The Courier Electronic Edition
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ANDERSON COOPER: Five years after Hurricane Katrina, the CNN reporter returns to New Orleans as the Gulf Coast faces even newer challenges.
SOLUTIONS, NOT PROBLEMS: The University of Findlay plays host to competitive sailor who is a quadruple amputee.
ALSO IN WEEKEND: Area events,
prep boys and girls soccer and a trip to Niagra Falls.
BUILD IT UP: Keep tabs on the chickens as community blogger Chris Cooperrider builds her homestead by hand.
DROP A LINE: Whether you're always here or just passing through, visit and sign our online Guest Book on the Far Flung blog.
IMAGE BLOG: Go behind the scenes with Courier photographer Randy Roberts.
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11 Comments (2 pages)
Latest comments listed first.On September 17, 2009, the American Journal of Public Health reported that nearly 45,000 annual deaths are associated with lack of health insurance. A study, conducted at Harvard Medical School and Cambridge Health Alliance found that uninsured, working-age Americans have a 40 percent higher risk of death than their privately insured counterparts, up from a 25 percent excess death rate found in 1993.
The United States now ranks 31st in life expectancy according to the latest World Health Organization figures. This puts us equal with Kuwait and Chile. The United States is 37th in infant mortality and 34th in maternal mortality. A child in the United States is 2 1/2 times as likely to die by age 5 as in Singapore or Sweden. An American woman is 11 times as likely to die in childbirth as a woman in Ireland.
If the American people are to address health care, we should address the issue as a care for health. In this, each person must become their own primary health care provider. When we must care for our own health even with insurance, we reduce illness, engage in preventive and less costly long term care. When we reduce illness in children by preventive medical programs and place health care in generational economic terms, we save billions if not trillions.
The cost of programs that care for health is far less than caring for illness. It is possible this is not within the scope of insurance company economic interests or political campaign contributions. There are many ways to save on the costs of health care, each requires health care reform that provides care for health.
One must ask if there is any group whose health care costs have declined, who have had their scope of coverage increased, co-pays reduced or who have never had claim(s) denied. How many hours has Jim Jordan spent on the telephone or writing letters because the payment for some procedure was denied. I have, and believe that my family has fairly good health care coverage.
I can state from the experience of represented individuals and families forced to file bankruptcy due to health care expenses that we need to reform our systems. Perhaps if Jim Jordan spent time in bankruptcy creditor meetings, he would learn firsthand how the cost of health care impacts middle class American families. Perhaps if he ever actually represented doctors against a med-mal claim or an individual who suffered from medical negligence he may better understand.
These are lessons that Jim Jordan will not learn as our elected do nothing.
The healthcare plan currently being considered by President Obama and congress is certainly not perfect, but it is at least a step in the right direction. And this step is urgently needed. The CBO has estimated that this plan is deficit-neutral, meaning it will NOT add to the national debt. In fact, they estimate that the plan will acutually slightly reduce the national debt over a number of years and will begin to reduce healthcare costs in this country. Even with this plan in place, more work will be needed down the road. This will be a long process and this can be the first step.
We cannot afford the proposed version of healthcare "reform." Frankly, we cannot afford any version of healthcare reform that has been proposed thus far.
It does not take rocket science to figure out that the US Government is insolvent and that government leaders in Washington choose to ignore that fact.
In many ways, President Bush was a big spender. In many more ways, President Obama is an astronomical spender whose only rationale for spending has rooted in blame of predecessors.
The problem with your baited question is you cannot justify the need to pass healthcare "reform" by comparing the pending legislation to the decisions made on an unrelated topic by a previous administration.
The only parallel between the previous administration and the present administration is neither has taken seriously the FACT that the country is out of money and has been for a very, very long time.
The federal government has not been effective at operating any program from the original income tax, to medicare, to social security. Everything the government has touched has eventually needed to be "subsidized." The trouble with this, is the subsidy always comes from the wallets of the American taxpayers.
We cannot afford it, sir.
(And for future reference, it would behoove a self-professed future educator to have a little more respect for all Presidents, past and present. It only makes one appear as juvenile to refer to a President as "dumbo Bush.")