Health Reform for Dummies: Part Two

Health reform is a sticky and complicated issue so here are a few facts that should help push you in one direction or another on how much right the government has to tell us what to do with our health.

Are Forced Mandates A Necessary Evil?
When you drive a car in the United States you are required by law to get insurance. Why? It’s to ensure that if you wreck someone else’s car they get properly compensated for the damages. Currently there is no such requirement on health insurance, but it looks like there is about to be. So far nearly every version of a health reform bill has required all citizens to have some sort of health insurance.

But what business is it of the government’s if you don’t want to get coverage? Shouldn’t you be allowed to take the risk? The problem is that everyone else is currently paying for such risk taking. If you walk in to any hospital in the United States with a life threatening illness or injury they are required to treat and stabilize you. So if you don’t have insurance and you can’t afford the treatment you were given in the ER, the hospital simply has to absorb those costs. In turn they must charge higher fees on everything else just to keep up.

(You may be wondering why anyone bothers with health insurance if the hospital will treat you either way. The problem is that there is a limit to how much they can and will do for you for free. They will save you from dying in a car accident but they won’t perform elective surgery for a non-fatal condition like a knee replacement, or get you glasses when you start to lose your sight.)

The problems with mandates tend to come up when we talk about the conditions under which a mandate is given. Some worry that without proper reform of the rest of the system mandates make things worse, forcing people to buy overpriced and substandard plans.

Abortion Impacts You Too
United States is still pretty divided when it comes to the issue of abortion. So obviously the potential that tax payer money would go to fund abortions raised some red flags very quickly.

For now, the House version of the bill doesn’t grant federal funding for any plan that covers abortion, and the (slightly) softer Senate version requires customers to write separate checks for them. Which means that there is no way in which the government is directly funding abortions. However for those who believe that abortions are wrong and should be made illegal, any government plan that even allows for the possibility of getting them is out of the question.

Medicare Will Probably Not Be There When You Need It
In the simplest terms, Medicare is health insurance for old people. Since so much of the country gets coverage through work, and most people over 65 are retired, and old people have a very real and obvious need for health insurance, Medicare (or something like it) is pretty vital. Reform plans for Medicare include everything from expanding it to cover more people (currently you must be 65 or older to qualify), replacing it with something better, or cutting down costs and closing loop holes.

One very scary fact is that if things go on as they have been with no change, the Medicare program will be bankrupt by 2017. Sorry mom.

Medicaid Makes You Pay For Poverty Line Citizens
What Medicare is for the elderly, Medicaid is for the poor. If you and/or your family make less than a certain amount of money per year, you qualify to receive health care from this government subsidized system. Current reform bills look to expand who can be covered by Medicaid. The highest figure goes up to incomes that are 150% above the poverty line (the current poverty line in the continental US for an individual is $10,830).

Death Panels Want To Pull The Plug On Your Loved Ones To Save Money?
One of the most pervasive rumors about health care reform has been the “Death Panel.” Many are claiming that the new plans include nefarious groups of people that will come in and make your nursing home pull the plug on grandma. I said we wanted to avoid getting political, but on this issue all the evidence I could find only points to one conclusion: it’s just not true.

What they are referencing is the proposal that Medicare pay for voluntary meetings with doctors to discuss a person’s end of life options, and help them make and follow through with informed decisions. The reasoning behind this is that people are not dying the way they want to. A study of Medicare patients in 2007 showed that 87% of them wanted to die in their own home, but 80% of people pass away in hospitals and nursing homes. More than that, most people either don’t know their options or can’t access the paperwork to make it happen.

The big idea is that it’s grandma’s choice as to how she wants to go. Yes, she could decide in the meeting that she doesn’t want to be kept alive on machines. Or she could walk away having signed an order that says to keep her alive at all costs. It could be something as simple as giving the authorization to let her daughter make medical decisions for her.

And the biggest, most important bottom line is that these are voluntary. If an elderly person or their family is at all concerned that they might be convinced into signing something awful, they don’t have to sign up for the meeting at all. Period.

So there it is. Keep an eye and ear open for more news on how the new legislation might effect you!

FCC Disclosure: JBNI Biodrux is the Producer of this blog and 33+ Curiously Effective Herbal Naturaceuticals Including “LEITZIN” for Deeply Vibrant Emotional Empowerment and Fountin for Severe Menopause Sufferers.

Online Sources:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34609984/ns/health-health_care/

http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/09poverty.shtml

http://health.howstuffworks.com/health-care-reform5.htm