An appeal from the UK for an equitable solution to America's heath care woes

"I am writing this note to urge you to support, be vocal,
be whatever it takes to find a more equitable solution
to America's health care woes.
It is a discredit to the U.S. that so many are without access
to affordable health care. It borders on a crime."
-- Carolyn, American living in the UK

The following is a letter, written by an American living in England. It was forwarded to me by a fellow supporter of President Obama, working to promote better understanding of what health care as a moral, societal and economic issue and what government participation in its payment and delivery really mean.

I could write the same letter as an American living in France, where I am married to an Ob/Gyn who has practiced in a public hospital for more than 25 years. I have told many stories here in this blog.

Those of us Americans living in Europe, like those living in Canada and Japan, know what benefit we receive in return for the higher taxes we pay: secure and certain, top-quality health care without question. No one cannot afford to see a doctor or be hospitalized. No one has to go without medical care. No one has ever to mortgage a property faced with the worst. And, American health care, while for those who can afford it is among the best in the world, is no longer the best in the world. Check out the WHO rankings of health care success by country. We're at the bottom of the industrialized world. Even if you consider only the top quintile of the population (in income), our infant mortality rate is higher than Canada's. Something is very wrong in the US as far as access to health care and health care delivery is concerned.

We might have bureaucrats receiving our claims and paying our doctors, but they aren't deciding which doctor we can see, what medical treatments will be covered, nor whether we can afford to see one at all. I'd rather have the government make doctors available to me than insurance executives decide what I need and don't need.

For us, health care is a given. We live our lives without fear of losing our jobs and losing our insurance. That's big peace of mind.
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Dear friends,

I've been following with increasing anger and dismay the debate over health care reform and once again the scare tactics being used to discredit and confuse the debate. I am writing this note to urge you to support, be vocal, be whatever it takes to find a more equitable solution to America's health care woes. It is a discredit to the U.S. that so many are without access to affordable health care. It borders on a crime.

As an American citizen who now lives in England, I have had first hand exposure to both systems. In the U.S., I was self-employed and could barely afford private insurance and even then, one with a very high deductible. I could not and did not avail myself of basic care and, when I needed an operation, funded that through a home equity loan that took me 5 years to pay off. I was lucky in that I at least had home equity and could afford the long repayments. My brother, also a self-employed contractor, cannot. He suffers from a variety of ailments and can only afford a doctor only very occasionally. Needless to say, that has not helped his other health conditions, including underlying high blood pressure.

In England, I have access to the National Health Service which provides full medical care. When my local doctor can not address the problem, I am referred to specialists. I have used the system for 10 years. It has served me well with good quality care. I have good friends who have had breast cancer or need for a heart bypass and who have sought and received good care through NHS. What you are hearing in the U.S. media are a few cases where the system has not worked or met expectations. To my knowledge, some of those cases were of individuals who could not have been 'cured' even with all the best care money could buy. In another instance, there is a British politician who is hitting the media trail to criticize the NHS. He is called an 'eccentric' by his own party and I understand is someone who can well afford private care on his own money and has never ever had to use NHS.

As I face retirement I will admit that one of my reasons to remain in the UK is the assurance that I have access to such health care benefits. It is reassuring. I know that my English taxes have contributed to funding that system. Those taxes are high but well worth such benefits as this.

Please support the struggle for health care reform.

Best,

Carolyn

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There's always the alternative... Wealthcare! No Welfare!



Yeah. That's the ticket.

Thanks, Jeannie!
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Or, we can all get behind Howard Dean and keep Obama clean, fighting for the public option at the very, very minimum like the President has said he favors.

Me? I'm with Randy Huber:

"I would like to see single-payer health care in this country," said Randy Huber, 64, a retired state government worker from Canaan. "To me, the public option is only a start."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/19/AR2009081901773_2.html?referrer=facebook

And Representatives Kucinich and Weiner, and many more Americans than the Blue Dogs and the President wish to count, or hear from, it would seem.
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Anthony, I'm definitely moving to Rockaway if I ever come back

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Why doesn't this make sense to everyone? If we're going to let the GOP off the hook (like they're practically begging us to do so they can save their derrières in their constituencies, and let's be kind and let them do it, shall we?) and carry health care insurance reform on our own, why not just go ahead and do it right? The government can hire a few of those the private insurance companies will have to lay off, and then the industry can just divvy up 1% of Cigna CEO Steve Hemsley's salary this year and give golden parachutes to all the rest.

The lucky ones.

I'll bet he doesn't even know how good we have it here in France, either.
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Bob Herbert just totally depressed me: get your tentacles off my reform

He concludes his OpEd so appropriately, to the very many of us feeling the same way, entitled "This is Reform?" as follows (if you have the heart, read the whole thing by clicking here):

While it is undoubtedly important to bring as many people as possible under the umbrella of health coverage, the way it is being done now does not address what President Obama and so many other advocates have said is a crucial component of reform — bringing the ever-spiraling costs of health care under control. Those costs, we’re told, are hamstringing the U.S. economy, making us less competitive globally and driving up the budget deficit.
Giving consumers the choice of an efficient, nonprofit, government-run insurance plan would have moved us toward real cost control, but that option has gone a-glimmering. The public deserves better. The drug companies, the insurance industry and the rest of the corporate high-rollers have their tentacles all over this so-called reform effort, squeezing it for all it’s worth.
Meanwhile, the public — struggling with the worst economic downturn since the 1930s — is looking on with great anxiety and confusion. If the drug companies and the insurance industry are smiling, it can only mean that the public interest is being left behind.

Call this health care reform "Leave no giant pharmaceutical or private health interest behind".

I've got to go do something else beside depress myself for awhile. Where's the mailperson with my big can of stain?
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The Great American Lie: a whole bay of pigs

"From the 1961 Operation Coffee Cup Campaign against Socialized Medicine as proposed by the Democrats, then a private citizen Ronald Reagan Speaks out against socialized medicine. There is no video because this was an LP sent out by the American Medical Association."

wyattmcintyre, member YouTube.com

Here is the plan for the construction of the Great American Myth. How strange that the year 1961 appears again. The year of Obama's birth. My own. Kennedy was in the White House. The US launched The Bay of Pigs. Communism was our Enemy, Socialism its basic political and economic philosophy.

Now it's finally time for the deconstruction of the Great American Lie.

Leave your country, my fellow Americans, to better see the truth. You're too close to the source of the power behind the lie. You've bought Capitalism with a Capital C's great fallacy, hook, line and sinker, and it's going to take you down.

Socialism is not communism. Socialism is not the enemy of Capitalism. They are partners working for a single goal: the augmentation of the wealth of society, and its equitable redistribution. No one ever said "equitable" is "equal".

The balance is ours to determine, but it always involves thinking critically about our leaders' motivations and their success at generating wealth for everyone, from the least to the greatest among us.

The larger and more complex the society, the more difficult it is to act together to bring the pressure needed to bear on the leadership when it has betrayed the interests of the lesser among us, who need representation and power. It's only a non-zero-sum game if the members of society stand up for themselves and make sure that their leaders distribute the wealth we produce.

France has many faults. One of them is not our, the United States of America's, greatest, the betrayal of society by private interests and their lobbies in the name of the unfettered free market.

Any 12-year-old here understands the meaning of "solidarity". We cheered when Lech Walesa named his party for it and brought democracy to Poland. We just chose to see it differently in our great American hypocrisy then?

That 12-year-old here can rebut Reagan, point for point. I'll give it a go as soon as I finish some more work for the house renovation, and feel free to join in with your own in the comments. make it a movement in a new American symphony, reclaiming the words stolen and soiled by US private interests and their henchmen, the lobbies.
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Hold the presses: Bill Kristol agrees with the unlegislation!

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Bill Kristol
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Spinal Tap Performance

It's right there, at 5.16 into the segment.

He says:

BK: It's a very bad plan. It's unnecessary. There are lots of things you can fix in the American health care system without completely overhauling it and trying to micromanage it from Washington.

[Has he been having coffee with Atul Gawande?]

JS: What's a nice targeted thing?

BK: Insurance fixes so you can't discriminate against people with preexisting conditions, make it easier to keep your...

And then, the public option:

JS: Would you like to see a public option?

BK: No.

JS: Now why not? Why shouldn't the government provide some level of care for the 50 million uninsured?

BK: The government does have Medicaid for the poor, and there are many proposals, and there already are some subsidies for people to buy health insurance, uh, who can't afford to... one reason the price of health care is going up so fast is because of the government programs, the price of Medicare and Medicaid have gone up faster than private insurance [wait, really?], so the more government you have, the faster the prices are going to go up, and that's pretty well-documented over the last 20, 30 years, and then you're going to have to try to control costs, and that's going to lead to rationing. It is a bad plan.

JS: So you don't believe, no public option? So even though that's good enough for the military, not good enough for the people of America?

BK: Well, the military has a different health system than the rest of America.

JS: It's a public system, no?

BK: Yeah, they don't have an option and they're all in military health care.

JS: Why don't we go with that then?

[Gotcha'!]

BK: [nods head to the left, eh, you maybe got me there] Is military health care really what you -- well, first of all, it's expensive, I think they deserve it, the military, I'm not sure --

JS: But the American public do not?

BK: No. The American public do [sic] not deserve the health care American soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan deserve, and they need all kinds of things that the rest of us don't need.

JS: Well, no, they can have a level of care, but are you saying that the American public shouldn't have access to the same quality health care that we give to our better citizens?

BK: Yes. To our soldiers? Absolutely. The American public --

JS: Really?

BK: I think one thing, if you become a soldier --

JS: Should they have nicer houses?

BK: They don't have as nice houses, Jon. They get paid less --

JS: No, I'm saying, should they?

BK: They get paid less so one of the ways we make it up to the soldiers is -- and since they are risking their lives -- is we give them first class health care, the rest of us can go out and buy insurance -- as 90% of us have -- as 90% of us have --

JS: I just want to get this on the record, Bill Kristol just said --

BK: I feel that you've trapped me somehow [smiling, naturally] --

JS: That the government can run a first-class health care system

BK: Sure it can.

JS: A government-run health care system is better than --

BK: No [shaking his head and smiling] --

JS: the private health care system.

BK: I think of it, I don't know that it's better, I don't know if it's better but --

JS: No, you just said that it's better.

BK: The military, I don't know if it's better all around --

JS: No, you said it was better. You said it's the best. The military, it's a little more expensive, but it's better.

BK: The military need different kinds of health care than --

JS: I just want to get this straight [writing on a notecard] --

BK: Note that down.

JS: The government run is the best health care.

BK: I will support you in arguing for better health care for the military if they are in any way being deprived that.

JS: I understand that. So what you are suggesting is that the government could run the best health care system for Americans but it's a little too costly and so we should have the [censored] insurance company health care.

BK: What I am suggesting is that --

JS: Or, no health care.

BK: Our soldiers deserve better health care than --

JS: They deserve the best.

BK: because they are risking their lives --

JS: I agree.

BK: and they are not in the same situation as all the rest of us, and --

JS: They have the best government-run health care money can buy.

BK: [pause... you can hear pins dropping and breath held] That could be. I hope they do. I'm not sure the VA, for example, which is another government agency has the best --

JS: Don't try and back out of this, brother, you're gone.

BK: has the best heath care. I'm not sure Medicaid and Medicare, which are government programs, provide the absolute best health care --


Ah. So, we're getting closer to the truth. Some of us deserve it, and some of us don't.

American soldiers deserve it because they are risking their lives for our country.

And US congressmen and women and senators deserve theirs because?
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