Can Obama, Clinton or McCain Heal Our Healthcare System? V V

[BridgeTheGap]

On the night before last week's primary vote, one of the city's savviest political consultants sat on a bed on the 16th floor of NYU Hospital wearing a loose blue gown that kept slipping off his shoulders. Gary Tilzer didn't bother about the gown. But he was careful to keep his right foot hidden under the covers. This was to help protect it from doctors who had been urging him to have the foot removed due to urgent matters related to diabetes.
A hospital aide approached to ask if he'd changed his mind. Tilzer held up a hand as though to ward away evil. "No, no way," he said.

Generally, this is the kind of thing that happens to people who badly neglect their health. Here, Tilzer, 50, must plead guilty: "I never knew I had this diabetes until my foot got bad," he said.

He didn't know about the diabetes because he hadn't been to a doctor in years. This was a particularly bad idea because Tilzer had added to his own risk factors by being somewhat overweight. "I'm working on that," he said. But he hadn't been to a doctor, he said, because he didn't have health insurance. And he didn't have health insurance, he insisted, because he is self-employed and hasn't been able to afford it.

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0807,robbins,79112,2.html

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. You don't have to be overweight to get diabetes

My husband is skinny and has it. Luckily, I knew warning signs and got him into a doctor right away. Caught it in time, and he controls it with diet and supplements. Still has circulation problems, though.

Why don't we just copy the Canadian health care program for here? I've been wondering this ever since the 1960s.

[groovedaddy]

2. Too much money being made off health care - the powers that be

don't want to lose this cash cow!

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

4. and real healers are not making money

my doctor being a good example. Her emphasis is on helping others, and if they can't pay or take forever to pay, that's fine. She's run a non-profit health foundation for nine or ten years now, and doesn't take a dime in salary for herself-she works for another doctor part time to meet her expenses.

[Doctor_J]

3. no. It will be repaired/rebuilt after the revolution, just like the media

There are a few abominable entities that are so malignant and so big that we won't be able to rid ourselves of them without a complete overhaul of the political system. Big Insurance is one of those tumors.

[CRH]

5. No it is a conceptually flawed system, ...

where profits of middlemen and the cost of corporate governance, will always perpetuate the upward spiral of price. Added to the monetary demand of the pharmaceutical industry in creation of chemically dependent health and longevity, the whole system will be used to bleed public monies from the discretionary spending budget, while leaving huge gaps in coverage.

Second, the publics perception of what should rightly fall within health coverage, needs to be enlightened. Example, transplants no, genetic stem cell therapies until the price is reduced, no, preventative medicine, yes. The perceptions of health care should be diverted toward obtainable goals. Leave behind the cosmetic and extreme maintenance of near impossible situations, for the rich to fund though their own voluntary insurance coverage. Three month premature babies used to die, now they are three million dollar babies that may need extended care into the future. Tough decisions need to be made, adjustment in the perceptions of medical ethics needs to happen, if universal coverage is to be obtained for all. A coverage of realism, for the benefit of the many.

I know this will offend the right to diminished life at maximum expense supporters, but in nature certain deficiencies in physical and mental conditions naturally die in maintenance of survival of the fittest. If you happen to be religious, God made these rules, millions of years before corporate medicine instilled silly notions of lives of extreme maintenance, or lives of extreme duration, for profit. Society should carry a 'reasonable' burden in support of the weak or the elderly, but it should not bankrupt a system for the betterment of the whole.

Flame on, it is only IMHO