SICKO Petition for Universal Health Care
If you are sick and tired of the current FOR PROFIT American healthcare system than go to www.healthcare-now.org and sign the petition demanding passage of H.R. 676, also known as Medicare for ALL..
Almost 7,000 people have signed.
After 30 years of delays and propaganda regarding "socialized" medicine, the American people have had enough.
Whatever you think of Michael Moore, his film SICKO and larger than life personality and persistence have pushed this issue from the back to the front burner of the American conscience.
Sign the petition and get everyone you know to do so as well.
All,
The latest paper from The Brookings Institute re Universal Health Care (cross posted on the Age and Health Care Anxiety boards):
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MIXPIXLIX & DAZED, YOU ROCK!!!
Read the paper folks, sign the petition! If you don't already know what's going on, learn and educate yourselves. This is critical, for the health of US citizens and the health of our country. Our current healthcare system ranks between Cuba and Slovenia! How embarrassing is that? Until this is passed, the USA is NOT the best place in the world to live! It can be if everyone acts now! Don't be complacent and expect others to get the job done. There is strength in numbers, let's show them how strong we are!
This matters, please take a minute and do your part!
Do we want socialized medicine? Be careful what you wish for. Problems with our health care system are leading some to fall prey to proposals calling for a nationalized single-payer health care system like Canada's or Britain's. There are a few things that we should take into consideration before falling or these proposals.
London's Observer, (3-3-02) carried a story saying that an "unpublished report shows some patients are now having to wait more than eight months for treatment, during which time many of their cancers become incurable". Another story said, "According to a World Health Organization report to be published later this year, around 10,000 British people die unnecessarily from cancer each year--three times as many as are killed on our roads."
Part I
The Observer (12/16/01) also reported, "A recent academic study showed National Health Service delays in bowel cancer treatment were so great that, in one in five cases, cancer which as become incurable by the time of treatment." The story is no better in Canada's national health care system. The Vancouver, British Columbia-based Fraser Institute has a yearly publication titled, "Waiting Your Turn." Its 2006 edition gives waiting times, by treatments, from a person's referral by a general practitioner to treatment by a specialist. The shortest waiting time was for oncology (4.9 weeks). The longest waiting time was for orthopedic surgery (40.3 weeks), followed by plastic surgery (35.4 weeks) and neurology (31.7 weeks).
Canadians face significant waiting times for various diagnostics such aas computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and ultrasound scans. The median wait for a CT scan across Canada was 4.3 weeks, but in Prince Edward Island, it's 9 weeks. A Canadian's median wait for an MRI was 10.3 weeks, but in Newfoundland, patients waited 28 weeks. Finally, the median wait for an ultrasound was 3.8 weeks across Canada, but in Manitoba and Prince Edward Island it was 8 weeks.
Despite the long waiting times Canadians suffer, sometimes resulting in death, under federal law, private clinics are not legally allowed to provide services covered by the Canada Health Act. Regardless of this prohibition, a few black-market clinics service patients who are willing to break the law to get treatment. In British Columbia for example, Bill 82 provides that a physician can be fined up to $20.000 for accepting fees for surgery. According to a Canada News Article, "Shortage of doctors and nurses could hurt Medicare Reforms" (3-5-03), about 10,000 doctors left Canada during the 1990s.
Continued, please see part II
Part II Do we want socialized medicine?
There's help for some Canadian patients. According to a Canadian Medical Association Journal article, "U.S. Hospitals Use Waiting- Lists Woes to Woo Canadians" (2/22/2000), "British Columbia patients fed up with sojourns on waiting lists as they await tests or treatment are being wooed by a hospital in Washington state that has begun offering package deals. A second U.S. hospital is also considering marketing its services." One of the attractions is that an MRI, which can take anywhere from 10 to 28 weeks in Canada, can be had in two days at Olympic Memorial Hospital in Port Angeles, Wash. Already, Cleveland is Canada's hip-replacement center.
Some of our politicians hold up the Canadian and British nationalized health care systems models for us. You can bet that should we ever have such a system, they would exempt themselves from what the rest of us would have to endure.
There's a cure for our health care problems. That cure is not to demand more government but less government. I challenge anyone to identify a problem with health care in America that is not caused or aggravated by federal, state and local governments. And, I challenge anyone to show me people dying on the streets because they don't have health insurance.
Dr. Walter Williams
There are forms of cancer that are 100% curable, if found in time. What if a patient has a subdural hemorrhage?
Concussion, abdominal pain, head pain, chest pain? No one should be expected to wait for diagnostic tests, they are the primary means by which doctors make a diagnosis. What if you or your child needs a organ transplant?
Our health care system is in very serious trouble, and I know that the government is the primary cause.
Just food for thought gang.
Tango, on this issue, I vehemently disagree. The propaganda put out about the waiting time to see specialists and receive treatment in Canada is just that. When I had insurance, I often had to wait several weeks just to see my PCP. There are thousands of people in this country who die each year from treatable, preventable illnesses. In fact, it is believed that the actual count is far greater than the numbers reflect. Many more people are losing their lives here than in Canada. The Canadian system is not the gold standard. France has the best system from what I've read. The US needs to examine all of the other systems and use the best from each. This is the only industrialized nation that doesn't provide healthcare to it's citizens! We are number 27, I believe, on the list, between Slovenia and Cuba. It's utterly shameful! Everyone will win with universal healthcare with the exception of the HMO'S and pharmaceutical companies. The medicine makers will remain in business, their profit margins may not be as vast as they currently are. Oh well! Frankly, aside from employees' job security, I don't give a flip about HMO's. The current employees, those who actually do the work, can keep doing their jobs under the government system; they will still be needed. The CEO's and officers who are billionaires can retire, find new ventures or flip burgers for all I care.
The message below, copied from the Age forum, is but one sad example of the lack of healthcare quality we currently have.
"I am currently going after a hospital that misdiagnosed me. I have been in the legal system since 2002. Just filed last year...finally. Federal Torts are always so much fun! Misdiagnosed. They missed my #### cancer. It grew. I ended up with 2B stage. Chemo and radiation. Thought Blue Cross would handle it since we pay over 1,000.00 a month for PPO. They declared my chemo and radiation medically unneccessary. For those who are insured under this company....be prepared...according to my husband Blue Cross is once again trying to change the game plan. They are trying to make the doctors eat 50%."
It is possible that I have colon, bowel, ####, pancreatic or another form of cancer as I sit here and type. Since I have no health insurance, concern about waiting for necessary treatment is utterly meaningless; I have no way to obtain a diagnosis to begin with. Emergency rooms do not perform diagnostic tests on uninsured patients. When you have a problem, they treat it, give you a week's worth of pills and the name of a specialist. The fact you have no insurance, therefore cannot see the specialist is meaningless to them. I am much more likely to die because I have no healthcare than awaiting treatment for something I cannot have diagnosed. 2 weeks, 4 weeks, 10 weeks, 35 weeks, awaiting treatment is a hell of a lot better than no diagnosis, no treatment, just pain, misery, then death. Read some of the stories on http://www.healthcare-now.org/ ; we need this now. Even if/when legislation is passed, it won't happen before thousands more US citizens die for want of medical care.
I know you are a good person. Wouldn't you rather see those of us who have no medical care obtain treatment and survive, pull our young men and women out of Iraq, save their lives, and have more than ample funding for a working healthcare system? Our veterans of the bush-cheney-rumsfeld debacle are waiting 2 and more years for medical treatment. Our country is sending them to be killed, maimed, psychologically damaged, and won't even care for them.
Take a deep breath and settle down. I do not want Socialized Medicine in this country, and the information in my post is not propaganda, it is fact! I am a good person, and I am also an individual who has worked in the medical field, and insurance fraud for many years. I also have a son in Iraq, let's not go there okay. I am all to familiar with how the US government has neglected the health care of our military, the disabled, the patient with no insurance, and how they have allowed people from other countries, not here legally, to abuse health care in the US.
Socialized medicine would mean that the government has complete control, do you really want that? Look at the mess they have already created! We do not have a healthcare system in this country that works, and I think that has a great deal to do with the fact that the government is involved. Everyone in this country, US citizens, not illegal aliens, should have health care! I do not have the answers about how this can be accomplished, especially when we have an idiot in the White House who won't shut our borders, and you want the government more involved! When it is time to elect a president, we better make absolutely certain that the person we elect has a fail proof idea for improving health care in this country.
Of course I want everyone in this country to have health care coverage, but Socialized Medicine is not the answer.
EEO, if you had to wait weeks to see your PPO, you should have screamed bloody murder, and contacted your insurance company! He/she was violating their contract with them. You might also want to consider the quality of health care that you receive. You cannot compare the quality if care that Americans get, to those that Cuban's get. Doctors don't want the government to tell them how to practice medicine, neither do I. We have the finest doctors in the world in the US, now we need a healthcare system that works.
We want the same thing, we simply disagree about what that is. Diagnostic tests cannot wait, patients in this country deserve the finest care available, and we need to let doctors practice medicine rather than worry about whether or not they will be able to order the tests they feel necessary.
tb
Tango,
I was not alluding to the information in your post as propaganda, and intended no offense to you personally. Much of what is being said and written to support arguments against national healthcare has been distorted and disseminated by insurance companies, HMO's, drug companies and those with a far right political bent. I know you are a good person, said so in my post. I support our troops 100%, I want them back home, unharmed. (although for the record, I am NOT a Cindy Sheehan fan, I think she has done a disservice to her son's memory)
I agree that it will be a tough road and full of glitches. It is almost time to elect a new president. God help us all if we end up facing another four or eight years of destruction. Whether operated by the government or a NON profit established to undertake the task, profit needs to be removed, government funding is essential, and everyone who is in this country LEGALLY should receive free healthcare and prescription coverage. I have gone without despite paying a healthy share of taxes my entire adult life up until I became unemployed. I am entitled, as are millions of other Americans, to have my medical needs taken care of. (not to mention dental!)
As for my former insurance plan, I was a county government employee; the officials and managers who negotiate with the carriers aren't even on the county plan. They are either on their spouse's plans or plans from previous jobs from which they retired and ran for office. They don't have a dog {} in that fight, so they only care about keeping employer's costs as low as possible. Employee's out of pocket expenses have nearly quadrupled since I began working there in 1998. Many physicians quit accepting county employees as patients because the insurance co.--HMO--PPO won't pay them enough. Even elected officials at the local government level don't give a rat's rear end about their employees.
I'm not going to argue with you, I like and respect you way too much. This is one of about 4-5 issues of critical importance to me about which I am quite passionate and unyielding in my position.
Otherwise, do you have any idea about when your son gets to return home? Very soon, I hope!
Hi EEO,
I know you have had a terrible time with healthcare, and I believe this is one of the most important issues the American people must think about when electing a president. We don't need to hear what someone plans to do, I want a description of what they propose, and how they plan on making it work. I don't want to argue with you either as I like and respect you too, I just cringe when I think of the government getting more involved than they already are.
Every citizen in this country should have healthcare coverage, prescription coverage, and dental coverage. This insurance should also pay more than 50% of a claim for psychiatric care. HMO's tell doctors that they can only order certain tests, cannot refer a patient out to a specialist with out it going through utilization review, and doctors don't handle being told how to treat a patient by an insurance company very well, I've seen a couple explode. It is criminal that there are people in this country with no insurance, I agree 100%, but the government will only scr_w things up more should we allow them to become more involved than they already are.
I also hear you about insurance expenses, my insurance has tripled also, and I don't have the same coverage I used to. Pharmaceutical companies are making millions off the American people, and it has to stop. We are on the same page, I just don't have the answers. I wish I did, believe me.
I hate Cindy Sheehan too! I don't even know where my son is, he is deployed, but as a Navy Seal, that information
isn't revealed, even to family. That's fine with me as it is for his protection. Gee, maybe all of us on this forum could come up with a healthcare program that actually works! I know that the people must have a big say in what
politicians come up with, God help us all.
Didn't mean to upset ya, I'm sorry. Keep on smiling!
tb:)
Tango,
You didn't upset me! The health care mess is what upsets me. When I was employed, and younger, I complained about my copays going up and the increasing amounts being deducted from my paychecks each year. At the time, however, I had no concept of what things were like for those without insurance. Now I am one of them, and if I get a job with benefits I will gladly pay more taxes for the rest. I have sat in the county ERs with people who were obviously homeless, unbathed, coughing, hacking, one man was bleeding from a car injury he was in a few days earlier; another hospital sent him to Parkland in Dallas for surgery and they didn't even move him up on the list. I thought that was what triage is about. He was in great pain and had to sit in the waiting room to be taken in for surgery. Sheriff's deputies dropped off an inmate, uncuffed him and left him sitting with the rest of us. He put his hand in his pants and began to ####. These things occurring in a major metropolitan hospital is unacceptable.
I'm fairly intelligent, but I don't have the answer. I think it may need to begin with eliminating campaign contributions from political candidate's coffers. Of course, that only leaves the wealthy with resources to campaign. Maybe Ross Perot was a viable choice. Strange little man. In Texas, Kinky Friedman runs for governor every 4 years. Many of us were kind of hoping he'd win last election. Rick Perry is a bush clone, just better looking.
Although calling him eccentric is an understatement, I agree with a lot of Kinky's positions on TX issues.
Born in Chicago to Jewish parents, Dr. S. Thomas Friedman and Minnie Samet Friedman, Friedman moved with his family to a ranch in central Texas during his childhood. He had a keen interest in both music and chess at an early age. Friedman was chosen when he was 7 to be one of 50 local chess players to challenge U.S. grand master Samuel Reshevsky to simultaneous matches in Houston. While Reshevsky won all 50 matches, Friedman was by far the youngest competitor. Friedman graduated from Austin High School in Austin, Texas in 1962 and graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1966 with a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in Psychology while participating in the Plan II Honors program. He is also a member of the Tau Delta Phi fraternity. It was during his freshman year at the university that Chinga Chavin gave Friedman the nickname "Kinky," in reference to Friedman's curly hair.[1] Friedman then served two years with the Peace Corps on the island of Borneo in Malaysia with John Gross.[2][3] He has been featured in the news including 60 Minutes on CBS and made an appearance as one of Jay Leno's guests.
Friedman lives at