BBC Talks to Nashvillians About Universal Health Care
A poster for Molly Secours' TennCare documentary
With all eyes on Nashville for the debate, BBC News spoke with a few Nashvillians regarding the hot-button issue of universal health care.
The BBC's Jon Kelly spoke with Nashville filmmaker Molly Secours, who, early last year, in a cruel twist of fate, was diagnosed with uterine cancer—just after she had completed her documentary The Faces of TennCare: Putting a Human Face on Tennessee's Health Care Failure. After witnessing firsthand the devastation of being sick and uninsured in the U.S., she knew she had to have her own insurance. Even though she was 80 percent covered, she still racked up $40,000 in bills.
A popular Nashville figure, Secours was fortunate enough to have friends who rallied behind her. Through benefit concerts and donations, she was able to cover much of her debt. But not everyone is so lucky. Her choice for president should come as no surprise: Barack Obama.
Meawhile, Nashvillian Paul Wright, who works for a "tyre" company (oh, those Brits and their wacky spelling—they seem to think they invented the language), likes things just the way they are. He contributes to his company plan, and feels people have "a duty to look out for themselves." He agrees with McCain. I wonder how he'll feel if he's one of the tens of thousands of Americans who will likely lose their jobs in the next year, or if he's suddenly struck with a devastating illness.
Secours told the Scene that the BBC's Kelly had suffered a brain tumor himself several years ago. "When they removed it," Secours says, "he was left with no muscle control on the left side of his face—which now slightly droops. We discussed his ordeal and how all his care was paid for. And soon, he will undergo a 13-hour reconstructive surgery that will restore his facial muscles so that he looks like himself again. All of this is covered under the British health care system."
So where do you stand on universal health care, Pith readers?
Comments
I drove a mom of three from the projects to their "Tenn care" doctor in the shadows of Baptist Hospital so she would not have to take two toddlers and a newborn on the bus. From the way you sign in to the signs on the wall, this doctor only sees Tenn Care children. After an hour wait with us being the only patients in the waiting room we were called back. The doctor stumbled around, almost gave a 3 week old her two month vaccinations(he would have if I had not spoken up and objected), kept walking out of the exam room during the exams to leaving naked children on the table to wait, told us that one of the children had a bacterial virus (what????) of the skin, etc. I was so appalled I wanted to cry. The waiting room was dismal and dirty. The other employees? Department of motor vehicles comes to mind. If you want your healthcare to be run like the DMV, then look forward to universal health care. If you do not want this, be afraid. If this is the face of the future for universal health care, no thanks.
Posted 10/07/2008 at 11:50:02 AMOh I forgot, if he was disfigured several years ago, how long has Kelly been waiting for the reconstruction surgery? Do you want some beauracrat in the government decided your course of treatment and when you will get it?
Friends from Canada brought their ailing father to Nashville for treatment because he had been put on a waiting list 6 months long for an angioplasty. The doctors admitted he would probably not live that long, but his age of 80 put him lower on the list.
Posted 10/07/2008 at 11:58:18 AMThere are at least 3 large dimensions to this problem. Lack of health insurance is one of them, but not the only one that would have to be solved.
Another dimension is that being covered under private insurance doesn't always "cover" you. The stories are legion (and one thing that Michael Moore's documentary actually did well, and not in a misleading way) that insurance companies work very hard to keep from paying legitimate claims for people whom they cover. And, as Molly Secours' story illustrates, out-of-pocket expenses even when you have insurance can be devastating in the case of a catastrophic illness.
The third and perhaps largest dimension involves rising costs. Universal coverage will help only marginally unless we control costs, which are rising at an unsustainable level. The paradox of breakthrough technologies in healthcare is that many of them also increase costs. Bigger culprit is the whole system's orientation toward treating illness rather than preventing it through things like lifestyle changes, good access to regular healthcare, making sure patients get and stay on medications. We spend 16% of our GDP on healthcare, more than any country in the world. Yet when measured by health outcomes, we rank about 19th. A big reason is that the incentives in our system are badly misaligned. Universal coverage in and of itself will not change that. (But universal coverage DOES need to happen.)
Posted 10/07/2008 at 12:32:08 PMI really hate the way writers of The Scene make it seem like this issue (and others) is so elementary and easily solved.
"I wonder how he'll feel if he's one of the tens of thousands of Americans who will likely lose their jobs in the next year, or if he's suddenly struck with a devastating illness."
And it's the government's job to make sure these horrible things don't happen? Perhaps while they are at it, they can put a stop to these pesky hurricanes and tornadoes.
How, may I ask, is a bankrupt government supposed to provide "free" healthcare to 300 million people? You can tell me it works in Europe and then I will state the fact that EUROPE IS BROKE AS WELL. I realize the concept of universal healthcare sounds great but you know what else sounds really nice? Heaven. And fairies. If only we had some fairies to help create wealth out of nothing.
Posted 10/07/2008 at 12:59:49 PM"I wonder how he'll feel if he's one of the tens of thousands of Americans who will likely lose their jobs in the next year, or if he's suddenly struck with a devastating illness."
I wonder how everyone who is being responsible and taking care of themselves feels about been told by people like Jack that they should consider themselves obilgated to cough up more money and/or accept more restrictions on their own healthcare plans to bail out other people?
Posted 10/07/2008 at 01:17:11 PM"Friends from Canada brought their ailing father to Nashville for treatment because he had been put on a waiting list 6 months long for an angioplasty. The doctors admitted he would probably not live that long, but his age of 80 put him lower on the list."
Like everyhing else, healthcare is a finite resource. It will either be rationed by price or rationed by goverment fiat.
Liberals, of course, prefer government fiat. But they won't state it that way when they try to sell the idea to people.
Posted 10/07/2008 at 01:23:31 PMMedicare for everyone. We already have national healthcare, you just have to be 65 to get it.
Countries that have national healthcare still sell private insurance and those folks can still see private doctors on their own timetable. But the insurance is much cheaper because they're not underwriting all the folks without.
We also have national healthcare for the indigent and the rest of us are paying for it through our premiums (at least those who can still afford it). How can anyone think this is a good idea?
Posted 10/07/2008 at 01:35:59 PMI'm with Boyd on this one. There's no way we can't have national health care. It seems like premiums jump from 10-20 percent a year, and it's eating both business and workers alive.
The red herring is to always pull horror stories from Canada and Europe, as if these are sufficient enough reason to not seek change. Neither presidential candidate is proposing anything near the Canadian model. Their plans are rather tepid, in fact, and very short on controlling costs, because they don't want to limit health care contributions during a campaign.
But in reality, health care is the one place where government has proven itself more efficient. I can't remember the exact figures, but the administration costs for Medicare are something like 12 percent. For private insurance, they're about 27 percent -- precisely for the reason Boyd outlines. A big chunk of those costs go to pay workers whose job it is to screw people out of legitimate claims.
The problem is that the health care industry has bought its way out of regulation on the people's behalf, just as Wall Street did. Whether it's fake new patents to keep generics off the market, allowing pharmaceutical companies to essentially bribe doctors into prescribing their medicines, or the AMA attacking alternative medicine providers to kill away competition, health care is just as corrupt as Wall Street. The Bush administration even barred the government from negotiating group prices on drugs. If that isn't utter whoring, I don't know what is.
Those of you who resist change gotta look at how you're being scammed. They jack your costs 10-20 percent a year, while continuously limiting what they cover, then they tell you there's no other way but theirs? If a car dealer tried to run this scam, you'd be wise to it in a New York minute. So how can you believe Big Pharm and insurance companies? When did they earn your blind trust?
Posted 10/07/2008 at 04:35:05 PM"When did they earn your blind trust?"
Strawman.
When did our bankrupt government earn yours?
Posted 10/07/2008 at 05:43:52 PM"But in reality, health care is the one place where government has proven itself more efficient"
Uh huh.
Meanwhile back in the real world, Medicare is so "efficient" that the 2008 Medicare trustee report shows it has accumumlated an unfunded liabilty balance of $85.9 trillion dollars.
http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba/ba616/
Read it and weep.
And even those numbers don't capture the whole cost of it because Medicare (and Tenncare as well) do not reimburse Medical providers for the full cost of the care provided to the patients covered by those programs. To make up the difference those Medical providers then shift as much of that cost as they can get away with onto - guess who?
People with private insurance and those who pay out of pocket for care - driving up their costs.
Tell us some more fairy tales, Kotz.
Posted 10/07/2008 at 09:28:01 PMThe unfunded liability is the gap between the future obligations (projected) of the program and the amount of taxes that have been collected to pay for it. This of course is the huge sword that is hanging over Medicare's head.
It has absolutely nothing to do with how efficiently the program is operated -- which was Kotz's point.
Posted 10/08/2008 at 07:23:19 AMYou're probably right about trusting government, Kevin. I'm just hoping we may soon have a government I can trust a little more, but that could be a fool's hope.
Posted 10/08/2008 at 11:23:44 AMIf it had been "efficiently" run, the expenditures for it would not have vastly exceeded the original cost projections that were used to set the tax rates necessary to cover the program costs to begin with.
And as I said before, it's reimbursement rates do not cover the provider costs so the providers are shifting some of those costs over onto those covered by private insurance. Medicare would look even less "efficient" if it were unable to get away with that.
Posted 10/08/2008 at 11:32:39 AMC'mon, Gilbert, you know Congress passes laws all the time that don't carry the funding to make them happen. That's entirely on Congress, since the people at a bureaucracy like Medicare can't just defy the rules Congress set down to live within their means. It's a shell game, but the shells are controlled by others.
You're right about Medicare driving down prices, which the medical industry recoups from the rest of us. And a lot of Medicare's formulaic payouts screw rural states like Tennessee, because they're based on seriously flawed cost of living standards. But I guess that's the point of universal health care -- the ability of government to negotiate price, rather than simply be gouged at the whim of insurers, big pharm, etc.
As Kevin notes, it's unwise to trust government. But as Wall Street's collapse once again proves, the private sector is ready and capable of screwing us so much greater. If I have to choose between semi-well meaning people of marginal competence (government) and wholly covetous people of marginal competence (Big Health), I'm going with the former. At least they occasionally entertain the people's interests.
Posted 10/08/2008 at 12:03:48 PM"C'mon, Gilbert, you know Congress passes laws all the time that don't carry the funding to make them happen. That's entirely on Congress,"
What I know is that the boosters of any proposed entitlement program always deliberatly lowball the estimated amount they claim it will cost in order to convince enough people to support getting it passed. It's a classic bait and switch. The history of Medicare is a perfect example of that.
"You're right about Medicare driving down prices, which the medical industry recoups from the rest of us. And a lot of Medicare's formulaic payouts screw rural states like Tennessee, because they're based on seriously flawed cost of living standards. But I guess that's the point of universal health care -- the ability of government to negotiate price, rather than simply be gouged at the whim of insurers, big pharm, etc"
Medicare isn't driving down the amount of it's reimbursement rates - it isn't driving down healthcare costs - it is simply causing them to be shifted elsewhere. If there were no "eslewhere" that providers to shift those costs to that they could get away with, then they would be much less willing to be in the business of accepting Medicare patients in the first place. A lot of them are gettin out of that business now anyway. Having Medicare coverage won't do you much good if you can't find a doctor that will accept Medicare business.
"At least they occasionally entertain the people's interests."
There is no such thing as "the people's interest". You can talk up socialized medicine all you want but making one person pay for something provided to someone else is not providing any "benefit" to the one on the paying end of the equation regardless of whether that "something" is a TV set, a car, medical treatment or a vaction trip to Disneyland.
Posted 10/08/2008 at 03:05:04 PMMake that Medicare IS driving down it's reimbursement rates.
Posted 10/08/2008 at 03:09:45 PMYou can talk up socialized medicine all you want but making one person pay for something provided to someone else is not providing any "benefit"
It would seem to my pea brain that our society at large has considered it a "benefit" to not watch old people die without healthcare. Or children or pregnant mothers. We, as a culture, have by and large decided that is something we are okay with helping to pay for.
Now, if we could just have some minimal coverage for the rest of us. I pay 10k a year for my family's coverage w/no well care and a 3k deductible. So until my taxes rise 13k a year for national healthcare, I do believe I could break even.
Posted 10/08/2008 at 05:58:34 PM"I pay 10k a year for my family's coverage w/no well care and a 3k deductible. So until my taxes rise 13k a year for national healthcare, I do believe I could break even."
In short, you want to vote yourself a handout of somebody else's money.
And that, in nutshell, is what "entitlement" programs are all about.
Posted 10/09/2008 at 07:37:49 AM