Health Care
I realize that this is totally out of context for this blog, but no one reads it anyways and I can vent my opinions freely.
Health care has been an issue for quite some time. I"m 34 years old and I have had insurance my entire life. In college I was on my parents, and when I became old enough and absolutely had to get a job I did and health care was part of the package. It's been something that I have definitely taken for granted. I have mixed feelings on "socialization" of health care. I have read many peoples opinions from the far right, to the far left ranging from "look at the VA hospital system", meaning that is government run and its bad. Taking a look at it though, I think that the people that say that are playing on the fears and memories of the baby boomers. I look at the VA system today and I see military people coming back from the desert needing prosthetic limbs and receiving them courtesy of the VA system, along with all of the aftercare that is needed for such procedures. Granted, in the 60s it seems that the VA system was flawed and did not take care of our vets as it should have. Their was a general apathy towards the war, and maybe in retrospect that played some part in it? I wasn't there to know for sure, and research will only take you so far in understanding how things were at that time. Now, however, they seem a lot better. Cleaner facilities from the ones I have seen, technologically advanced, and seemingly run according to a better standard in the past.
Let's look at the number of people that are currently without health care in the US. I never really understood how you can take a "survey" of in this case, 29k Americans and then document that as 16% of a group of people that numbers over 228,000,000. This defies logic to me. You would have to have such a diverse group of people surveyed to even come close to an accurate picture. One would have to ask, what is the demographic for this survey? Is it inner city D.C. or The Hamptons? Anyways, this recent Gallup poll surveyed more than 29,000 individuals in June, 2009. Their survey showed that 16% of Americans over the age of 18 are currently without health care.
Let's put that in perspective. Roughly 228,000,000 Americans over the age of 18. 16.6% do not have health insurance so 36.5 million people are without any health insurance at all. This does not count medicare or medicaid recipients which one would assume would run that number up a bit. I also learned something very interesting while researching all of this. 41% of Hispanic Americans are uninsured, which is by far the largest class that is not insured. Next are those that make less than 36k a year at 28.6% uninsured and then those ages 18-29 at 27.6%, and lets face it, they don't need insurance really anyways.
So, the people that stand to benefit the most from this are the Hispanics, lower middle class, and young Americans. So, pretty much the people that elected Obama. His speeches lately though have left much to be desired on the topic of health care as he tries to cater his words to both the left and the right it seems. Good thing everyone is so broke still that the economy is more of a worry or I think people would be more worried about this issue than they seem to be.
Then theres the studies that show that out of the total 47 million or so Americans that are uninsured totally, there are additionally around another 25 million that are under insured due to "caps" in coverage and cost of drugs and additional variables. These are the really the people that need insurance the post. Get diagnosed for a brain tumor for example and your insurance most likely covers up to $150k. Cost of surgery and treatment tops 250k for this leaving the "insured" on the hook for the rest. This, in my opinion is the strongest case for a National health care program there can be. Limits on cost, coverage for all, and limits on drug costs for everyone. Equal health care should be the norm for Americans as it is for the rest of the "enlightened world", but this is not so.
Why?
