August 25, 2009 by vortmax.

From the UK Guardian:

In the furious debate gripping America over the future of its health system, one voice has been lost amid the shouting. It is that of a distinguished gynaecologist, aged 67, called Dr Joseph Manley.

For 35 years Manley had a thriving health clinic in Kansas. He lived in the most affluent neighbourhood of Kansas City and treated himself to a new Porsche every year. But this is not a story about doctors’ remuneration and their lavish lifestyles.

In the late 1980s he began to have trouble with his own health. He had involuntary muscle movements and difficulty swallowing. Fellow doctors failed to diagnose him, some guessing wrongly that he had post-traumatic stress from having served in the airforce in Vietnam.

Eventually his lack of motor control interfered with his work to the degree that he was forced to give up his practice. He fell instantly into a catch 22 that he had earlier seen entrap many of his own patients: no work, no health insurance, no treatment.

He remained uninsured and largely untreated for his progressively severe condition for the following 11 years. Blood tests that could have diagnosed him correctly were not done because he couldn’t afford the $200. Having lost his practice, he lost his mansion on the hill and now lives in a one-bedroom apartment in the suburbs. His Porsches have made way for bangers. Many times this erstwhile pillar of the medical establishment had to go without food in order to pay for basic medicines.

Even more to think about.

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August 25, 2009 by vortmax.

This Washington Post article highlights what I view as the big hypocrisy in this whole partisan effort to sink the “public option:”  We already have a big, government run health system:  Medicare. And most people, including Republicans, don’t want Medicare touched.

Opponents of health-care reform should be chanting “No more Medicare!” The arguments that have been made against the public option (a health insurance plan sold and administered by the federal government) apply with equal or greater force to Medicare.

Plan designed by the government? Check. Government bureaucracy? Check. Subsidized? Check. (Medicare does not have to fund itself solely by charging premiums to its members; instead, it is largely funded by a payroll tax levied on all workers.) Able to drive private insurers out of business? Check. Medicare dominates the over-65 market.

If you are against the public option, you should be deeply, fundamentally, bitterly against Medicare.

The public option is not exactly “Medicare for all” (since Medicare is a “single payer” system), but it is like Medicare in that it would be run by the government.

Would the public option lead to everyone hopping on board with the government plan?  Possibly, thus resulting in a huge burden on our government and reduced income for private health insurance providers.  That’s another issue to be debated.

But please stop with the hypocritical cry of “No government run health system!  But don’t touch Medicare! “

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