Complete Bullshit

Ok, I try to stay away from politics and heavy duty subjects because no one really reads my longer posts. But with all of the issues that I've had going on in the past few days I've been predominantly bitching and whining about my personal life falling to shambles I completely forgot about this one. Last Thursday I was full of a righteous anger because of a couple of things which coincidentally fueled each other from two separate news sources. While sitting in the waiting room at my doctor's office I was reading a magazine (Time, or Newsweek I think, I can't remember the magazine and they have pay subscriptions to access articles so I gave up trying to find the article online) I ran across a blurb stating that the illustrious "they" wanted to have mandatory health insurance for all Americans. "Ok," I thought..."That's kinda stupid." Maybe long-term it would be great, but it's a little too close to socialized medicine. The people who cannot AFFORD health insurance (we will get to that in a minute) will be given waivers, and special grants in order to be able to attain it. "Hmmm," I pondered, "How much money is that going to be?" I cannot recall if they mentioned how many people overall were uninsured, I remember them having a bar graph that showed the expenses for a single person's health insurance annually over certain time periods. I remember 2004 was over $9,000 per person; 2006 was supposed to be an estimated at over $14,000 per person). My issue with this is..health insurance costs are rising because of the goddamned frivolous malpractice lawsuits against doctors. Their premiums are atrocious, and some doctors are opting to drop it, or get out of the medical profession altogether.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - Dr. Rene Loyola says he has given up just about everything to keep practicing medicine. The surgeon owns no home or land, and has no savings other than a retirement plan after 29 years in the profession. He says he frequently has to turn away patients who need his help the most. Read the Rest of the Article

The common sense aspect of cost-and-demand comes into play. You don't have enough doctors, the others can charge more (which they have to do to keep up with their premiums) and soon you have a shortage of doctors on a whole, and the ones still working (and insured) are rollin'. Well, later on, I was driving back home and was listening to NPR (yeah, I know...I know...but the radio stations around here suck and you can only listen to a TOOL cd sooo many times). Well, to make a long story short, they had to say this:

The U.S. Census Bureau releases new data that shows the number of Americans living in poverty rose last year by 1.3 million people. The number of people living without health insurance also rose, to 1.4 million, according to the report. Hear the Audio

That brings the approximate total of people living under the poverty level to 35.8 million people - 12.8% of the population. Most of this is related to an increase in CHILD poverty -I believe it is stated that the rates did not change very much for those 18-65. 15.6% of the population - 45 million people - do not even HAVE health insurance. Well, when I see those numbers, I realize a slight gap. Which means that people who are above the poverty level are still not able to afford insurance. I recently had a friend tell me that the health insurance costs to cover his family of 5 was going to be $65/week. That breaks down to over $3000 per year. Not including co-pays, and any other extraneous costs that insurance won't cover. Also not sure if that includes dental insurance.* That's no pittance when you have mouths to feed and mortgages to pay. Imagine if this person were a single parent? He would likely be included in those statistics, along with his children. A frightening conundrum no? Do we raise taxes to make sure that everyone is insured? (Remember that total is 45 million people); or do we continue along the path we are going down and wind up having the rates raised higher and higher with each passing year? Or maybe, just MAYBE we can get people to stop suing doctors, and to allow for medical costs to equalize, thereby bringing down insurance costs and allowing the government programs already in place to do their goddamned work? Maybe I am oversimplifying things, I must admit that this isn't an issue I have done hours of research into. But with the information I have been fed by the "objective media" *snort*, this is the conclusion I have come to. Either that, or just bring in socialized medicine and then everyone can be miserable and mistreated. I don't want my doctor looking at me and seeing a potential malpractice suit with legs, nor do I want him to look at me and see a number. We have to come up with a happy medium because those numbers are reaching crisis numbers; and this issue can't be ignored until it all just "blows over". I have craploads of friends WITH medical insurance who have monumental amounts to pay back, and they are considered middle class. I can't even imagine what it would be like for someone not even making enough to be considered over the poverty level. A living hell, indeed. *My beef with dental insurance being a "luxury" item is that some medical issues could be headed off at the pass if dental problems were taken care of like regular maintenance. Examples being: getting your annual eye exam or pap smear. (Or that thing where the doctor squeezes your balls and makes you cough..is that to check your prostate? I just think of it as fun..*squeeze..SQUEEEEEEEEZE*)