Constant Conservative brought readers' attention to an article in Commentary Magazine in which business and financial historian, John Steele Gordon, writes about the failure of three U.S. run health systems: the Indian Health Service, the Veterans Administration, and Medicare.The Indian Health Service, Gordon pointed out:
delivers what it is pleased to call health care to two million American Indians living on reservations in thirty-five states. “Don’t get sick after June” is the standard advice, for by then the money allocated by Congress has mostly run out.
Indians on reservations are usually poor and often suffer from very high rates of alcoholism, obesity, and the problems that come with those conditions, such as high blood pressure and diabetes. But as the Associated Press reports, “Indian health clinics often are ill-equipped to deal with such high rates of disease, and poor clinics do not have enough money to focus on preventive care. The main problem is a lack of federal money. American Indian programs are not a priority for Congress, which provided the health service with $3.6 billion this budget year.” That’s an annual budget of a measly $1,800 per Indian. No wonder the health statistics of a people that have been guaranteed free health care by the federal government since 1787 are so terrible.
And then there's the "even larger federal health care system, for veterans":
When it was found that thousands of veterans were put at risk for HIV, hepatitis, and other infectious diseases by improperly sterilized equipment used in colonoscopies last February, an investigation was ordered. Three months later, it seems that not much has been done about the problem.
Of course, there's also Medicare, the U.S. government's health insurance program for people age 65 or older. It's a real treat for paperwork lovers, as I can personally attest from much experience wheeling aged relatives through its labyrinthian paths. If a Medicare recipient makes one of a number of teeny-weeny-eensy-beansy little paperwork errors, finding his or her way back into the Medicare Labyrinth can be a paperwork challenge equal to solving the New York Times crossword puzzle, except that it requires much more exertion and will take longer.
That might be because there is not just one Medicare. No. That would be so ungovernmentlike. There are four Medicares: A, B, C, and D. Courses on how to apply for Medicare A, B, C, and D are not only available, but recommended. No problem though. One could hardly expect anything but paperwork perfection from an elderly person who, on a good day, may be experiencing seriously declining memory, vision, hearing, and ambulation, among other faculties. Falling through the Medicare cracks is so common that, in some places, government programs even exist to help catch people who fall through those cracks. Of course, those programs come with their own sets of paperwork challenges.
Paperwork versus convenience. Based on your own personal experience, which do you think your federal government will choose?
As far as I can tell, the most effective way to keep health care costs down was perfected by Congress as a by-product of Medicare: Make it so damn difficult to apply and stay on track that old sick people on minuscule budgets who are legally quite eligible for health care benefits don't know that they are eligible, can't figure out how to access those benefits, or are too sick and infirm to access those benefits. That's a real cost-cutter. And it insures that the people most in need get beat to the benefits door by the semi-pro system manipulators who have been milking the system for their entire lives.
Despite the skill of Congress in making an entire segment of the population eligible for a benefit that many of them will never be able to access, Medicare is still a financial flop, accounting as it does for an enormous chunk of our national budget deficit and poised to account for a much bigger chunk of our national debt, a chunk so big that Obama is offering to reduce Medicare costs by folding Medicare into his nationalized health care program.
Huh? I have heard otherwise lucid-appearing people buy Obama's argument that a big government-run health care program can be made less expensive by extending it to include the entire population of the U.S. plus anyone who shows up here from any country, legally or illegally.
Back to Gordon:
I have an idea. Why not have the federal government demonstrate that it can provide adequate health care to American Indians, a promise it hasn’t kept for 222 years? Then demonstrate it can provide adequate health care to veterans, a promise it hasn’t kept for 79 years. Then demonstrate that it can reform and efficiently run the health insurance system called Medicare, which it has been been making a dog’s breakfast of for the last 44 years. And then, and only then, take over all of American health care.
Do the right thing. Call or write at least one congressman or senator today. Remember that, no matter what, they'll have Cadillac health coverage for the rest of their lives, so they won't quite get what you are talking about. (Cadillac is a GM product, but contact Congress anyway.) Obamacare is a life-changer, in a bad way.
- Representatives' names and addresses here. Email and fax numbers here.
- Senators' name and contact information here.
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