By Luther Hollis III
*Evening News at 6:00 – Health Care Reform
*WITV – “Angry-Mob Style” groups protesting Obama’s health plan
*The Post – Health Care Opposition
You get the picture?
Health care reform is the sizzling topic of America; a Google search of “health care reform” yields almost 23 million results. Polls are showing increasing opposition to the president’s ideas, and more Americans are becoming engaged in local town hall meetings and/or protests.
Polls – He said, she said, they said
Interesting results in Health care poll.
While I typically do not put much faith in polls, they do tend to give a roundabout idea of populace opinion. As you can see from this poll, after Obama’s plan has been explained, individuals are more apt to favor the plan.
Other poll results around the web offer similar results while some show entirely different views. The listing of various polls found at PollingReport.com show more of an equal split between those who favor or oppose Obama’s plan. The same goes for those who approve or disapprove how Obama is handling the health care issue.
Yet still, there are those who have not made a determination on the matter and just are not quite sure of how the health care issue should be handled.
What exactly is Obama’s plan?
I have scoured the government’s health reform website only to find a barrage of “Why we need health reform now” reports and statistics.
The closest I have gotten to knowing exactly what Obama’s healthcare plan is, was found at BarackObama.com. Of the nine page pdf file, roughly two of the pages are a listing of sources and the remaining pages offer Obama and Biden solutions to health care reform.
While I could divide the “plan” up and explain it to you, I think it is best that you actually read through it yourself.
My big question on the plan is, “Why is there approximately 1,000 pages in the proposed ‘America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009,’ when Obama lays his plan out in nine pages?” The answer to my big question is that there is an immense amount of information that Americans aren’t being told regarding the long form of the health care reform plan. Again, I am not going to decipher 1,000 pages of legalese for you, but you may review H.R. 3200 at your leisure.
O Canada!
I don’t know about you, but I am quite annoyed by the whole “Look at Canada or Great Britain, their own people hate their health care system, and it’s universal!” argument.
Quite frankly, America cannot be compared to Canada or Britain in relation to the health care system. The American population is higher than both Canada and the UK combined. America has more people uninsured than Canada has people! America, having a much higher population, has more doctors than either country, as well as hospitals and doctor offices.
In all reality, there really isn’t another country to compare America to when discussing health care.
The other thing that sort of irks me are the commercials by Shona Holmes. Holmes is a Canadian citizen and came to the United States for brain tumor surgery. She is the right-wing advocate against a universal health care system because she could not receive treatment in Canada in time to save her life.
First, kudos on her having the tumor removed. But, once again we cannot compare America to Canada. Perhaps if there were more hospitals and doctors in Canada, there would not be a wait for patients. Additionally, the reason she was able to receive the surgery is because she was able to pay for it with loan money from friends and family. For folks that don’t have health care in America, they usually do not have the type of friends and family to scrape up brain tumor surgery money. Holmes fails to mention all of the other times she has utilized Canadian health care and come out fine.
Isn’t some coverage better than no coverage?
I cannot possibly even think that there are people without health insurance who are not supporting a universal health care solution; this brings me to my final point of this session.
I have no health care at the current moment. I am on unemployment and COBRA was too expensive. I am somewhat on the fence with universal health care. This leaves me to think that those who do not support universal health care are somewhat well-to-do middle class Americans with health care. I deduce that they feel like more of their tax dollars will be diverted to another welfare program, and they may have to give up their private insurer for the government plan. The biggest fear are the overtones of socialism that universal health care emits.
Well, I present the following questions to the readers:
- Isn’t a government health care plan a good safety net if you ever fall on hard times and lose your private insurance?
- Does everyone you know have health insurance?
- Do you care about other people, less fortunate people who may not be able to legitimately afford private health care?
When I answer these questions, I lean more and more toward supporting universal health care.
Let me know what you think about H.R. 3200 – leave me comments, I’ll answer them.
*denotes fictitious headlines
6 responses so far ↓
Paul // August 6, 2009 at 1:15 PM
We first heard from the birthers, with their fake “birth certificate” in hand and with their fake outrage. These are the same under tones that you saw from Republicans during the confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor, “you are not like us” or “you are too different”, “you are not main stream”. And then they act surprised when people do not vote with them, they are lost, no core beliefs, too bad.
In my opinion the Republican Party has been taken over the most extreme religious right (people who love to push their beliefs on others while at the same time trying to take away their rights) and that’s who they need to focus on if they real want to win. Good Luck, because as they said in WACO, “We Ain’t Coming Out”.
It’s funny we hear Republicans say that they do not want “faceless bureaucrats” making medical decisions but they have no problem with “private sector” “faceless bureaucrats” daily declining medical coverage and financially ruining good hard working people. And who says that the “private sector” is always right, do we forget failures like Long-Term Capital, WorldCom, Global Crossing, Enron, Tyco, AIG and Lehman Brothers. Of course the federal government will destroy heathcare by getting involved, Oh but wait our military men and women and the Senate and Congress get the best heathcare in the world, and oh, that’s right, its run by our federal government. I can understand why some may think that the federal government will fail, if you look at the past eight years as a current history, with failures like the financial meltdown, Katrina, and the Walter Reed Scandal but the facts is they can and if we support them they will succeed.
Hollis333 // August 6, 2009 at 1:38 PM
Hello Paul, thanks for reading!
One of the issues that I feel hurts America more than anything is the whole Republican/Democrat thing. There is so much division (reminds me of the Civil War – a country divided amongst itself).
In saying this, you have brought up one of the most excellent points that I try to get people to understand,
“In my opinion the Republican Party has been taken over the most extreme religious right (people who love to push their beliefs on others while at the same time trying to take away their rights)…”
I am a Christian…but not a right-wing evangelical.
I have been saying for about the last 4 years, American Christianity is tainted…highly. I respect everyone’s choice of faith, and their lifestyle (glbt). I do not have to agree with them or condone their preferences, but that is where is stops. It is not my position to FORCE my beliefs on those who don’t believe like I do.
Their are wacko evangelicals who are just as extreme as the muslim jihadists, and that’s okay?
The devious part of it all is that evangelicals try to push Christianity on America through legislation. Did Jesus tell Pontius Pilate or Caesar to follow him?
AGH! I could go on forever about this but will save it for a blog post.
Anyway, I am not a Repub. or Dem., I think on my own and logically look at the issues. More Americans should give freethinking a try, perhaps Obama’s health care would start making sense.
KristinaWebb // August 6, 2009 at 4:12 PM
I have insurance as a student through Palm Beach Atlantic. Because I had problems with my lower back before being enrolled with their provider, I cannot receive treatment for my back problems, which may include a herniated disk from my time as a veterinary technician. My hypothyroidism is also considered a pre-existing condition, so they will not cover the cost of my Synthroid. It is so frustrating to have insurance, but to be denied treatment. Insurance providers do not care about people, but about the risk a person poses and how much money the company will have to pay to make a person better.
tvtbt // August 6, 2009 at 5:15 PM
Great article, Trey. This is a great post on health care!
G.L. Smith // August 7, 2009 at 4:39 PM
Good article Luther, and I’m someone who is completely opposed to any government involvement in healthcare.
To answer the three questions you asked of readers:
1. No, I don’t believe it is.
2. No, I don’t even have health insurance.
3. Sure, but I don’t believe government welfare is the correct answer.
The problem with healthcare is that there is already too much government in it and too many government regulations designed to favor the insurance and drug companies who lobby them, and work against the doctors and patients.
The government can’t run anything successfully. Entitlement programs are failures that are abused and serve as black holes for money that we don’t have any way. Public education is a joke, they can’t even run the Post Office successfully. If the government, regardless of which party is in charge, has taught us anything, it’s that they fail at practically everything.
A true free-market would be a much better option for real healthcare reform. They keep saying the middle class won’t see a tax increase, but you can’t start these kinds of massive programs with their insane spending without raising taxes to pay for it. Raising taxes isn’t an option though, at least on the middle class. So they may raise them for the wealthy, but that’ll be a disaster too. The most likely option ends up being printing the money, which only piles on debt and trickles down to the lower and middle class people as inflation and a weakened dollar.
Besides the economics being totally wrong for such a program, this government (and by that I mean the US government of at least the past century) has done absolutely nothing to warrant the trust of the American people.
To comment on a part of your response to Paul, you are correct that there is too much division in this country. Too many people define themselves along an imaginary line of left or right.
Ronald Reagan once said in a tremendous speech, “You and I are told increasingly that we have to choose between a left or right, but I would like to suggest that there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down–up to a man’s age-old dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order–or down to the ant heap totalitarianism, and regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course.”
I agree with that in a number of different ways. When the “right” used fear and deceit to force through legislation that caused America to give up freedom for alleged security (Patriot Act), they embarked us on the downward course. Likewise, I think the “left” is embarking us on the downward course with universal healthcare.
The less morons in Washington telling us what is best for us, the better off we all are.
Hollis333 // August 7, 2009 at 5:55 PM
Thanks for the input G.L. and the compliment.
I now have to dig a bit further to explain myself. I think you and I are of the same mind, just different angles on this one.
My envision of government health care is that it would be the go to plan for those who can’t afford private insurance. If a person has private insurance, keep it.
The government plan would be just another insurer out there that cost less. My 2 children are on the Florida Healthy Kids program here, I spend $15/month (premium) for them both. Anyone (kids) can get on the program; it doesn’t matter if the parents make $70,000 per year (they would have to pay more monthly, which is essentially like our income tax system – make more pay a little more). The coverage is just as good as private insurance. Daughter recently needed glasses…no problem. Dental visits too…no problem – $800 worth of dental work for daughter…$0 to me.
If the gov. plan was set up like that, I wouldn’t mind paying $100-300/month for my family coverage. I know some tax money will still have to be tossed into the program, but the program will allow anyone to be enrolled.
My hope is that the gov. plan would be set up like that. But I am not 100% sure of all the particulars – yet. I am also not 100% in support of Obama’s plan either – just leaning that way.
My next blog post is going to be about insurance again (in general – car, life, health, etc.). I will try to make sense of insurance period and investigate the impropriety of insurance co.
Insurance companies have taken greed to a new level.
More to come soon. THANKS FOR READING!