"Insuranization" of Medicine

Radical right-wingers speak of the evils of "socialized medicine" when they attack plans such as the S-CHIP or the health care plans of Hillary Clinton. They act as if the American medical system is some perfect system and that adoption of government programs such as S-CHIP will ruin this perfect system for everyone. They say that if the government assumes a bigger role in providing or guaranteeing medical care for Americans, it will lead to government telling citizens what kind of care they can get and who can provide that care.

What they don't talk about, however, is the fact that for most of us we already exist in such a system, only it isn't the government telling us what care we can get or who can provide it, it is private insurance companies. Companies that aren't accountable to anyone but their owners and officers.

This "insuranization of medicine", to coin a phrase, means that the medical care that you get is dependent on decisions made by your insurance company. The insurance company decides what care is allowed and what care is not allowed. It decides what should be covered and what shouldn't be covered. It decides what medical providers you will be allowed to see and what providers you won't be allowed to see, if you want reimbursement for the cost of those providers.

This system has led to the average cost to employers for medical insurance coverage for a family of four being, on average, $11,500 per year and has led to the average family of four paying $3000 a year toward their own insurance coverage. These figures, by the way, are from the National Coalition for Health Care.

The issue before Americans isn't whether some powerful institutions are going to control their health care and dictate their coverage. That ship has sailed. The issue before Americans is who will hold such institutions accountable, the public or private individuals? That's the real issue and that's what Americans who want health care reform should be pointing out to Americans.

Reader Submission: Mental Illness and Violent Crime

America Needs a Mental Health Initiative to Help Heal Society

To protect the public from potential criminals while safeguarding the individual from Big Brother is to walk a treacherous tightrope. So far, this delicate balancing act has been performed poorly by too many public servants.

The abundance of violent crime in inner-city and other high-risk areas illustrates that the nation is losing the struggle against dangerously anti-social behavior. Add school and workplace shootings to this sorry picture and the social disorder of modern America becomes disturbingly clear.

The root causes of most of twenty-first century American crime are not poverty and lack of economic opportunity. The generator of so much of our country’s criminal hostility is the alarming number of people struggling on their own with various forms of serious mental illness. The massacre at Virginia Tech only highlights this phenomenon. How else can we explain the increasing senselessness of American criminal violence?

America needs an urgent response from its elected leadership. The crisis of untreated mental illness cries out for national attention. In the crime and health care debates, mental health issues and their consequences for society have been given minimal treatment for far too long.

So much of our focus is directed at security measures that the necessity of providing better mental health evaluation and assistance is given unacceptably limited attention. According to The New York Times, there is only one clinical staff member on the typical college campus for every 1,697 students. This is a severely minimalist approach for reaching out to students in need in light of the fact that depression and substance abuse are growing epidemics on university and high school campuses. The longer that the nation gambles with this crisis, the greater the odds that crippling social disorder will result in the future.

Today’s America is fast evolving into a morally shocking society. Though segregation, discrimination, and racial violence have become targets of government action, national institutions have found themselves rather helpless at bringing the country’s moral, political, and financial resources to bear on the growing plague of serious untreated mental illness.

Teenage gang members savagely beating old people for pocket money. “Pranksters” phoning in bomb threats to high schools in the midst of post-Columbine and post-9/11 anxiety. Adults slaying their spouses and children, then turning guns on themselves. Such breaking news stories are becoming awfully repetitive for a civilized society.

The traditional explanation of moral deficiency only goes so far. There is a nationwide epidemic of psychological disorder that requires a cooperative effort between political leaders and psychiatric, public health, and other mental health professionals. The issue of violent crime has expanded fatefully beyond the narrow dimensions of the gun control and prosecution versus defendants’ rights debates.

Crime is often a sensational issue in the media. However, other pressing concerns emanating from untreated mental illness tend to go underreported. Homelessness is one such issue.

Unable to hold a job, to interact normally with others, or to deal with life’s difficulties without relying on drugs or alcohol, thousands of mentally ill Americans find themselves on the mean streets and skid rows of the nation’s cities every year. The shortage of halfway houses, clean and safe shelters, and free outpatient clinics reinforces this national tragedy. Not to mention the high expense of inpatient drug and alcohol rehabilitation.

For all the talk of “supporting the troops,” many vets continue to be abandoned to the streets and to rundown residential hotels on account of post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse, and other behavioral and emotional problems. Without a doubt, our society is failing the mentally ill. The consequences will remain morally and socially disastrous for the country until affordable, or free-of-charge, good quality mental health services are made available to all Americans. The United States is in dire need of a “New Deal” for the health care system, with a solid commitment to identifying at-risk persons for the purpose of ensuring their own and their neighbors’ health and safety.

Individual privacy is a vital concern. Checks must be implemented to discourage the government, educational institutions, and employers from prying too deeply into Americans’ private lives. Yet, at-risk children and adults require prompt identification and psychological help before treatable problems develop into debilitating or life-destroying disorders. We have thousands of broken homes, incidents of domestic violence, runaway kids, and filled-to-capacity homeless shelters as evidence. At the most dangerous levels, the Columbine and Virginia Tech shootings illustrate the potential for outright disaster for entire communities. Public safety and the health and welfare of our communities demand our country’s full dedication to these problems.

Comprehensive mental health care free of charge or at an affordable cost must be a right of every American. Our schools should be especially vigilant in guaranteeing help for students suffering from psychological and family problems that place those individuals as well as the local community at risk. While protecting the rights of victims of mental illness, progressive Americans must work to ensure the safety and welfare of innocent people who may be affected by outbreaks of pathological violent behavior. Progressives and Democrats should seize the lead in formulating bold and creative solutions for the sake of the nation.
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Submitted by kmjohns

A State by State Approach to Universal Health Care

Earlier this month we posted an entry about the efforts of SPAN Ohio to create universal health coverage in Ohio based on a single payor system. This effort joins efforts in other states to achieve universal health coverage in the absence of any effort by the Federal Government to achieve this goal. These efforts are usually presented by the media as being evidence of some sort of "failure" by the Federal Government. There is another way, however, to look at such efforts.

One of the problems with the Clinton health insurance plan of the 1990s was that it tried to impose one structure on all of America. Quite frankly, such an approach has a multitude of problems. This is a very large and diverse country. The states range widely in population, culture, and demographic make-up. A plan conceived in Washington to cover every state is bound to be resisted since there is no guarantee that such a plan will work in every state.

Here's a different approach: why not advocate a plan that uses the taxing power of the United States government to achieve this goal without mandating any particular plan? Here's how this would work: the United States government would reduce the income taxes for the residents of any state that reaches the goal of universal health coverage for all its residents. How the states get there is up to them. Whether they want to get there is up to them. The Federal Government would develop the yardstick and apply it to the states. It would also publish tax tables showing the states that are getting a break on their taxes.

What this would do is put pressure on state legislatures and governors to come up with universal coverage. It would be very hard for Republicans to oppose politically and it would stop liberals and Democrats from having to work out the detail of a plan while trying to win elections.

Is it a perfect solution? No, but that's not the choice. The choice is between the status quo which leaves an increasing number of Americans uninsured and a plan that increases the number of insured Americans.

SPAN Ohio Works for Universal Health Care

SPAN Ohio is an organization that is working to establish a single payer health insurance system in Ohio. (SPAN stands for Single Payer Action Network). This organization is sponsoring a conference in Columbus on April 21, 2007 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. If you click on this entry's title, you can read about SPAN, what it does, and what will be happening at the conference. If you are interested in health care reform, you should be aware of SPAN and its activities. Check it out, we think you will find it interesting.

John Edwards Proposes Tax Hike on Wealthy to Pay for Health Plan

John Edwards is releasing a health care plan on Monday that will provide for a tax hike mainly on the wealthy to pay for expanded health insurance. He is one of the first politicians to admit that taxes might have to rise to solve America's health care problems. Although he is for raising taxes, his plan apparently doesn't call for a single-payer system. His aim is to bring insurance to the uninsured, lower health care costs and bring competition to the markets. He would expand the Medicaid plan and ask employers to either provide health coverage or buy into what Edwards is calling "health markets." He also called for more focus on collecting taxes that are legally due, but are not now being collected. If you click on the link in this entry's title, you can read more about the Edwards plan.