Arkansas Blog

I agree with with that little blurb from Huckabee.

But that statement leaves a whole lot unsaid. The big problem is not getting the low income and working poor critical, acute care. The damn shame and major failure with our system is they don't get the preventive care and early treatments that would have kept them from ever needing critical care.

Oh, and once the acute care is delivered, they get very little until they show up in an emergency room again.

Things like community health centers help a lot. But they are a band-aid in a failing system. Everyone should have access to affordable coverage and access to regular visits and screenings.to start with. Maintaining good health is just as critical as providing care when someone is really sick, and it is more affordable to do.

Typical repugnanat attitude: Ain't no problem. This is the problem: ". . . unreimbursed care that hospitals place on the backs and the bills of those who are paying through private insurance or out of their personal pockets."
We're paying for the great unwashed, so says our fine Christian guv, someone who likely has been provided with health care and housing throughout his adult life.
Were he still a pastor, I wonder what his advice would be to a working poor member of his flock who had never been provided with or been able to afford health insurance but who was diagnosed with breast or cervical cancer, for instance. Apply to state agencies for help? A cancer society which might provide some help?
Let's hope time is not of the essence. I know one woman who was diagnosed in May or June and finally had surgery in October. I know of another who had a lump in her breast and was told by her doctor, who knew she didn't have insurance, "Let's wait and see." She was dead a little more than a year later.
Chemo or radiation therapy? Just put the treatments on your credit card, my dear?
Yep, know of one of those too.
You go, Guv. Far away and fast, never to be heard from again, unless your name is noted in the bankruptcy announcements in a few years. Good enough for you.

We do have near universal health care. If you can get to the ER they have to at least get your condition to stable before booting you out and the truth is most doctors and hospitals will treat you past that point for fear of malpractice suits (real or imagined) and out of human decency.

The flaws ought to be apparent. ER care is about the most expensive way of obtaining medical care and it is that way in large part because so much of that cost is provided to people without coverage or the resources to pay out of their own pocket. Rather than taxing to provide such minimal care and using a government program that has a low overhead, the cost is instead recovered by increasing the cost of private coverage that has a responsibility to shareholders to maintain a profit margin.

A real change is needed. Too many of the patients presenting at ER's don't have emergencies and need to be diverted to lower cost clinics that can provide the family doctor type care needed that is so awkwardly provided by an ER

One night in the hospital cost my husband over $11,000.
Isn't that a little crazy?

Huck, showing his true compassionate Christian colors again. I have said many times that crack dealers, whores and gay men are not who are ruining our country. It's nice white people in the health care industry that's a major part of the problem.

No politician ever talks about the obscene costs of the simplest health care. None of them talk about the over-billing and out and out fraud most of us will encounter with our next visit to the hospital.

BlueRidge's husband could have had anal sex with Madonna for less than 11 thousand dollars per night. A friend whose husband is a surgical nurse at Campo De No Fumar Hospital recently had to throw a fit because a nurse put a little disposable wrist brace on her 8 year old daughter and had the gall to charge her 900 dollars for a surgical consult that NEVER happened.

My friend is constantly telling me how ugly and mean I must be at all times to simply get a correct bill from Sparks Hospital. Not free, not reduced, just a damn correct bill for services rendered.

What would the average person do if they went to McDonald's and were charged 348 dollars for a Happy Meal? Or the same price for 35 Happy Meals you never received? I'd get a damn gun after them. But daily...hourly this kind of crap is pulled on SICK people. Who among us is rotten enough to cheat a SICK person?

Yet it's standard practice at about every medical facility in the United States. Yes I'm mad after making 2 trips and 14 hours sitting in the crowded ER waiting room with a 90 lb, 76 year old stroked out mother with congestive heart failure in order for them to find she had a badly broken leg that required 4 hours of surgery last Monday.

You pick up and carry your mother in your arms into an ER and spend 6 and 8 hours watching her writhe in pain while dirty little kids wipe their nose on her dress. Then when you get the bill with 8 dollar band-aids and a list of services you know she never got and it's more than you paid for your house...get back to me on these crack heads and kissing gay men that Huckabee blames for pulling down America.

And we're surprised when someone goes postal and shoots everyone in the house? Seems to me more of us should be losing it because of the unfairness and corruption of the health care system Huckabee is protecting.

So think of all that when the Republicans bash anyone without white skin, or says gay people are at the root of all our problems. It's well dressed Buick driving, church going white men with flag lapel pins that are ruining our country and mistreating the old and the sick.

Huckabee got rich off of us the last 10 years. He can afford insurance and his goons will make sure his hospital bill is correct. How dare he spit on us while living in luxury and crediting the Lord with his success.

We have nearly universal health care. The elderly have Medicare. The poor have Medicaid. Children are always covered. Almost everyone that works has insurance. Almost.

Most physicians and hospitals provide a substantial amount of charity care and write if off. Emergencies are as someone stated obligative of hospital admission and treatment for legal reasons. My father had a heart attack and bypass surgery and spent the rest of his life making small payments to his doctor and St Vincent's according to an income-based formula.

The way to fix the problem is to offer an insurance pool to those who are self-employed, unemployed, or work in jobs that don't provide insurance and to their families. If you can't get competitive group discounts corporations get insurance is just too expensive for these people to afford. I've met a lot of uninsured truck drivers and craftsmen (plumbers, electricians, etc) that are self-employed. The government could offer a large insurance pool to provide competitive insurance rates for these people and offer the same bulk rates private insurers offer corporations. You'll still have people that elect to not be insured but in that case it would be more of their own fault, at least they would have options. It wouldn't cost the taxpayer anything, it shouldn't need government subsidy as rates would be set according to risk just like private insurance.

Only those ignorant of the system
or those who have never been sick
an uninsured would make such a
comment. Thousands of people die
every year in the US due to a lack of
healthcare.

Sure when you are almost dead of
cancer you can go to the ER and then
die in the hospital. You can't get the
treatments needed to save your life
though. This is true of many diseases.

If having no health insurance is no big deal,
why do people who can pay so much for it?

So if you are male under 65, and self-employed, you can just die. Real nice...

By the way, I'd venture to guess that at least a third of working people DO NOT have health insurance.

Yes, when our insurance shot up to almost $7,000 a year in 2000, we decided to self-insure. We are still ahead of the game, but someone has to examine the health care system in this country and make it affordable for all Americans.
The money we have spent in Iraq should have been spent here at home. We need health care that doesn't force people into bankruptcy.
I just got two more bills today. one from a doctor who never saw hubby(???), for $850.00 and the other from the lab for $480.00.
So now for a one night stay at a hospital, it's over $12,000.00.
DBI, I don't know Madonna, but I know that health care costs in this country are completely out of control.

About half of the population are on socialized care, like Medicare, Medicaid, the VA, and other governmental systems.

Of the other half not in socialized care, the insurance companies insure about half (1/4 of the population). That means there is about 1/4 of our population not unsured.

The private system only manages to service HALF of the people they supposedly cover, while we are paying TWICE what other countries pay. That is abysmal.

We are worse than BOSNIA when it comes to health care. Are we stupid or incompetent???