My Problems with the Affordable Care Act aka #Obamacare

So, I had an email exchange with my mom discussing the Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare. Personally, I don't like the official name for the act as it functions like the name of the Patriot Act did. "What do you mean, you don't want to vote for the 'Affordable Care Act'?? Don't you want people to be able to afford health care?? You horrible monster!"

Regardless, my mom had some good points but ultimately I think there are a lot of things we simply aren't discussing about the entire issue of health care. I addressed these things in my email reply. I also addressed her understandable confusion regarding the government shutdown. Here is what I sent her:

Thanks for your thoughts, Mom. I agree with most of them and you're right, Obamacare does help a lot of people get healthcare.

However, I feel that a few things are being overlooked:

1) it's not that I don't want to pay anything for health care. It's that all I want to pay for is health care. Not pharmaceutical company profits, not for treatments instead of cures, and definitely not for health insurance company executives' yachts and multiple homes. I believe that there is something deeply immoral about making lots of money of off sick people.

2) you assume that health insurance companies want to pay for your health care. They don't. They are all "for profit" companies and thus MUST put profits first (that's the law, I believe). So, the medicine and procedures you need them to pay for will be scrutinized by insurance company employees. If insurance companies paid for what ever the doctor or you wanted done, I'd feel much better about the health insurance industry.

3) our country could do a national health system, like the UK's. We tax American citizens for loads of things--why not tax just a bit more for health care the way we already tax for social security or any number of other things? Imagine how much money small businesses would save by not having to pay for their employee's health care anymore.

Ultimately, my biggest problem with Obamacare is the mandate. I haven't seen one compelling argument for why every American should be *forced* to have health *insurance*. The best argument I've heard is that it's because if I get into a car accident, get medical care and don't pay for it, the hospital has to spread the cost of my care across everyone else's bill in order to stay profitable. To that, I say: "So, if a hospital can't stay profitable, but is clearly providing an important service, then shouldn't we all be taxed so it can stay open and continue providing those important services?"

Not every problem in the world can be solved by a corporation. We seem to not know this as a country.

As for this stupid government shut down thing? It seems to me like the Republicans throwing a hissy fit. Remember when the government shut down during the Clinton years? It was for a couple of days and we barely noticed. In the great scheme of things, it's no big deal. It's not like Al Qaeda is waiting to attack.

To me, America is about freedom and, to me, freedom is about choice. Not giving Americans a choice regarding how we treat our own bodies is positively unAmerican, to me. This mandate is a tax on life, itself.

My pal Mari needs some surgery--help her out with a couple bucks, wouldja? http://mariadkins.com

I posted this on my Tumblr yesterday but since Mari is still a hundred bucks short, I thought I should post it again... read on or just go here and give her a hand if you can with the Chip-In widget at the top of her sidebar, or, like I said, read on:

mariadkins:

i need a hysterectomy

And most of you are probably looking at that and thinking, “Duh, we know you and know that.” But here’s what you don’t know. I’m pasting in a note I sent around via e-mail and Facebook, and please excuse the lack of caps use. As I stated in the note, I hesitated to start another ChipIn, but I did it anyway; the link is at the bottom. Also, if you’d like to copy my widget to your website, please use this link. (by the way, Preston said my note sounded pitiful lol)

i called robin, the surgeon’s nurse, back *again* this morning because i’d never heard from her. she called me about half an hour ago and said that the clinic can’t schedule my hysterectomy until i pay a deposit. (i have medical financial aid through UK because i don’t qualify for medicaid and preston couldn’t ever afford to add me to his insurance) she said the medical aid office should have called me, and i told her that this is the first time i’d heard from anybody since connie called me on the tenth. she told me who to call and gave me the direct number.

i called and left a message, which seems to be what my life is made of any more – leaving messages.

shannon called me back, and we talked, and she said she hadn’t even received my paperwork until half an hour before. i checked the call log on my phone – that would have been when i talked to robin and around the time i left the message for shannon. anyway, shannon pulled up my records and said that i have to pay a $470 deposit. we discussed that and when my aid expires, and she told me to keep her number, etc, etc.

so i’ve sat here and absolutely bawled and have given myself a killer headache in the process, of course. i have no idea where we’re going to find $470.

i did that chip-in thing for my new computer last month so i’m very hesitant to turn around and start another one for something that’s this serious.

any suggestions, advice, help any of y’all can give me/us would be a blessing. otherwise, the way things looks, this is something i’m just going to be stuck with for the rest of my life. i just want to sit and scream.

http://mariadkins.com/i-need-a-hysterectomy

Here's where I came in with my standard rant on our wonderful health care system that requires people to *always* have a job with health benefits if they want to actually have health care:

Why is the most basic human right the first to be overlooked our society?  The right to health care is a fundamental need every single human on the planet will eventually require and yet, it's not guaranteed in the country that claims it is the most free of all the countries.

Mari is a really great person and needs a hand.  If you can help, please click the link above and give her chip-in fund a few bucks.  Anything can help.

I just get so angry that good people can't just get the health care they need.  No one's perfect and we can't all have jobs all the time.  Society is simply too flawed to guarantee employment for all, so what are the folks without a stable dayjob to do?  What good is society if it can't serve all of its members?

You must admit that forcing people to always have jobs with benefits is not fair and does not match up with our promised right of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I mean, how can you pursue happiness if you're sick? How can you live if you're dying? How can you be free if you're forced to have a job at all times?

Worse yet, we live in a society that does not guarantee a job for every last one of us. Therefore, our society doesn't guarantee our health. And since we are under a much bigger threat from things like cancer and heart disease than we are from foreign invaders or terrorists, what the hell is our government really doing for us, anyway?

We are supposed to live in a free market country--how come the USG has such shitty customer service?

So if you agree with me and want to help my pal Mari, head over to http://mariadkins.com and check out the Chip-In widget in her sidebar. I'm sure she'll appreciate it!

Ballpoint Adventures for April 25, 2012: Barbie explains Obamacare--I MEAN--cheese to Billy pt.2

I wrote this back around April 9, 2012, when the Supreme Court was considering what to do about Obamacare. I think it should be junked and our entire system redone in the style of the UK's NHS. In this strip, and the one for April 24th, I explain why.

Ballpoint Adventures for April 24, 2012: Barbie explains Obamacare--I MEAN--cheese to Billy pt.1

I wrote this back around April 9, 2012, when the Supreme Court was considering what to do about Obamacare. I think it should be junked and our entire system redone in the style of the UK's NHS. In this strip, and the one for April 25th, I explain why.

Ballpoint Adventures for April 10, 2012: Oh, OBAMACARE!

I drew this back while the Supreme Court was considering whether to strike down Obamacare completely or just strike parts of it. Regardless, I had things to be said. Sadly, I was swamped with work and avoiding sickness, so I couldn't draw the next two strips in the series, or even post this one until today, 4/23/12.

Screencap source: http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2010-08-07-cancer-costs_N.htm

From the article:

In 2009 and 2010, as the economic collapse shuddered across the globe, oncologists in California noticed a troubling trend: Three patients who had had serious tumors under control for as long as eight years reappeared in the clinic with massive cancer regrowth which, in one case, required emergency surgery.

In retrospect, this downturn in fortunes should have been predictable: The economic recession had forced the patients to discontinue a life-extending medication.

“In all three cases, the patients developed new symptoms and came in after having missed an appointment or two without us knowing that they had stopped the drug,” said Dr. Katie Kelley, co-author of a letter-to-the-editor in the Aug. 5 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, which describes the cases. Kelley is also assistant clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

And there have been other such cases, both at UCSF and around the nation, either of patients stopping medications altogether or rationing in the hopes of making precious supplies last longer.

From me:

For purely arbitrary, man-made reasons, people are suffering and dying, after finding medicine they need to survive too expensive.

What is the difference between a mugger shooting you on the street for your wallet and a pharma company charging you more than you can afford for the drugs you need to live?

Why do we think the question “Your money or your life?” is a reasonable question to be asked?

What is wrong with our brains????

Episode 8 of the 666cast featuring a rant against our leaders, both elected and paid for! Yep, in this week’s 666cast, I take to task the folks who are leading us. Whether elected or not, they have a responsibility to do the right thing to keep society and the people who live in it safe and moving forward. However, none of the guys at the top are doing it. Whether it’s Obama or the bankers or the head of BP, we’re getting screwed big time and our society is in trouble because of it. Please subscribe to the feed. What do you think?

Episode 8 of the 666cast featuring a rant against our leaders, both elected and paid for!

Yep, in this week’s 666cast, I take to task the folks who are leading us.  Whether elected or not, they have a responsibility to do the right thing to keep society and the people who live in it safe and moving forward.  However, none of the guys at the top are doing it.  Whether it’s Obama or the bankers or the head of BP, we’re getting screwed big time and our society is in trouble because of it.

Please subscribe to the feed.

What do you think?

Oh the Hypocritical Lies: Death Panels have been around for years...

Oh the Hypocritical Lies: Death Panels have been around for years..., originally uploaded by thepetecom.

UNBELIEVABLE.

This is what I'm calling the voices against health care reform.

These people are either the biggest idiots or the biggest liars (with Sarah Palin, it's very hard to tell).

So, Palin and others are "scared" there will be these government death panels deciding who lives and who dies based on how sick you are. What a crock. Companies have had this power for years now. Salon.com recently did a piece called "The 'death panels' are already here." The Salon piece mentions the case of Nataline Sarkisyan, who died in 2007 after insurance company Cigna dragged their feet because they decided a liver transplant wouldn't save her life (she later died without the transplant).

Sounds pretty death-panelrific to me, but I remembered a case from further back--after about 30 seconds of Googling I found an excerpt on Michael Moore's YouTube page from his old series The Awful Truth where he explored the case of Christopher Donahue, a man who's insurance company, Humana, was refusing to pay for the pancreas transplant he needed to survive. Michael Moore held a funeral for Donahue outside of Humana's headquarters, which Donahue, himself, attended. Before long, Humana caved and paid for the transplant, but as we saw years later with Nataline Sarkisyan, not all companies are as "generous" as Humana.

So, the next time you hear someone praise the free market for all things, think about this kind of situation.

If we truly believe all humans have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, doesn't the "right to life" mean we have to make sure everyone can get health care? And if companies are going to put their "right" to make as much money above our right to life, doesn't that mean that these corporations are anti-American and, really, anti-human? Pretty bizarre that they're in the "business" of providing health care insurance when they look to ways to avoid doing just that.

So, UNBELIEVABLE, once again, that these idiots or assholes honestly think the government would institute death panels when they've existed for over a decade. That's right--the Michael Moore show, The Awful Truth episode I described above was aired in 1999.

We've had death panels since last century--thanks, Sarah Palin (and others), for finally getting around to noticing just now.

Economic Crash Now Directly Risking Human Lives

I first found this Salon article through a posting at DisInfo.com a great Digg alternative for folks who like to think for themselves but still like to see what sites/articles other, like-minded, folks are checking out. The Salon.com article in question is entitled "Is a shortage of patients hurting hospitals?.

The headline alone turned me off to reading the rest of the article, though--the DisInfo post points out: "Hospitals, doctors, and dentists are of late experiencing a shortfall of patients, as people who have been laid off lose their insurance (and thus the ability to pay for treatment)"

So, this is where the rubber hits the road--the private health care industry, that forces all Americans to pay for health care is now too expensive for a growing number of Americans to pay for.

The economic downturn is now putting a tremendous number of human lives at risk.

And it's all in the name of making a profit, making a living, keeping businesses alive.

So, now businesses are more important than the lives of average Americans.

THIS is where our wonderful system has taken us.

Maybe now we can agree that capitalism unbridled is a bad idea.

Maybe now we can agree that the free market in all corners, unregulated, is a bad idea.

Perhaps, at this point, we can move toward universal health care for everyone since so many more of us now, thanks to the mistakes/insane greed on Wall Street and in Washington DC, can't afford a doctor's visit.

I don't see any other way to cut this one.

You can't blame all the people who got laid off during this economic crash for getting laid off.

Free health care MUST happen now.

If only our politicians would realize this.

Bizarre Health Statistic from NYT Labor Reporter

So, I'm finally getting back to listening to my podcasts after moving to NYC and I'm listening to Democracy Now today when I hear the guy who wrote the book "The Big Squeeze" say something in an interview with Juan Gonzales. Check it out: "And another, you know, health statistic that surprised me when I was researching the book was, United States spends about $6,500 per person for health coverage, which is more than twice what France and Germany spent, about two-and-a-half times what Japan spent, yet, you know, they have universal health coverage." (source: http://www.democracynow.org/…enhouse_on )

I found this pretty damn surprising. If true, it would mean that, put it simply, the capitalist model (vs. the "socialist" one everyone says is bad) delivers crappier health care for most people and costs more, as well.

Our leaders are *seriously* letting us down, it would seem. (In another way, I mean.)

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