Let’s Talk about a Real Healthcare System (And, No, I Don't Mean "Obamacare")

[xchrom]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/08/13-3


Let’s talk about healthcare. I don’t mean debating the Affordable Care Act. I mean healthcare, as in: If everyone needs healthcare, guarantee that everybody gets it.

I know, when it comes to healthcare, it’s easy to get into a debate for or against Obamacare. But we nurses see the world through a different lens: our patients.

Good healthcare is a fundamental resource that keeps America’s big engine running. Every day, as we do our best to care for our patients, nurses see people with chronic disease like asthma or diabetes who can’t afford insurance costs or medication. Maybe they’re absent from work, tired, and distracted from trying to manage their health on a shoestring. They run the risk of hospitalization. They struggle for a distant unreachable shore hoping something will help. They can’t get ahead because their health keeps dragging them down.

And yet the answer isn’t on the horizon, the answer is in our pockets, in our hands. It’s our taxes. We pay them and we ought to benefit from them.

[daleanime]

1. K&R....

[chimpymustgo]

2. Real healthcare, like the rest of the civilized world. Not Obama's "I got 95% what I wanted".

[forestpath]

4. +1000

[historylovr]

3. K & R

[Scuba]

5. If we can't afford to educate our children, to heal our sick or care for our elderly ...

... just what is it the defense budget is defending?

[G_j]

8. +10000

[leftstreet]

15. +1

[Kolesar]

6. I don’t mean debating the Affordable Care Act.

First paragraph

[Thinkingabout]

7. Having had recent experience in the health care system, namely Texas Plus, there is a huge failure

In coordination of care. My friend fell while visiting in France, once she arrived in Dr office in France she left two hours later after x-rays, cast, cruches, order for wheel chair and visit with orthopedic.

She returned to the states, had to personally arrange for wheel chair rental and Dr appointment the following day with her primary care. It has been almost two weeks getting a referral to see an orthopedic, still waiting on delivery of wheel chair and still no home health care. When someone tells you how healthcare in Canada, UK and France has long waiting lines tell them they are mistaken, the lines are right here in the US.

[LittleGirl]

14. our health care is a joke in this country

I have an auto-immune disease and from crowd sourcing, I'm learning all kinds of information about this disease. It should come from the doctors, not fellow patients. Most of the complaints are that the doctors in this country don't treat us properly. I've lived abroad and experienced socialized medicine. Our system is fucked up.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

9. Good quality healthcare benefits society and productivity

Republicans and their corporation friends feast off the sick.

Single payer system is the best way

[dionysus]

10. the only way to fix it is to put enough people in office to pass something better.

[valerief]

13. And the only way to do that is to convince men with guns to stop protecting "elected"

officials.

[Half-Century Man]

11. Yes, eliminate the cost of insurance

and spend the money as taxes for health care, add some from the MIC and viola....Universal Health Care, and take it to the best in the world. Become somewhere to be jealous of.

[indie9197]

16. I agree, insurance companies are the problem.

They exist to maximize their profits and their profits come directly out of the pockets of people who are basically forced to pay them "protection money". It is apparent that they cannot coexist with affordable health care.

[Half-Century Man]

17. Me , I love the argument of bureaucrats might run health care...

...instead of doctors.
The bureaucrats run health care now; just corporate ones instead of governmental ones. Yeah the ones who get to pick their salaries are the ones in charge of what care you get and how much they feel like paying for you to live over the course of a lifetime.
So, the less money spent on you means the more in their pocket.

Instead of the bureaucrats on a fixed civil service salary.

[valerief]

12. Silly, taxes are for WAR so rich people can get richer, which is the most important thing in the

world.

[Corruption Inc]

18. Rec'd.

Great article, gets right to the real point.

[limpyhobbler]

19. du rec cool nt

[Enthusiast]

20. It's perfectly obvious.

As long as the insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry and the health care services industry have their hands in the cookie jar we will not see an improvement.

These entities take their excess profits and purchase influence from "our" representatives.

Correcting this problem looks nearly impossible.

But we could end the problem by mandating publicly financed elections.