Health Care Reform

It was the strangest thing, but I was just walking along, minding my own business, when I fell off the edge of the internet! Thus explains my extended hiatus from blogging: it's taken me awhile to claw my way back up to my keyboard. I'm still a little tired from the effort, so my first foray back into blogging is borrowed.

Yesterday, the San Francisco Chronicle printed a letter to the editor written by my father, a wise man indeed. I am reprinting it here. Without further ado...

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Health Care Reform
How history will judge us

Soon Congress will pass a watered-down version of a health care bill that falls far short of what most governments see as routine and responsible.

Historians of the future will look back on this time and wonder why Uncle Sam could not manage to provide easily accessible health care to his citizens. They will wonder at our unwillingness, unlike every other industrialized nation of the 2000s, to offer government-provided medicine to those unable to afford private plans. "What were they thinking?" historians will ask.

Here's the answer: We are thinking that profit margins for health care and pharmaceutical corporations are more important than treating and preventing disease and treating injuries for our citizens. Perhaps someday the priorities of this nation will improve, but for the present, our intentions are clear.

Signed,
MY DAD

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Post Pediatrician Ramblings

I took some kids to the doctor today. One had a well-visit. Three had to get flu shots. One had to be checked for wheezing, a follow-up to a visit two weeks ago. That's a lot of stuff, right? Well, that's nothing compared to the to-do list I left with. Check this out:

-- Get eye exam for one kid. (Poor thing bombed her in-office eye exam...just like her momma!)
-- Get chest xray for one kid.
-- Get KUB xray for one kid.
-- Fill prescription -- two different meds -- for one kid
-- Get over the counter meds for one kid.
-- Bring one back in a month.

In the next 5 weeks, four of my kids will have their regular well-visits. Some people think of November and December as the Holiday Season. I think of those months as "Time to Reconnect with My Pediatrician Season." Which is nice, because I have a wonderful pediatrician, and love chatting with her. How many of you are facebook friends with your pediatrician? See, she's just that awesome. In fact, she's so awesome that when she moved her practice to a town 25 minutes away from us, we stayed with her; we make that drive because we can't imagine anyone else caring for our kids. With gas prices as high as they are, this means that you have to be pretty sick to warrant a trip to the doctor's office at my house.

So by the time I picked them up at school, got them all in and out of the doctor's office, got them all fed (I heart In-n-Out), stopped briefly at home to get them changed into soccer gear, got them to their practice field, raced to pick up the little one from daycare, swung by the bank to make a deposit that reaaaaallllly needed to go in today, stopped by the pharmacy to drop off the prescription, I had been in my car for over four hours. Thank you Bay Bridge malfunction for making the roads ridiculous today.

In case you are wondering, if you spend 4+ hours in a car with rambunctious children and too many containers of soda/coffee, here are a few things that might happen to you:

Your 7-year old girl might spill her root beer on your 9 year old son's absolute favorite drawing, the one he did of a monkey in a school desk, raising his hand and saying: "Would you mind repeating everything you said after 'LISTEN CAREFULLY'?" And he might respond with a howl filled with so much despair that the flowers on the side of the road will wilt.

Your 5-year old might dump her french fries on the floor with just the right timing so that the 9 and 11 year old boys will smush them into the carpet when they climb over the backpacks in a headlong effort to get into the back seat.

Your 5-year old might kick your coffee cup while attempting to hightail it out of the front seat, where she is not supposed to be because "I have a cup of coffee there and don't spill it!" The coffee could get all over the diaper bag and all over the Kindergartner's homework assignment.

Your 3 year old might flick a straw full of Dr. Pepper in your face as you are trying to unbuckle her...which means you might walk around the house for 5 or 10 minutes with Dr. Pepper speckles all over your glasses before you manage to clean them.

You might notice, after getting rid of three of them at the soccer field, that a few more of them also spilled their fries in the back seat.

You might yell a lot at your offspring. You might hear yourself saying quite a few things you thought you'd never say, like "You never learn, you never ever learn!" because you've heard that one before, in your own childhood, and could have sworn you were immune from such nonsense.

You might arrive home with no plan for dinner, but an acute awareness of where exactly in the fridge is the last bottle of Pipeline Porter made with 100% Hawaiian Kona Coffee.

Put a fork in me: I'm done.

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Support the Public Option

Another cut and paste from MoveOn.org; please join me!

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After months of delay, the full Senate is about to debate and vote on landmark health care legislation. But first, Senator Harry Reid and Democratic leaders have a big decision to make:

Will the Senate consider real health care reform with a public health insurance option, or a watered-down compromise full of giveaways to Big Insurance?

I just signed a petition asking Sen. Reid to include a strong public health insurance option in the Senate's health care bill. Will you join me at the link below?

Click here to sign the petition!

Thanks!

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Tell Me Why

I have been thinking about health care lately -- go figure -- and I cannot for the life of me figure out why a person would be opposed to universal coverage for all.

I suppose I sort of get it, if you are happily covered by good insurance that you've never really needed. And I understand (although disagree with) the fear that insurance provided by the government would be inefficient at best and corrupt at worst. And I am familiar (although in disagreement) with objections based on opposing social entitlements. We've heard quite a few voices against the public option citing these and other concerns related to covering everyone.

As an aside, since our country already has a public, albeit not universal,option --Medicare -- we can see evidence of how it works. My own family was recently the beneficiary of the public option: Last Spring, my father, who has a private plan but also has Medicare because of his age, was in a serious accident while riding his bicycle. He was able to receive the care he needed without going broke. Had he needed to rely solely on a limited private plan, severely breaking his pelvis, which was already ordeal enough, could have been financially catastrophic for my folks. What I really want to know is, who could object to that protection?

But here's who I want to hear from: the uninsured, or underinsured, person, who has gotten sick, who is unable to access care because he or she cannot afford it, and who is physically suffering and may even die from a lack of medical care that would otherwise address their health issues...and who is opposed to universal health care. And if you exist, please, please, explain to me why you oppose an option that would enable you to recover from your illness and live a healthy life. Or if not that person, then someone who loves that person, and is still opposed to universal health care.

What do you say to counter the notion that no one should die because they can't afford care and no one should go broke because they get sick?

I don't think anyone else could ever convince me that an argument against universal health care even makes sense; I have yet to hear, in all the cacophony of fear and confusion, a single good reason why citizens in the richest country on earth should suffer and even die because they cannot afford insurance in a system whose costs are out of control, artifically high, and ass-backwards. If you suffer under the current system and still have rational reasons for opposing the public option, then YOU are the person I want to talk to. You are the person who might help me understand this debate.

I'm 100% certain you will not convince me to change my own mind, but I am desperate to gain some insight into what the other side could possibly be thinking.

Are you out there? Tell me why.

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Sign Health Care Petition

President Obama will give a major speech next week laying out what he thinks needs to be in the health care bill.

This is a critical crossroads. The president needs to hear that Americans are counting on him to stand up to the status quo and fight for real reform with a strong public health insurance option.

I just signed a petition telling President Obama I'm counting on him to fight hard for a bold health care reform bill. Can you join me at the link below?

http://pol.moveon.org/hcobama

Because no one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick.

(Most of this is a cut and paste job from moveon.org; thanks for joining the cause!)

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Thank You, Barney Frank

Barney Frank speaks the truth. Can we have a little more intelligence in this debate, please?????



I am shocked that the effort to improve health care in this country is being greeted with such fierce, nasty, ridiculous opposition. What planet indeed?

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A Real Question

Can someone please enlighten me? Why does it make sense for health care to be subject to market forces? Why do people object to more people getting health insurance? To those who oppose the public option, why is it acceptable for one person to have access to cancer treatment while another person must suffer through cancer without health care?

I do not understand how the free market can possibly be more important than the health and the very lives of our citizens. Shouldn't the free market serve the people, and not the other way around?

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