Listen in on the buzz surrounding health care reform and you'll hear:
We need a health care system of shared responsibility.
-or
People need to take Personal Responsibility for their health.
These are great ideas. They are worth promoting.
...wait a minute. What does shared responsibility mean....exactly?
Does it mean people pay more in copays, deductibles and premiums?
Does it mean insurance companies get less or more?
Does it mean health care providers get less or more?
Does it mean employers can shift more costs to employees?
Does it mean you pay more every time you see a health care provider?
Does it mean a smoker's tax?
Does it mean a fat tax?
Does it mean a couch potato tax?
Does it mean we increase WIC to allow for 5 servings of fruits and veggies per family member per day?
The reality is that few, if any, realize what these Congress Critters, pundits, columnists, health care "experts" or bobble heads are actually proposing. Shared responsibility is a euphamism for stick it to the health care consumer. People lie about this all the time. The truth is the health care consumer pays for all the health care through:
- Premiums
- deductibles
- copays / coinsurance / cost shifting
- lowered salaries and wages
- taxes
- charitable contributions
The arguments start along the lines of, "Why should my taxes go to pay for caring for your fat ass?" and rolls down hill from there along party lines.
Shared responsibility could mean personal habits. It's easy to point the finger at a smoker and forget that cigarettes have additives to make them more addictive and if everyone quit smoking long term health costs would increase. (Please stop smoking anyway. That would be a good problem.) It's easy to say we should walk more until you find out that city planners didn't adequately plan public transportation to connect people from where they live to where they work, go to school and hang out. (I'm not talking about Philly or Washington D.C. I'm talking about Miami and LA.) We clamor on about childhood obesity and rising diabetes rates but allow our educators to eliminate recess and physical education in favor of more preparation for the sedentary pursuit of higher standardized test scores. Our employers complain about the rising costs of health insurance and then turn around and give their employees a stressful, hard time when they choose to go to the gym over staying an extra hour at the office.
The health care industry has lined up their lobbyists and are paving the way for their idea of "shared responsibility", which is "Preserve as much of the unsustainable status quo as possible". The MSM is agreeing with their advertisers and are missing the point (as usual) that we cannot pay 20% of our GDP in health care and have a healthy economy.
I could rant on, but you'd probably stop reading this diary.
"Shared Responsibility" should, could mean shared between the consumer, provider, payer and government. The idea that everyone do their part and we all share in the cost is a good concept, but ultimately, the health care consumers pay the whole bill. We don't have a healthy health care policy because many voters don't want to subsidize the healthcare for their neighbor's "fat ass" or smoking habit, but if we go down that road, how long will it be before we don't want to pay for our neighbor's bad genes associated with sickle cell anemia, Down Syndrome or breast cancer?
Shared responsibility could mean everyone is responsible for creating an environment we can thrive in. If we did that, our country would be a very different place to live. We live in a country where most people are sleep deprived, over-fed and undernourished at the same time. We are over-scheduled, over-stressed and under refreshed. We don't trust our employers, employees, businesses or our own government (that we elect to serve us). Mention these facts of the American Way of Life and you are "negative" or a whiner and people offer to call the Whaaaaambulance.
Our distrust of health insurance and pharmaceutical companies is well deserved and our sense of betrayel that the White House and Senators seem to be taking these corporate thieves' suggestions for health care reform to heart is well placed. We cannot allow the health care industry to write our health care reform bill. We can't allow lawmakers to abdicate their duty to oversee health care reform.
We need to focus on where we go from here. We need to get out our talking points about health care special interests.
* Health Insurance Companies think that Health Care Personal Responsibility is for everyone to buy Health Insurance.
Although no Health Insurance just about guarantees people won't get health care, just having Health Insurance won't ensure people will get Health Care either.
* Pharmaceutical Companies think that Health Care Personal Responsibility is to buy a health insurance policy that pays for name brand drugs and to take a regular regimen of name brand drugs.
The United States cannot afford to continue to subsidize drug pricing for the rest of the world. The U.S. must negotiate with drug companies for the best price for their nation.
* The AMA thinks that Health Care Personal Responsibility is to see your physician when they want you to, do what they tell you to do and pay whatever the your third party payer doesn't.
Our health care system needs to accomodate people's schedules so they can get care in appropriate settings outside of the 9am - 5 pm confine.
We need an all payer fee schedule to eliminate cost shifting to the unisured and underinsured that also compensates providers fairly for both their expertise and their overhead.
* With Health Care costs
causing a bankruptsey every 30 seconds, the health care consumer's idea of Health Care Personal Responsibility is to simply not get sick or injured.
We need a Universal health Care System that doesn't penalize people for getting ill or injured.
Better yet, we need a single payer health care system.
After all, we are the ones paying for it.