Posts Tagged ‘insurance’

Healthcare By The Numbers
Can we afford to be well?

Posted on the March 16th, 2010 under Government by Pete Gaeta

Taken from the White House blog with verification for the numbers.
  • 1 — in every six dollars in the U.S. economy is spent on health care today. If we do nothing, in 30 years, 1 out of every three dollars in our economy will be tied up in the health care system.
  • 8 — The number of people every minute who are denied coverage, charged a higher rate, or otherwise discriminated against because of a pre-existing condition.
    8 — The number of lobbyists hired by special interests to influence health reform for every member of Congress in 2009.
  • 41 — that’s the number of leading economists — including three Nobel Prize winners — who sent a letter to President Obama and Congress yesterday urging the swift passage of comprehensive health insurance reform to curb skyrocketing health care costs.
    41 — is also the percentage of adults under the age of 65 who accumulated medical debt, had difficulty paying medical bills, or struggled with both during a recent one year period.
  • 50/50 – If you’re an American under the age of 65, there’s roughly a 50/50 chance that you will find yourself without coverage at some point in the next decade.
  • 625 – That’s the number of people who lost their health insurance EVERY HOUR in 2009
  • $1,115 – that’s the average premium for employer-sponsored family coverage per month in 2009. Annually, that amounts to $13,375 – or roughly the yearly income of someone working a minimum wage job.

What Canadians Think Of Their Health Care

Posted on the May 26th, 2009 under Articles by Pete Gaeta

You won’t see much of this on TV in our country. The huge corporations that control health care in the U.S. stand to lose too much if we move to a national single-payer health care system. But what would be better for us? Thanks to The Real News for bringing us what some Canadians had to say.


More at The Real News

Don’t Believe Everything You Hear About Healthcare And The Stimulus Bill

Posted on the March 6th, 2009 under Government by Pete Gaeta

My friend Tony was alarmed by some claims made about provisions in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Stimulus Bill) by Betsy McCaughey in an article on Bloomberg.com (and possibly from other sources, but that’s the one he cited). My response wouldn’t fit in a Facebook note, so I’ll post it here instead.

Couple things first – the version of the stimulus bill cited in the article is the House version and NOT the bill that was passed, that being said, there is nothing in either of them that addresses the doctor/patient relationship or what kind of treatments can be covered. The topics in the bill address the creation and maintenance of medical records and the creation of an IT system to handle them. There will be a LOT of IT work there to keep schmoes like us busy.  It also includes some funding for studies to provide information to doctors so they don’t have to rely exclusively on pharmaceutical and medical equipment salespeople to keep up with current treatment options.

Though I can’t deny the need for such a system, my big concern is privacy, and there are extensive stipulations in the bill about privacy and access, including recourse and penalties if there is a breach.

The reference to  “Meaningful users” refers to payments to be made to healthcare professionals as incentive for adopting the government system. I’m not sure what McCaughey was getting at with that, but she totally mischaracterized what is in the bill.

The funding in the bill for comparative effectiveness research supplies grants to public and private organizations to provide information needed by healthcare workers, but does not stipulate any form of  restriction or limitation on how that information is used.

There is no mention of “means-testing” in the bill, as the bill is not a health care plan. In any case, means testing (in a health care plan) would affect how much people of various incomes pay for their coverage and NOT what is covered.

The only reference in the healthcare section to “protocols” is a recommendation that open-source solutions are used.

Conclusion:  Either Betsy McCaughey didn’t read the bill, read it wrong, or just hoped that YOU wouldn’t read it and accept her paranoid ideological viewpoint as fact.

And there’s my Friday night – thanks Tony!