Hey Sanjay, care to weigh in on this?
Michael didn't even touch the Medicare mudslide in SiCKO. Why not wrestle this one to the ground by yourself, without any nettlesome interference from big bad Michael Moore?
About six months ago, my stepfather's best golfing buddy friend announced that he was in big trouble.
He told us he had received a really bad cancer diagnosis. Mouth cancer. It was all over the poor guy's oral cavity. When I heard, I did what I do best and started to research treatment.
This is not a cancer you want to have. The treatment is, well, barbaric.
Then I heard something which made me very sad. He had had symptoms for quite some time. A lingering sore throat, stuffed nose--a bunch of things.
He had gone to a doctor who was unsure what was going on and told him to get some additional tests. Expensive tests.
This was several years ago, at the time he was uninsured. He waited. He told himself he'd be eligible for Medicare in a couple of years, so he'd tough it out.
As you might imagine, this hit me like a ton of bricks. It was everything that I write about every day.
At the time, I wondered was this too, status quo in the richest country on the planet?
I wondered was there an army of soon-to-be Medicare eligible uninsured American citizens, waiting desperately to attend to long-neglected healthcare?
Well I received my answer this morning.
I'm reading a just-released report which reveals that what happened to this poor guy is not isolated. It's a national epidemic. For millions of middle-aged Americans delaying treatment until Medicare kicks-in is par for the course.
Add a new wrinkle to our long list of national healthcare shames.
Some Chronically Ill Adults Wait for Medicare
When uninsured adults with common chronic illnesses became eligible for Medicare, they saw doctors and were hospitalized more often and reported greater medical expenses than people who had had insurance. And their increased use of medical services continued at least until at least age 72, researchers are reporting today.
Their study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, is one of the first to follow a large group of people through that crucial time of transition from being ineligible for Medicare to receiving Medicare benefits.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Now just the other day Mr. George Bush made the following comment in Cleveland. I need to steady my hands as I type what the president of the United States said.
I repeat, this dribbled out of the mouth of the leader of the free world. Yes indeed.
The immediate goal is to make sure there are more people on private insurance plans. I mean, people have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room. The question is, will we be wise about how we pay for health care. I believe the best way to do so is to enable more people to have private insurance. And the reason I emphasize private insurance, the best health care plan -- the best health care policy is one that emphasizes private health. In other words, the opposite of that would be government control of health care.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/...
I see. Emergency Rooms.
This is the most expensive place on the planet to receive medical treatment. Because we have 47 million Americans without guaranteed and affordable care, when you have a true emergency and go to an emergency room, you will likely wait many hours to see a doctor. This is because Mr. Bush wants uninsured Americans to go to emergency rooms for care.
Will the media ask him to elaborate? Paging Dr. Gupta. Or will he get a pass on this crap, just like everything else?
As an aside, do yourself a favor and read the entire transcript of the attempt by this man to speak. His mangled words and sentences, his inability to use simple grammar he should have mastered in third grade, is a national disgrace.
The New York Times article continues with an exegesis on whether or not having access to basic health care is good for the nation.
You don't know whether to laugh or cry.
"You might expect that if you fall into habits of not using much health care, you might continue not to use it," Dr. Skinner said. Instead, the study found a sort of pent-up demand among the uninsured.
"It shows how unfair our system is," said Louise Russell, a research professor at the Institute for Health at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. "These people were not getting care, and they were at least as in need of it as the people who were insured."
The study also shows that it may be less expensive than expected to provide universal health insurance, Dr. Ayanian and his colleagues concluded. Medicare is bearing the brunt when uninsured people put off seeing doctors or seeking medical care until they turn 65.
"A lot of the prior research focused on the health benefits of extending insurance coverage," Dr. Ayanian said. "Our study suggested that it may be cost effective."
But, economists note, it has to cost more to insure everyone than it does to leave some people out.
"The quick interpretation is, ‘Well this saves money,’ but it’s a partial savings," said Mark Pauly, a health economist at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. "You get some money back, but it’s still going to cost money."
Dr. Mark McClellan, the former head of Medicare who is now a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said the study had limitations.
The uninsured, he said, were very different from the insured people in the study. They had much less education, their incomes were lower, they were more likely to smoke and to be depressed.
And of course, leave it to a fool moron like Mark McClellan one of the architects of the disasters known as Medicare D, and Medicare Advantage to spew nonsense, and do what all these people do best, make excuses. Paging Dr. Gupta.
"Health insurance is supposed to not just prevent the complications of chronic diseases but also to keep you healthier," Dr. McClellan said. "And Medicare historically has not done a very good job of that."
Even now, he said, with expanded screening services, only about half of Medicare beneficiaries avail themselves of them.
So, in a word, let's just give up and go home, and leave everything alone because it's all working so well. And you are to blame because, you're fat, you smoke, you won't exercise, you're a sloth.
Sound familiar?
Paging Dr. Gupta.