The Virginian-Pilot
©
NORFOLK
There was no shouting, fighting or angry protesting.
Sunday's "Community Conversation on Health Care" held at the Five Points Community Farm Market was heated only by the afternoon sun.
About 50 people came to hear from health care professionals and advocates about the different overhaul options.
"My goal is to educate and inform," said Nic Renz, one of the event organizers. "We can affect this legislation. It's up to us to engage the politicians."
Andrea Miller, a former congressional candidate, and Drs. Keith Newby and Margaret Flowers each took turns talking about their experiences in the health care system and what elements of the proposals they supported.
They focused on the single-payer option in HR676 and the public option in HR3200.
Newby, of Cardiology & Arrhythmia Consultants in Norfolk, admitted he's still looking for a concise summary of the various proposals. But he said it's clear that people who take care of themselves should be rewarded with incentives, such as lower premiums.
"This is just a single person's opinion," he said.
Flowers, a Baltimore pediatrician who serves as co-chairwoman of Maryland's chapter of Physicians for a National Health Care Program, and Miller, outreach coordinator for Progressive Democrats of America, both spoke in favor of the single-payer system.
They said the single-payer system would not require the creation of a new bureaucracy and has fewer concessions to corporate lobbyists. Miller also said that under HR3200, health insurance would be a requirement enforced by the Internal Revenue Service. The bill is also considerably shorter.
Overall, the attendees were praised for educating themselves.
Renz is organizing a candlelight vigil for Wednesday night in Norfolk. It will coincide with others being held nationally by MoveOn.org in an effort to show support for the public option before Congress returns to session. The vigil will be held at 7:30 p.m. at the intersection of Colley and Spotswood avenues.
Lauren King, (757) 446-2309, lauren.king@pilotonline.com
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Heatlth Care meeting
Knowing they are scheduling their meeting to coincide with MoveOn.org speaks volumes about where they stand on the issue without them saying a word.
How many plans?
I just did a quick internet search on health insurance in Virginia. Aetna offered 14 different plans for personal health insurance. UnitedHealth offered 7 different plans. I didn't bother checking how many plans the other companies offered. So my question is how many plans do we need offered to us by our friendly insurance company?
Since none of us plan for sickness, how can we know the plan we pick is the correct one? And if you don't have the right plan, you could be stuck with your entire medical bill? I thought the whole idea of a single payer system was to prevent such a catastrophe.
I've also heard the argument that no one wants a bureaucrat making health care decisions for them. However we seem perfectly willing to let financial analyst make them instead. Or there have been no stories about insurance companies not paying for treatment the consumer, policyholder, wanted. That they and their doctor decided was needed for this individual.
Duh!
When you present only one point of view, and invite only those who agree with you, you can expect a less contentious meeting.
Every Time.
But what does that accomplish?
Exactly.
Socialists do not want any dissention. Dissidents get sent away.
Health care debate
I am sorry, but I somewhat disagree with some of the points that were made. I see the VA, Medicare, and Medicade as failures. Each is near bancruptcy and many physicians don't want to see Medicaid/Medicare patients, and this is when the federal government has the ability to force them to or just dump more money into the program. I believe a single-payer or government option is much more than the government can manage or pay for. There is no mention of tort reform in any of the bills, so the liabilty lawyers will still get their cut of the pie. Finally, if health insurance premiums went down, how would that effect other insurance products? In fact wouldn't decreased revenue in health care cause them to raise profit margins in other areas?
Just some things to consider,
removing the cost of health care, from the capitalist market place and consider the ripple or butterfly effect. Your home owners insurance would go down, auto insurance would go down, business liability would go down, workers comp. would go down. Oh sure you could still be liable for lost wages, pain and suffering, neglect, indifference, etc. but the cost of health care would not be included in figures used to determine the price of all services and products wouldn't be part of the equation. Vets wouldn't be limited to VA medical centers,even though they would still want their specialties, in head trauma, limb loss PTSD etc. but the VA wouldn't be so stretched to the point of not being able to provide for our vets. The rank and file health insurance employees will be needed elsewhere and the CEOs and other overpaid management, well who really cares, let them crash and burn. Just like they've done to this country.
Every other industrialized nation in the world
Every other industrialized nation in the world has national health insurance, and they pay HALF per capita what we pay for healthcare. Why? Because they don't have to pay 150 different insurance companies' admin costs, liability lawyers, and Big Pharma profits. We are being scammed, my friends, because Congress has received $3.4 BILLION DOLLARS in contributions from healthcare corporations in the last decade. Wake up folks, and don't listen to the lies from FoxNews, and the congressmen who are wholly owned by the corporate lobbyists.
Let's get it right...
Let's get it right... everyone in the nation pays, not just those with insurance, because everyone has it. Oh, that's right every other nation does not have the illegal immigrant problem that taxes their system like we do.
2 - Every other nation does not have to battle court cases with ungodly amounts of money awarded for patient stupidity.
3 - Every other nation has people that come here for medical care, ask yourself why is that?
4 - Suppose I don't want to join in, suppose I want to "self insure" for the first $5K
5 - Currently you can get any service you can pay for, under the new system, it doesn't matter if YOU can pay for it, you don't get the treatment if your insurance doesn't cover it, even if you can.
Not only do those countries
Not only do those countries pay HALF what we pay per capita, they get substantially better results. I'd have no issue paying more if we were getting terrific results, but we're Number 37.
Currently, health care costs consume 17% of our GDP. hat percentage is expected to reach 40%-50% in the next generation. If we're spending 40% of our GDP on health care, that's a lot less that we can spend on infrastructure, education, the military. We're headed for second-nation status, and that's a long way down from our position as global leader.
They also have...
A couple of million people - can you imagine how horrendous a single healthcare system would be for 310+ million people. The waste alone would be larger than those other systems combined!