Health Care Reforms — Who Needs Them?

The short answer is ALL OF US.  It’s time for the “political hacks as usual” to stop talking and debating and dancing around the issue and get their tails ends on task to work finding answers that benefit Americans.
As a public school teacher, I’ve seen how lack of basic health care impacts education — and my future tax dollars when these students don’t graduate.  Parents who are “too poor to be rich and too rich to be poor” have extreme difficulty affording eyeglasses, antibiotic treatment for simple infections, preventative care such as flu shots and immunizations.  Somewhere in the private sector, most of these can be covered, but those solutions are not easily fo und and often have intolerable waiting lines.  So, those of us with health care foot the bill because most “public hospitals” have a mandate to treat indigent people, primarily in overloaded Emergency Rooms not designed to handle basic medical care. As a result, the insured are already paying for the uninsured!  What’s new with the reform?  A solution is just been sought which provides care with less red tape and obstacles for all and that finds ways to cut the fat from health costs — and the health care system in morbidly obese. 

As a personal example, I chose the wrong coverage from my employer one year.  We changed carriers and I thought I was signing up for coverage equal to the coverage I had under the previous carrier, but I wasn’t.  What a shock to discover that one of my medications was going to cost me $182 each month due to that mistake.  (More than $500 was already being deducted for my health insurance!)  I went to my private care physician and told him I could no longer afford medication, although I knew I needed it.  He and I put our heads together and came up with a list of generic options which offered the same benefits at much less cost.  The bottom line is that all of my medications now cost a total of about $35 a month, and neither my doctor or I notice any difference in their effectiveness; I take advantage of the programs offered by most pharmacies to order off their list for $5.00 a month.  These prescriptions are not even billed to my insurance carrier now!  Without my mistake, my insurance company would be billed for hundreds of dollars of prescriptions each month for which there are much less expensive generics available.  Both my doctor and I were overcharging my health insurance because we had no reason to search for a less expensive option.  I shudder to think of the thousands of other options out there that are simply not being explored which could cut health care costs without cutting back on care.

Instead of screaming at town hall meetings and believing all the hipe coming out of the pocketbooks of health insurance companies, examine the proposals and make rational decisions!  Realize that some of your personal healthcare costs and probably be slashed without any loss of quality of care — and produce a savings of thousands each year.  Multiply that savings by the millions of people in this country who are insured and already picking up the bills for the uninsured.  I’m astounded!  Are you?