, those things won't change with the plans being worked on in Congress. The Obama administration has stated this clearly and the one long bill coming out of Senate Finance Committee that I read, states that fact also.

But what about those who have no insurance, no money to pay those spiraling costs, that you are absorbing anyway as a taxpayer. Prices will continue to raise at the alarming rate they are now. More and more Americans will be on that list of no insurance. Medicaid, as it stands, will be picking up more and more costs, and passing them on to us, the American taxpayer. Medicaire and Medicaid will continue to absorb more than their share of our tax dollars.

Americans will continue to be declined for pre-existing conditions and have no resort to care. They will continue to be declined for services deemed to costly and not cost effective use of insurance monies.

So what does this scary plan provide. It provides more affordable choices, where you can compare plans and pick the one that's right for you. None of the plans being discussed would allow you to be denied coverage due to pre-existing conditions. And one of the options would be and should be a public plan that would increase competition amongst the private sector and providing health care for the uninsured and the under insured.

There are parts of the plan that give me pause to think. For instance the wellness issue, where healthy lifestyles would be rewarded with cheaper rates. Do I want the government telling me what I can eat and how I should exercise? Well, unfortunately, most private insurance companies already do that, reducing your rate for several factors including not smoking or drinking and maintaining a healthy body weight, going for yearly physicals, etc. They use those incentives or have your employer demand that you have that yearly factor as part of retaining coverage. Our plan does exactly that. No yearly physical, no insurance..

And above all, let's be honest in our discussions on this topic and not get all partisan about it. For those of you who oppose reform? Why? Tell me without saying we're turning into a socialist system, because, as I keep saying. That train has already left the station. We've been socialist since the 1940's.I guess we're a Socialist Capitalist..sort of like the Europeans and the Canadians. I know, I know, you just hate the thought that those Europeans led the way. At least we get to elect our socialist leaders unlike Russia and Iran.

Hopefully the plan that has come out of the House on Friday will be read by reasonable thinking Americans who will honestly try to look at all sides of this issue, not just their own partisan opinion. I can dream can't I? If yesterday's hearing in Philadelphia is any example of the heated debate, we all should sit up and listen to both sides, and strive for compromise.

The House Plan could lead to coverage for 95 percent of Americans and would introduce a government run insurance program, not a government healthcare program, but an insurance plan.

Tell me why healthcare reform is a bad idea for the uninsured, let alone you. I hear we don't want government run healthcare. Well, you won't have that. Your hospital will still be St. Mercy or whatever it is. Your insurance will still be your private insurance and your doctor can still be your doctor. But for Jo Blow down the street, he gets to have his child's teeth fixed and medicine for his diabetes. Ms. Sally who lives over two blocks and lost her job, came down with cancer, can't be denied coverage because it's a pre-existing condition.

My personal physician is all for a government insurance plan, so he can afford to continue to treat the huge percentage of people in my town who have lost their jobs due to the GOP ruination of the economy in the past 8 years. Oops..there it is, that ugly partisanship that both sides can't help engaging in. I take it back then. We're all worried about a zillion issues, and mud-slinging blame does no good for the future and offers cold comfort for the past misdeeds of any political party. We can fight for our political party and watch our country continue to split down the middle or we can strive to understand the heated rhetoric coming from both sides.

Anger is always based in fear, any amateur psychiatrist can tell you that. Let's sit down and try to talk about our shared fears, hopes and ideas. Maybe we just might reach a compromise.

Why is that a bad thing?

Resources Used:

Betty's Brain

CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/07/15/sebelius.health.reform/index.html

Philly.com http://www.philly.com/philly/business/homepage/20090803_Temperatures_rise_at_health-care_meeting.html

Kathleen Sebelius is the Secretary of Health and Human Services in President Barack Obama's Cabinet.