Our Insane US Healthcare System

No other nation in the world does health care the way we do in the US.

--We have, far and away, the most expensive health care system in the world. --We are the only nation that ties health care to profit. --We are the only nation where citizens go bankrupt from health care costs. --We are the only nation where our number one cause for bankruptcy for citizens is health care costs, approximately 40% of all bankruptcies in the US are from this, year after year, consistently. Insane. Obscene. Immoral. Fixable.

Don't Look Now But a Town In Rural Missouri Just Got Hit. And Hard

I hadn't seen anything of this but it seems a hospital in rural Missouri, in the town of Kennett, is closing.

116-bed Missouri hospital to close 

next month

The website Axios simply and clearly points out three very big factors of all this:

• Many people are worried residents won't get care at all or will suffer from having to drive long distances for hospital care.
• "We have two nursing homes, and people are already talking about pulling their loved ones out because there's not a hospital close enough," one worker said.
• "This little town just lost its biggest employer...financially, a lot of businesses are going to suffer," another employee said.
• Kennett is a farming community in Dunklin County, whose residents are poor and have some of the worst health outcomes in the state. (The area overwhelmingly voted for President Trump in 2016.)

Get that.

Not only losing your town's only hospital but also it's biggest employer. Talk about a double, if not triple or worse "whammy."

Can you imagine even being elderly in that town, let alone in a nursing home, knowing your town is losing its hospital?

If you had a loved one in a nursing home there, would you keep them there?

Worse, if you were in that nursing home and in reasonably good condition otherwise, would you want to stay there, in that town, in that nursing home?

What do you bet the nursing home or homes in Kennett, Missouri will be losing patients, customers? And quickly?  I would be very surprised if, in only a couple to a few years, the nursing home or homes there don't also close, have to close. I certainly hope I'm wrong about that.

Then, can you imagine being an employee of the hospital? Thinking you had a job for life? And you're in rural Missouri, rural America. The nearest hospital is 50 miles away. Further, do you think they have many job openings? It's questionable, at least.

The heck of it is, this is not good for the town of Kennett but it's not good for that entire area. It's not good for that region, that part of the state. Simply put, it's no way good for Missouri.

It's not good for America. It's not good for the nation.

____________________________________________________________

More of the fuller situation that brought this about here, below:

When a rural hospital shuts down

Other links:

Sudden hospital closure gravely concerns Kennett doctors 

Wellington, Kan., hospital threatened 

like other rural facilities 

Possible shutdown of St. Francis hospital in Topeka

Closing of Kansas hospital adds to 

Medicaid expansion debate

America's Rural Hospitals Are Dangerously Fragile 

The Great American Smokeout Tomorrow!

Yes sir! The annual Great American Smokeout is tomorrow!

For any of the smokers out there, maybe today is the day to take this push and try to quit, if even for a day. There are so many benefits, too, as you may well already know. There are many benefits to your health but saving money factors in and more.

So good luck tomorrow and have fun with it! (If possible).

The Republican Nightmare That Is Obamacare

Oops.

The Success That is Obamacare

Breaking news this week on Obamacare show the costs of health care are, in fact, not just low and lower but even lower than expected. This broke in the last 2 days:

Obamacare premiums to spike, but law is cheaper than expected

This is from business-friendly, traditionally conservative Forbes magazine:

CBO Downgrades Obamacare's Enrollment And Subsidy Projections

CNN Money:

Obamacare will cost less than thought

USA Today:

Obamacare subsidies slash costs for low-income consumers

Even the always Right Wing Washington Times agrees the costs are lower:

Obamacare premiums to spike, but law is cheaper than expected

Robert Reich puts it well yesterday also, on his Facebook page:

Remember when opponents of Obamacare claimed it would bankrupt America? New cost projections, published yesterday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, show the law costing 29% less over the next five years than the CBO first estimated. The reason: Healthcare costs are rising more slowly than previously assumed. Why the slowdown? (1) Larger co-payments and deductibles have caused consumers to rein in their own spending on healthcare, (2) Obamacare has caused providers to improve efficiencies in delivering healthcare, and (3) The law has also created incentives for more preventive care, thereby reducing the incidence of costly chronic diseases (heart disease, some cancers, and diabetes).

Bottom line: Obamacare is on the way to proving itself a huge success. But that doesn’t seem to matter to Republicans who are still out to kill it.

America: We're Number One!

Facts about our country right now

Land of the Free

Yeah.

Right.

Oh, and we're a "Christian nation", too, don't forget that one.

How is that, exactly?

American Exceptionalism

 

Yes, well, we're exceptional, all right.

Why we need to work together, all of us, as Americans.

Important new documentary coming out

Fortunately, it is to be on HBO. That means some people, at least, will see it.

If it were at the theaters, it would get acclaim, some would see it but not enough people. And likely, too, it wouldn't be the people seeing it who should see it.

This way, if it's on HBO, in our homes, in our living rooms, we don't have to get up and go anywhere to take it in.

And there's more and cheaper food, too.

Jesus Christ via US Health Insurance Companies

On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day: more unequal than ever on health care, too

Weekend entertainment suggestion

I think I have a great weekend entertainment suggestion for you today.

A friend mentioned that he did it last night while we were at breakfast this morning.

If you either get tired of "March Madness" basketball or your team isn't on or you just want something to watch on TV with the thought of having a good laugh, turn on Fox "News" this weekend.

Oh, yeah.

They're going nuts right now, what with the President and the Democrats anchoring to get a health care reform fix right now.

They're flipping out.

They're coming unhinged.

Whether it's Hannity or Beck or O'Really or whomever, go over and give them a view.

It's a hoot.

They're just sure that this is the end of the world or the virtual end of the world or that by Sunday evening we'll all be living in a Socialist country or some such absurd, ludicrous, insane, and/or emotional nonsense and hyperbole.

You may thank us later.

Have a great weekend, y'all.

Note to the Missouri GOP

The US' health care system is broken.

It doesn't work.

It's not affordable.

It is the most expensive health care system on the planet.

We're ranked 37th--behind Rush Limbaugh's Costa Rica, for pity's sake--internationally, when considering mortality.

It needs fixing.

You've never tried to fix it and this President is trying to, just like Democrat Harry Truman, before him and too many Presidents since, including Bill Clinton.

Get over it.

The President is right on this one.

We need help and it will take help, structurally, from the government to do it.

No other country on the planet lets the markets decide who gets health care and how.

We're dying out here.

Literally.

For statistics on America's health care system, click here.

Three big problems with and for health care reform

There are at least three big problems with and for the health care reform right now, in Washington, that could lead to who knows where--not the least of which is that the reform will yet be killed.

First, there is the fact that right now, today, Massachussetts is rather famously voting for a Senator to replace Ted Kennedy.

Ol' Ted will surely "spin in his grave", so to speak, if the Conservative, Republican Scott Brown--Tea Bagger that he is--wins the seat.

Hopefully all the Democrats turn out today and are backed by some independent voters and put Martha Coakley in the Senate.

If not, the Democrats lose their super-majority in the Senate and we lose our ability to pass any health care reform.

And that will be for years.

Cross your fingers.

The second problem for health care reform right now is that the mandate for all Americans to buy health care insurance may get thrown out as unconstitutional.

And you know? I have to say, it does seem that it would be tough to get this to fly in our courts.

Americans forced to buy health insurance by their government?

I don't think so.

And anyway, what sense did that ever make, anyway? If you can't afford health care, how is it that the government's mandating you to buy it is going to make that happen?

If you don't have the money for health care, you simply don't have the money for health care, government mandate or no government mandate.

And finally, this brings us to what is wrong, ultimately, at its core, for this entire health care reform. The third and final thing wrong with this is that the very industries we were supposed to be reforming were allowed in the room---heck, in the negotiations--during the whole debate to begin with.

That's insane.

Since when does the patient get to be their own doctor?

Meaning, our problems with health care should have meant that the hospitals and doctors and insurance agencies--especially the insurance agencies--shouldn't have been let in on the health care reform debate and proposals. They're all putting things in there for themselves, not the American people.

So what happened?

The "single-payer" option was discarded right away and this alone was estimated to have saved us $350 billion dollars per year---enough to pay for the entire health care reform.

It simply makes no sense to have 1300 different health care insurance forms--one for each insurance agency in the country. The savings would have been huge.

And the "public option" for a government insurance plan for us--at much lower costs--was thrown out.

How else can we get insurance companies to keep their costs down unless there is a government option?

The result was that the American people and the actual reforms we needed were thrown out, for the sake of the corporations and their profits.

I hope this will all have been worth it and we get some good health care reform.

Right now, nothing is certain.

Not what's in the bill and not whether we'll even get a bill.

Here's hoping.

An open letter to Senator Christopher "Kit" Bond

Senator Bond,

We need to make it clear that we not only want true, comprehensive health care reform in our country, we need it--and we need it badly.

We need the single-payer option--but apparently aren't going to get it--and we need the public option for insurance and aren't likely to get that, either.

Lots of us don't have health insurance out here, Senator, because health care costs here in the States are the highest in the world, as we all know.

Lots more of us can barely afford our health care for the same reason.

We need help, Senator.

We need your help.

We need you to vote for health care reform when it comes up for a vote soon.

We know you're not likely to give it to us because you don't want this President or his party to succeed, for fear of your own party's failure, but it's the right thing for the country and for its citizens, and your constituents

It's the right thing, Senator, it's worth repeating.

Vote for health care reform, Senator Bond.

Do the right thing.

We need this help.

We need your help.

Sincerely,


____________________________

Now, go write Sen. Bond. You can do that here: http://bond.senate.gov/public/

Misinformation at its worst

In The Kansas City Star today, there was yet another example of gross misinformation, in this instance, on the part of a reader--no surprise--and it points out the mistaken ideas people have about real life, situations and hard statistics.

Here's most of the letter to the editor:

Government can't be trusted

"What is it The Star does not get when it keeps publishing liberal editorials pushing for national health care, claiming that such a system will drive down costs and provide affordable care for all?"

"Do you realize that everywhere this has already been attempted it has been a disaster? (i.e., Europe and Canada)."

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is where I have to stop. (Fortunately, he didn't go on much longer, anyway).

What the heck??

That is such a blatantly mistaken statement, it's beyond belief.

Virtually the entire free world has health care for all its citizens--except the United States--and Canada's and Europe's health care systems, in specific, are two of the most successful, working health care systems of all these.

It seems this writer must purely be basing his thoroughly untrue and incorrect statement on some fictional opinion he holds.

Reality absolutely shows, unequivocally, how both Europe's and Canada's health care systems (pick a country) work so very efficiently for both the patients and practitioners in the industry. The doctors and health care givers are paid reasonable wages and the costs are far lower for the institutions and respective countries, in spite of everyone getting the care they need.

The US statistics, by comparison, show we spend more than any other nation on the planet for our health care, for starters. Followed by the facts that we also rate 37th, internationally, in terms of morality rate and, finally, that we have at least 46 million of us who have no health care insurance at all, no one can claim we have a good, working system.

Far from it. Our health care system is broken. Badly broken. And needs repair.

Let's start there, with the fact that it needs fixing and then use only good information, to take us forward.

Link to facts and data on other countries' health care plans by T.R. Reid, from the Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/21/AR2009082101778.html