Health care reform must heal many ills
President Obama was in Green Bay, Wis., to promote an overhaul to health care. John Dimsdale reports on why the system needs fixing and what may stand in the way.
President Barack Obama addresses health care issues during a town-hall meeting at Southwest High School in Green Bay, Wis. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
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Kai Ryssdal: The president's a big basketball fan, as you may know. And as such he understands the importance I'm sure of good defense, keeping pressuring on your opponents to force them to play your game. At a town hall meeting in Wisconsin today the president applied the legislative equivalent of a full court press on health care as our Washington bureau chief John Dimsdale reports.
JOHN DIMSDALE: At $2.5 trillion a year, President Obama said the U.S. has the most expensive health-care system in the world. And for the health of the economy, he said something must be done.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Today we've already built an unprecedented coalition of people who are ready to reform our health-care system: physicians and health insurers, businesses and workers, Democrats and Republicans.
But there are growing cracks in that coalition as Congress works out the details, such as the proposal for a government-run insurance option for the uninsured. House Republicans today rejected that idea. Missouri's Roy Blunt.
ROY BLUNT: This idea of a government takeover of health care simply will not fly with the American people.
But there are 50 million uninsured Americans and reformers say that's why the system needs fixing. The Kaiser Family Foundation's Diane Rowland is a veteran of health-reform efforts.
DIANE ROWLAND: Years ago we were looking at a single proposal put out there and then taken apart. Instead, what we have here is trying to work through to get more consensus before there's a single proposal.
The president's full court press continues Monday with a speech to the American Medical Association. The AMA has put the administration on notice that doctors don't support a government plan that forces them to participate. But the AMA says it is committed to passing reform this year.
In Washington, I'm John Dimsdale for Marketplace.
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From Indianapolis, IN, 06/11/2009
Healthcare in America is a privilege and a multi-trillion dollar industry, just benefiting the ultra wealthy insurance companies. Here is an very ominous example of our so called medical care. Professor and surgeon Dr. Richard Foster of Indiana University medical center operated on a cancerous kidney, that was partially successfully removed. After she was operated on my relative she found herself in incessant chronic pain and has been on the strongest of pain killers since then. The surgeon in question severed the intercostial nerves under her rib cage. As with many states physicians are never held accountable, as its hard to prove medical malpractice even if you can afford the attorney fees. She is now appealing Federal disability, because two pain doctors say she can never work again. Since than she spends more time fighting with her California state-backed insurance company, for her pain medication to elevate the awful pain.
These insurers have denied her over and over again, and forced her into federally mandated emergency room. This is an outrageous travesty of what we have a nerve to call health care. Health care in most European civilized countries has been exceptional, but since the advent of unparalleled immigration, a once Universal health care, single payer system has rapidly gone downhill. Yet If I had a chance at being a member of Canada's, France, United Kingdom method of delivery, I would grab it happily with both hands any day. In America it's run for profit, that is monopolized by giant wealthy insurance companies, who deceives the American people with copays, premiums and and almost impossible referrals, once the doctor has seen you. Of course the--BIG ONE--is pre-existing condition clauses, and small print in documents that you need a magnifying glass to read, if at all. Time this superpower called the United States accommodated it's citizens with a single payer system for all and not just the high income families.
From WV, WA, 06/11/2009
Obama has avoided the thorny details of assiduous analysis on the most critical problems facing America, and has used sweeping, but banal statements of obvious principals, while his appointees actually implement policies and programs inconsistent with the claims of the message. Now his methodology will be applied to Healthcare?
Did America elect a monarch? … A President is still needed.
http://pacificgatepost.blogspot.com/2009/06/does-america-yearn-for-monarch.html
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