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Health Care Policy from Faith Perspective

162  III.  THE SOCIAL COMMUNITY

V) Right to Health Care--Health is a condition of physical, mental, social and spiritual well-being. John 10:10b says, "I came so that they could have life--indeed, so that they could live life to the fullest."  Stewardship of health is the responsibility of each person to whom health has been entrusted.  Creating the personal, environmental, and social conditions in which health can thrive is a joint responsibility--public and private.  We encourage individuals to pursue a healthy lifestyle and affirm the importance of preventive heath care, health education, environmental and occupational safety, good nutrition, and secure housing in achieving health.  Health care is a basic human right.

Providing the care needed to maintain health, prevent disease, and restore health after injury or illness is a responsibility each person owes others and government owes to all,  a responsibility government ignores at its peril.  In Ezekiel 34:4a, God points out the failures of the leadership of Israel to care for the weak:  "You don't strengthen the weak, heal the sick, bind up the injured, bring back the strays, or seek out the lost."  As a result all suffer.  Like police and fire protection, health care is best funded through the government's ability to tax each person equitably and directly fund the provider entities. 

We believe it is a governmental responsibility to provide all citizens with health care. 

We encourage hospitals, physicians, and medical clinics to provide access to primary health care to all people regardless of their health-care coverage or ability to pay for treatment. 

The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church (2012)

pages 126-127

Solutions and Self-Interest

So, what if everyone in the nation enrolled in Medicare?  How would that work?

Typically, when someone asks a question like that, immediately naysayers begin to push back, calling the idea absurd and/or cost prohibitive.  Or, people laugh and walk away.  Data flies around.  Conversations turn tense.

Today, I'm wondering why.

The nation faces a health care crisis both in terms of cost and public health outcomes.

Growing numbers of people believe the solution is not that complex to imagine.

The problem revolves around the existing self-interests of powerful groups.  This reality produced the compromise response that is the unwieldy Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as "Obama Care."

But, honestly, there is a better way.  A way to further curb expenses, as well as a way toward much improved public health results.

Read on!

Health Care Reform. . .explained

Why is health care so expensive in the US?

The good folks at MedicalBillingandCoding.org created an infographic laying out many of the exact reasons why costs are so insane in the American medical industry.

To view their work cleck here.

As always, reactions welcomed.

Waiting for care?

Sooner or later in just about every debate over national health care reform the issue of waiting times for services comes up.  A widely held belief is that in the U. S. we don't have to wait for our care, at least not as long as citizens of other developed nations who have some form of universal health coverage.  In light of that notion, I found this report from Ezra Klein enlightening. 

America’s waiting times are the worst in the developed world

By Ezra Klein

Any discussion of waiting times must begin with the observation that France, Germany, Switzerland and many other developed nations manage to combine universal access to care with rapid access to care. It’s an unfortunate quirk of international health-care policy that Canada and England, the two countries that do struggle with waiting times, happen to be the two nearby, English-speaking countries in the sample, and so our impressions of government-run health-care systems are disproportionately influenced by their experiences.

That said, it’s important to understand that America also struggles with waiting times. Someone who can’t afford to go to the doctor, or can’t afford to purchase an elective surgery, waits. In some cases, they wait forever. In some cases, they’re killed by the delay. But we don’t count them as having “waited” for care, and so they don’t show up in measures of American waits. But which would you prefer? A three-month delay for an elective surgery? Or no surgery at all?.


To read the entire report click here.

Reactions? 

Healthcare reform looming

The following article appeared in the Harvard Gazette, May 6, 2011.  Here's an honest, comprehensive assessment of what we face in healthcare's needed reform.  The counter-intuitive truth remains:  the way out of our bankrupt system of health care will involve providing Medicare-like coverage for everyone. 

Health reform may require a crisis

ABC’s medical editor cites obstacles to improved care system

A new, more sweeping version of health care reform that provides universal coverage and controls costs is still a few years away, according to ABC-TV’s medical editor Timothy Johnson. Unfortunately, it likely will take a budget crisis to get it through Congress, Johnson said.


Despite the passage of national health care reform that extends coverage to the uninsured, ends discrimination against people with pre-existing conditions, and allows parents to keep children on their insurance until age 26, Johnson said even more sweeping changes are in the works that would create a system similar to Canada’s single-payer program.

The reason, Johnson said, is that health care costs in the United States remain far higher than those in other countries and are climbing fast enough to threaten the nation with bankruptcy within a few years.

“In five to seven years, we’re going to be facing true financial catastrophe, with the possibility of actual bankruptcy in this country,” Johnson said. “We’ll probably throw up our hands … and what we’ll probably do at that point is expand Medicare to cover everyone.”

Johnson, who is also the medical editor for the local ABC affiliate, WCVB-TV, and who holds appointments at Harvard Medical School and Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital, analyzed America’s health quandary Wednesday evening (May 4) during the annual Lowell Lecture, sponsored by the Harvard Extension School and the Lowell Institute of Boston.

Johnson based his talk on his recent book “The Truth About Getting Sick in America: The Real Problems with Healthcare and What We Can Do.” He was introduced by Dean of Continuing Education Michael Shinagel.

There are no easy answers to America’s health care problems, Johnson said. Per capita costs for health care in America are more than double those in other industrialized nations. Though some observers may say that the quality of care is better in America, Johnson argued that it is not more than twice as good, and the problems of the uninsured and of the bureaucratic burden placed on doctors far outweigh any benefits.

Read the entire article here.

Help getting in the water. . .

Not long ago I received the following note from a friend I've known for a long time. He is a father. His oldest son is battling cancer of the brain.

I found his note moving. His awareness of others around him, even as he assists his own son in the fight of his life, is inspiring.

As I read his words and got in touch with his heart, it occured to me that health care reform is all about making sure everyone has what they need to "get in the pool."

John 5 tells about the healing at the pool of Bethesda. I know exactly what that must have looked like. When you sit in the lobby of the MD Anderson Brain and Spine Cancer Institute, you see men and women, boys and girls of all ages and races from all over the world professing every belief imaginable. They are being pushed in wheel chairs by family. They are being helped on canes and crutches by friends. They all have in common a deeply held belief that they can be healed if they can just get into the “pool”. How sad to have waited 38 years because he didn’t have someone to help him into the pool.

I now know some of what the Father in Luke 15 felt: “… we had to celebrate and be glad because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.”

A good way to spend part of this day might involve my spending time remembering those who still need a hand toward the healing they desire so very much. 

Waiting for a doctor's care. . .nothing new here

Forgive me for not being too sympathetic. But, I find the barrage of TV ads concerning the evil health threat posed by the Obama health care reform plan laughable.

For the past 15 years I've been surrounded by countless friends who have had to wait and wait to receive the health care they needed to stay alive. Due to delayed treatment and diagnosis, many of my friends died.

Why?

Simply because they were poor, uninsured and unable to pay for the care their conditions demanded. Too young for Medicaid, too poor for private insurance and too sick to be effectively treated by the MASH approach of the Emergency Departments of local hospitals, my friends had to wait.

They waited on charity--on folks like me to beg for free treatment.

They waited on disease severity to reach a point where the ER might lead to hospitalization.

They waited for admission to Parkland where everything is over crowded beyond belief.

So, you'll understand if I'm not moved by the concerns of the well off, like myself, who get the best of care because we can pay to buy private health insurance. I'm certainly not concerned with the pain of the insurance lobbyists.

I say provide coverage for everyone. Let all of us pay something based on ability. Let everyone receive the care needed.

Frankly, if I have to wait on my brother or sister to go first, I'm ready to do so.

In every other developed nation on the planet this willingness to share and to wait, just a bit, results in far better national, public health outcomes than are realized in the USA at a fraction of the per capita cost.

We need to read the Golden Rule as we consider what is needed in health care reform. And, even more, we need to remember one another.

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Health Care Focus

The Hillary Clinton campaign created a media stir over the past couple of weeks when Ms. Clinton told a story about a woman who was denied health care because she couldn't pay. As the story unfolded, she was accused of distortion of the facts and of outright falsehood.

I recommend Paul Krugman's comments in today's edition of The New York Times. Krugman clears up the nature of the facts, demonstrating that the candidate did not tell a lie. She and her staff could have worked a bit harder to get the details of the case clearer before using the story.

More to the important point, Krugman illuminates the tragic stories of health care failure in the United States among the uninsured, working poor. Clinton's point as well.

Must read essay in my view:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/11/opinion/11krugman.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin.


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