Health Care

I found a copy of the new Health Care Bill and thought I'd try to read some of it.
I didn't have to get far to discover I don't like it.
On page 1

The purpose of this divison is to provide affordable, quality health care for all Americans and reduce the growth in health care spending

This is not an acheivable goal, you cannot grow the number of people covered and also reduce the growth in health care spending. They need to make up their minds what they want to accomplish first.

Also, it doesn't serve transparency in government to publish a bill on the internet and not allow me to copy segments of it for use in my blog. I had to hand type the above, the copy edit function doesn't work on the pdf file.

Health Care?

An example of why health care costs are so expensive in the U.S.

From a respiratory therapist.

My next work task will be to make a "round" and administer breathing treatments to people. Also, I will write down numbers from mechanical ventilators.

The breathing treatments are totally unindicated in about 98% of cases. Doctors order them for non-respiratory problems such as kidney failure or a broken femur. We are literally giving people treatments so it "looks like" we're doing something. This is why medicine is so expensive. The numbers from the ventilators are useless because nobody, not even other respiratory therapists, will ever look at them. I could show up, clock in, go home, and then come back later and clock out, and it wouldn't make a lick of difference. The really scary thing is, most of what happens at a hospital is like this: we kill time while people heal themselves.

Hillary is insane

According to CNN

A Clinton adviser compares the plan's so-called "individual mandate" -- which requires everyone to have health insurance -- to current rules in most states that require all drivers to purchase auto insurance, according to The Associated Press.

I've spent time in jail because I didn't have automobile liability insurance. Is that the plan?

Have health insurance or go to jail. What a country. Now we'll never be able to close Gitmo.

Update:
One reason that mandatory insurance of any kind is a really, really bad idea.

Update:
Maybe she's misrepresenting her own idea in an attempt to sell it. Maybe the point is to provide universal insurance, not to require insurance. But she's still insane.

Update:
If we really want universal health care it's not that hard to do. You just do it slowly, expand medicare, increase grants to community clinics, stop trying to impose religious dogma on medical providers, etc.

But we don't really want universal health care. We want universal control.

Update:
I'm not the only one who thinks Hillary's idea is the idea of a nutcase. She's no longer pushing universal health care, she's pushing a government mandated market for approved insurance providers.

County hospitals

I know from experience that Texas has county hospitals pretty much everywhere which have a mandate to provide emergency treatment to anyone who walks in. It's health care of the last resort but it's health care for everyone.

USA Today has a story about the crowded Emergency Room at the public hospital in Harris County (Houston).

Although I lived in Houston for a while, and didn't have health insurance when I was living there, I don't think I've ever been to that emergency room.

Things aren't as crowded in the more rural counties in Texas. And if you're looking for a heart transplant you probably want to go to Houston, but for other medical treatment you'll probably get pretty good treatment at the smaller hospitals.

I did go to the emergency room in Victoria County (Victoria, Texas is right in the middle of a triangle formed by Houston, San Antonio, Corpus Christi) once. I was having some severe stomach pains. I'd been having some sharp pains for a while but I didn't have insurance, didn't have a regular doctor, and the pains never lasted long, so I did the American thing and ignored the pains. That is until they got so severe I was doubled over so bad I could barely walk and couldn't drive and the pain didn't go away.

My girlfriend drove me to the hospital. They sent me for xrays. They had me laying in a gurney and after a while some surgeon came up to me with a clipboard and said, "we don't see anything on the x-rays". "We need to cut you open and look arouhd, but first you have to sign this release".

I was hurting, not really thinking very clearly. "What if I don't sign it?"

He said, "We'll roll you into that corner right over there and leave you there until you're dead".

I signed it.

They ended up removing a gall bladder, whatever the hell that is.