A Second Opinion

I was thinking the other day about a good way to determine what is best for the future of American healthcare. One thing that came to mind was; why not let the medical professionals vote on how they think they can provide the best care for the most people? Or allow them to give an estimate of the maximum number of patients they could effectively treat in a shift. This information would prove to be extremely helpful to lawmakers while they are trying to hammer out the specifics of this plan. Knowing the number of patients that could be treated in a day may lead to a slow dispersion of healthcare based on severity of injury until everyone’s needs have been met, if indeed socialized medicine is the best plan for the country. I believe that going to the people who must work with whatever system is implemented would be best because no one knows the application of the present plan and ideas proposed in future plans better than the people who work with it every day.

What do we do?

Although my last post seemed to have a lot of detail in it there is still a lot of uncertainty as to how this reformation will be implemented. Similar bills contain over a thousand pages of logistics and policies. The United States has not yet defined many specifics so it is difficult to exactly analyze the plan. However, we have several examples worldwide that can give us some direction as to the achievements and downfalls of socialized medicine. The simplest analogy that I have heard describing social medicine is that of a military nurse, “under socialized healthcare, even with private insurance, the quality of care will go down. Think of it this way, right now, those who can afford a sandwich can get any type of sandwich they want with a number of meats and cheese and all the condiments you could want; under socialized medicine everyone will get a sandwich, but it will be ham and bread”. There are not many ways to avoid this drop in quality because there are not enough medical professionals to properly treat an influx of 45 million new patients. As Americans prepare to propose the specifics of healthcare reform we should look very hard into ways to avoid this consequence without dropping quality of care or the standards of training for medical professionals. I’ll try to share some ideas later.

Reform Summary

In this post I will be summarizing the proposed health care reformation based on information I found at: http://www.kff.org/uninsured/upload/Obama_Health_Care_Reform_Proposal.pdf and in later posts I will explain how these things will be enacted and the limitations and possible problems the plan will run into. One of the big selling points of this bill is the “Overall approach to expanding access to coverage” which means that the government will make various laws that will give everyone a universal health insurance policy. A couple such requirements are that all children to have government funded health insurance and employers must either offer health insurance to its employees or aid the government funded insurance. The creation of the National Health Insurance Exchange (NHE) will make it possible for private business owners and individuals to have access to the new public plan or a series of approved private plans. This bill plans to meet these new requirements by expanding organizations like Medicaid and State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to be able to provide care similar to what the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) offers. The Obama administration plans to subsidize these requirements by making federal income tax related funds available to those who cannot afford the required coverage. The state of Texas has roundly denied previous offers by the federal government to assist (using national and state tax money) in funding the health insurance of children and people in poverty. Texas is an independent state and does not like the federal government interfering in our affairs, which is why Texas has very low state spending and taxes. Health insurance companies would no longer be able to consider current or previous health conditions in their acceptance of an individual or the formation of an individual’s premium and would form plans that meet minimal quality and efficiency determined by the NHE. A few other changes to private insurance to help control monopoly formation and price gouging are proposed. There is no state flexibility on these matters; all states must meet these requirements. Thanks for reading! I will be expanding on these concepts and giving some opinions in later posts.

Introduction

My name is Alex, I am from Fort Worth Texas, and I am currently a student at Texas A&M University. Over the next few months I will be researching and sharing current information on the proposed health care reform in the United States. As a future Physical Therapist this topic is very important to me so I will try my best to keep the information as up-to-date as possible and provide you with the pros and cons of this reform. The reform in a nutshell would require individuals to pay a certain tax for universal health care, leveling the playing field so that the rich are not always the ones to get the best treatment, supposedly everyone would get the same treatment. In theory this plan sounds very good, but when you get down into the nuts and bolts of it there are many points of controversy and if you look at other countries that have instituted a similar system then many questions are raised about our ability to implement this plan with favorable results for all.