Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Healthcare Thoughts

See my thoughts at:
Speed's In From the Ledge Post
Leave comments here or there.

CNN Healthcare Timeline
Healthcare Reform

5 comments:

R-Five said...

The common theme to all of your points is education. That people would applaud as they have when told their children can stay on their parent's plan until age 26 is astounding to me.

A person versed in history and economics understands that the unequal distribution of prosperity that is capitalism is what elevated health care and life expectancy. In Dickens' day, still nostalgically thought to be some lost golden age, infant mortality was horrific by today's standards.

John said...

I also found the "fake sun" tan tax interesting.

I don't think Dicken's thought his day was too great for the needy...
Scrooge Ignorance and Want

The question is are we smart enough to keep improving healthcare, while ensuring everyone has basic healthcare? Or do we keep sacrificing lives in order to promote improvement?

It is hard to justify that some American citizen's can not attain adequate preventative healthcare in a country as wealthy as ours. Ignoring all the other factors, this does seem wrong.

Anonymous said...

I think it's the smart thing and the right thing. I started to post over at Speed's, but the anti- side is so angry right now that I don't think it does any good to try to discuss either the big picture or the finer points.

There were times in the past 8 years when I was very very angry about some important policy I strongly disagreed with. Eventually the sun rose in the east, the earth kept turning, and we all moved on. I hope we can do that again.

--Annie

R-Five said...

I think we all share the sense of community to look after the less fortunate. It's the leap of faith that government will do this better than charities where we divide. Look at all the great hospitals and foundations out east, so many of them built by private philanthropy 100 years ago or so.

I want the government to discriminate between the unfortunately, the clueless, and the scammers. Charities do. Take good care of the unfortunate, get them on their feet again if possible. Less so the clueless, that they might get a clue. But bread and water for the scammers, if that.

John said...

I donate a pretty big chunk to the United Way. I find it an efficient and convenient way to support a diverse group of pretty good agencies. So I found the following story fairly interesting when a single mother told me it during a United Way drive at a previous employer.

It turns out that her son had been born with some form of hearing loss. Since she was having hard times, she approached several of the agencies funded by the United Way to ask for medical/financial assistance. From her perspective they were not able to help them with their problem. As it turns out the entity that did help her son get the necessary hearing aids was one of the MN Child Healthcare programs. Therefore she was not a very big fan of the charities.

My guess is she was somewhere in between the unfortunate and clueless crowds... And maybe she did not look hard enough.

I think though that the charities are severely limited in what they can do. And I am not sure the soup kitchens downtown evaluate their guests to determine if they are unfortunate, clueless or scammers.

Finally, which charities are you thinking of that help with preventative care in the Twin Cities metro. I am guessing that the free clinics focus on fixing the ill, not preventing the conditions. But that is just a guess.

Thoughts?