Health Care Summit

Anyone pay attention to the health care summit today? Yeah, me neither. I mean, I paid attention in the sense that I knew it was going on, but did I really have any hope that anything would be achieved? Absolutely not.

I was quickly tallying the number of liberals, moderates and conservatives that read my blog, (assuming I know most of the readers and have an accurate idea of their political philosophy) and I determined that I probably have more conservative friends than one might think. So in the spirit of friendship and pacifism, I am going to attempt to keep the blog as apolitical as humanly possible for Jon Cattey. But I feel like this whole health care thing needs a little discussion.

First: this health care summit is just dumb. Does anyone actually think that putting a camera in front of these people is going to spur some form of agreement? I'd be more in favor of the summit if there weren't cameras involved. The cameras just entice the politicians to try and get the most one-liners out.

Some of my favorite lines from today and my response to them...

"This is a car that can't be recalled and fixed and ... we ought to start over." — Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn. Wow, nice allusion to the current Toyota problems. Do you have anything constructive to add? No...ok, then shut it.

“This will take courage to do.” — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. I'm sorry, but am I the only person who is just so tired of Mrs. Pelosi? She is supposed to be one of the leaders in Washington who can actually help get stuff done, and she offers up meaningless quotes like this. Right, the Republicans just don't have the courage that you do. Got it.

“People are angry. We promised them change in Washington,” — Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona I guess my biggest problem here is just McCain in general. Yes John, you promised us a lot of things during the campaign. Unforunately, you lost; so nothing you said matters.

“The health insurance industry is the shark that swims just below the water and you don’t feel that shark until you feel the teeth of that shark.” — Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.V. I just like this metaphor! I have no idea what it means or really how it applies, but it sounds good...haha.

“Doctors are risk averse to the tort system and the extortion system that’s out there today.” — Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla. Right, this is the reason you are a Republican from Oklahoma. This quote actually really angers me. Anyone who thinks that the tort system, specifically medical malpractice, is the main reason or a major reason for our health care problems is totally delusional. Furthermore, to somehow insinuate that the current system amounts to extortion is ridiculous. The vast majority of people who are injured by their doctors never receive any form of recovery. The statistic in Wisconsin is something like the average doctor will have a claim made against him or her once in every 125 years of practice. This idea that doctors live in constant fear regarding potential litigation is a fallacy.

I would hope we could all agree that our health care system needs serious reform. I even agree that the tort system could probably benefit from reform as well. But let's not make "tort reform" out to be the savior of a seriously screwed up health care system.

At my current job, I see clients who have medical bills well into the millions of dollars. Often times, they personally owe a large portion of these bills. That is wrong. It's wrong on every level to think that we (society as a whole) don't have an obligation to care for people who have serious medical needs. Yesterday, I saw a statistic that every 12 minutes someone in the United States dies in large part because they don't have health insurance. Obviously, we can quibble about the study, but there can be no doubt that the number of uninsured individuals in our country is unacceptable. For the sake of these people and my kids/grandkids/hopefully great-grandkids at some point, we need to get something done.

So, I urge everyone to think about these things. I know most of you are fortunate, just like myself. We are fortunate that no matter what happens or doesn't happen, we will be fine. We can afford insurance even with outrageous deductibles and premiums. But that isn't reality for most Americans. For that reason, something needs to be done, fast.