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How's Your Health Care?
One of Ronald Reagan's famous lines was: "Are you better off today than you were four years ago".
When it comes to the state of health care in the US how many of us can say we are better off? It seems that daily there are news reports of the increasing number of uninsured Americans, currently at 44 million and rising. Those with insurance are finding that their premiums are rising by over 10% a year. Half of the uninsured are working Americans.
According to Dr. Isadore Rosenfeld in the 8/15/04 issue of Parade Magazine the reason behind rising costs include the "great advances in medicine" such as expensive sophisticated tests such as MRI's, CT and PET scans, costly treatments for cancer, heart disease and infections, as well as the fact that we tend to live longer and are prone to arthritis, strokes and Alzheimer's. This is partly true but not the while story.
According to Public Citizen's Heal Letter (July 2004) another factor is the privatization of hospitals and health care in general. While the argument is often made that the private sector can do things cheaper and more efficiently than the public sector this apparently isn't true for hospital care. In a meticulous meta–analysis of private not for profit versus private, investor owned hospitals it was found that not only do the investor owned (i.e. for profit) hospitals have higher death rates and less nursing care, they charged 19% more. The conclusion: "Investor owned hospitals are profit maximizers not cost minimizers".
The Harris Poll on public attitudes towards various industries in the US came up with some interesting trends in health care. It found that while hospitals in general receive a 70% "favorable" rating, that pharmaceutical companies received only 44%, health insurance companies only 36% and managed care companies even lower at 30%. Since 1997 Americans opinion of drug companies has dropped by 35%, the largest drop of any industry surveyed. It was followed by managed care, which dropped 21 percentage points and insurance companies, which dropped 19%. Clearly Americans are reacting negatively to what they perceive as price gauging and a decline in service.
Dr. Rosenfeld to his credit suggests that what must be done is to guarantee health coverage to all Americans, every man, woman and child while pointing out that the US is the only industrialized nation that does not. What he fails to suggest is how this will be done so that it is affordable. An ABC-Washington Post poll from last October showed 62% of Americans favor government program of universal health care while only 32% are opposed.
Many people keep jobs they would rather leave because they are afraid to loose their health coverage. Finding a job that offers decent health plan is getting harder and harder.
Supermarket and hotel workers are currently fighting to maintain health care benefits while management says that employees must bite the bullet.
Let me once again remind voters to reflect this Election Day, Are you better off than you were four years ago? And where will you be four years from now
© 2004 Larry Forsberg. All rights reserved.
Articles posted on this Web site are for personal use only and remain the property of Larry Forsberg, L.Ac.
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