Dean's health care via E-Mail? [View All]

[lurk_no_more]

From a recent E-Mail

Like most health care promises, no one reads the fine print, or past the positive sinps of a positive spin and you would think that a positive health care record of past would be one without the need for spin or the need for telling less than all there is, however dean's Vermont healthcare plan while on the face of it, appears to be a model for the future, (or to here dean say it, his model for the future) it is proclaimed a wonderful thing by omission of all that is not.

Dean claims to have a health plan that will guarantee insurance for all Americans modeled on the system he set up in Vermont. In reality, according to his own Web site, his plan would leave at least 10 million Americans uninsured. And that is only if he actually implements his plan-he is determined that "nothing will happen on health care until he works out a plan to balance the budget." If he does model the national health care system on Vermont's system, it won't be pretty.

Vermont actually doesn't have universal health care. It is true that almost all children under the age of 18 are covered, but U.S. Census Bureau figures show that 10-12 percent of Vermonters remain uninsured. This is only a little better than the national average of nearly 15 percent uninsured.

For those Vermonters who are insured under Dean's plan, their access is extremely limited. Dean's plan requires families to pay monthly premiums for government-subsidized health care. Because services are provided through private insurers, however, premiums have been steadily increasing while care has been steadily deteriorating. Over the past 10 years, employee health insurance costs have increased by 400 percent.

Dean has also cut basic services from the health plan such as X-rays, dental services, physical therapy, psychological care and cheap prescription drugs. As Dean explained to the Rutland Herald in 1991, one of the main assets of his health care plan is that "it definitely keeps people out of the emergency room."

It seems his main concern was not so much universal coverage as cost-cutting. In his first State of the State address he moaned: We spend too much money in this country and in this state for unnecessary
medical procedures. We must reduce the combined pressures of professional liability, consumer demand and reimbursement mechanisms which encourage providers to administer more care and to order more tests.

In other words, health care under Dr. Dean means paying more for less.

I personally found the cuts in X-rays, dental services, physical therapy, psychological care and cheap prescription drugs more than a bit disturbing, especially for a doctor.


” JAFO”