This week’s postings, listed below with a brief description cover articles from 8/18/13 through 8/24/13. The theme of the week is agreement, and there are many areas of agreement among stakeholders in the healthcare industry. Specifically, I advocate consumer agreement, the “us” of people most impacted by the PPACA, the current and former middle class.
Our agenda is more patriotic than any of the political players, healthcare providers or insurance companies because we want the best healthcare we can obtain for our families in the event we are stricken with illness, a simple goal of having and exercising the ability to use the healthcare system to make us better when we’re sick, private health interests that cumulatively support a commitment to public health.
We cannot hope for such a patriotic goal if we don’t sift through the separate agendas of other stakeholders in order to assess for ourselves what policies can work to support our national goal based on our understanding of what is going on.
For instance, those advocating repeal of Obamacare, likely don’t believe that it’s because Obamacare is “socialist” though you hear the term thrown around. Obviously Medicare and Medicaid have been part of our national commitment to helping people obtain health care EVEN IF they’re old or poor, for many decades.
For those on the other side, advocating a single-payer system, it’s not a “socialist” agenda, but an economic one, based on the fact that a little bit of national health insurance, such as Medicare and Medicaid, leaving the rest of us to find “private” insurance has resulted in “private” insurance hikes in premium and copayments and coinsurance charges by insurance companies trying to make up for limitations on how much they can get from government for public insurance programs.
You prohibit providers from getting more for Medicare patients, where do you think they go to make up profits? The private insurance plans.
As consumers, we seek affordable health care when we’re sick and representatives in government committed to that view, difficult since representatives must be responsive to lobbyists from the healthcare industry such as the AMA or insurance companies.
Here are the posts from this week, and their description:
“The Battle of Intent,” (Politics: Republicans need to come across as caring about citizens)
“Needing to Believe and Obamacare,” (Politics: How a one-sided argument is depriving the American people)
“President: ‘Health Insurance is Your Right,’” (Policy: Sacrificing truth to sell Obamacare)
“Suggestion *Affinity Health,” (Policy: Informing consumers of problems with insurers on health exchanges)
“How republicans Get it Wrong…All the Time,” (Politics: Continued advocacy against the poor will not work)
“United, Maybe We’ll Stand: UPS and University of Virginia,” (News: Celebrating the potential unity in negative experience).
