Health care and the long drive
No, I didn't get sick on my drive back from Chicago today, but I did spend some time thinking about health care.
I heard two bits on the radio that got me going. The first was on some unidentified station over in western Michigan. It was some unidentified conservative Congress person. I wasn't in range of the station long enough to hear who was talking or even what station it was. But I did hear enough to get where the speaker was coming from.
He said (I'm paraphrasing) that the problem with universal health care is that there aren't enough doctors and hospitals to accommodate the 50 million uninsured people in the United States suddenly entering the system. He said that back when Harry Truman was trying to get universal health care, he included a provision to help educate new doctors and increase the number of doctors in the system. That isn't being done now.
"I'm afraid if we let the Democrats push through Cap and Trade, Health Care and Immigration Reform, we'll never be able to roll this stuff back," he said. "But I think that I and my Republican colleagues can stop it."
That was radio interview No. 1.
The second one was on NPR when I was about halfway across the state. The NPR piece was on increased wait times for doctor visits under the current system. The average person waits four weeks for a specialist appointment, and one week for a primary physician visit. The upshot of the piece was that reduced Medicare payments (under the current system) have caused shortages of practitioners in some specialties and in primary care (family practice and general practice). An unidentified Congress person (most likely a Democrat) said that measures were being added to the health care reform bill to make primary care and the scarce specialties more attractive to students coming out of medical school to deal with the shortages.
My reaction to the first interview was some disgust that the conservative seemed completely OK with 50 million people being locked out of the medical system, because that way, he has shorter wait times to see a doctor.
I wanted to ask him (and I'll never get a chance, because I don't know who he was), why he hadn't tried to offer an amendment to help students go to medical school and increase the number of doctors. It seems to me that the choice between "spend a little (very little in proportion to everything else) to have more doctors," and "let 50 million people face financial ruin or death because they don't have access to affordable health care" is pretty much a no-brainer.
Look at the cost. Let's say the average primary care physician sees four people an hour for eight hours a day, five days a week. (That's probably not accurate, but just an "out of my butt" estimate.) Let's say the average person (with insurance) sees a doctor four times a year. To add 50 million people to the system, you're going to need about 25,000 doctors. But let's be really wild and double that number. If we passed a bill that gave out 50,000 $100,000 scholarships to medical school, it would cost $5 billion. In comparison to the money we've doled out for bailouts in the past year, that's chump change. And since there aren't 50,000 extra spaces in medical schools for next fall, we'll need to roll this out over several years. So, we're looking at $1 billion a year for five years.
Is this such a big problem?
My reaction to the second interview is to point to my plan as laid out above. We need more doctors and nurses (we need a similar scholarship program for nursing school -- and some work rules to make a career in nursing more attractive than it is right now). So, lets include provisions in the health care reform bill to get more doctors and nurses into the field and see that they are paid fairly for their work.
If the American health care system can't handle Americans, it needs to be reformed so it can. It simply isn't acceptable to lock out 50 million people to keep from inconveniencing the other 250 million. I've got news for you, the other 250 million are already inconvenienced.
Affordable health care for everyone isn't a boondoggle. It's just common sense.
I heard two bits on the radio that got me going. The first was on some unidentified station over in western Michigan. It was some unidentified conservative Congress person. I wasn't in range of the station long enough to hear who was talking or even what station it was. But I did hear enough to get where the speaker was coming from.
He said (I'm paraphrasing) that the problem with universal health care is that there aren't enough doctors and hospitals to accommodate the 50 million uninsured people in the United States suddenly entering the system. He said that back when Harry Truman was trying to get universal health care, he included a provision to help educate new doctors and increase the number of doctors in the system. That isn't being done now.
"I'm afraid if we let the Democrats push through Cap and Trade, Health Care and Immigration Reform, we'll never be able to roll this stuff back," he said. "But I think that I and my Republican colleagues can stop it."
That was radio interview No. 1.
The second one was on NPR when I was about halfway across the state. The NPR piece was on increased wait times for doctor visits under the current system. The average person waits four weeks for a specialist appointment, and one week for a primary physician visit. The upshot of the piece was that reduced Medicare payments (under the current system) have caused shortages of practitioners in some specialties and in primary care (family practice and general practice). An unidentified Congress person (most likely a Democrat) said that measures were being added to the health care reform bill to make primary care and the scarce specialties more attractive to students coming out of medical school to deal with the shortages.
My reaction to the first interview was some disgust that the conservative seemed completely OK with 50 million people being locked out of the medical system, because that way, he has shorter wait times to see a doctor.
I wanted to ask him (and I'll never get a chance, because I don't know who he was), why he hadn't tried to offer an amendment to help students go to medical school and increase the number of doctors. It seems to me that the choice between "spend a little (very little in proportion to everything else) to have more doctors," and "let 50 million people face financial ruin or death because they don't have access to affordable health care" is pretty much a no-brainer.
Look at the cost. Let's say the average primary care physician sees four people an hour for eight hours a day, five days a week. (That's probably not accurate, but just an "out of my butt" estimate.) Let's say the average person (with insurance) sees a doctor four times a year. To add 50 million people to the system, you're going to need about 25,000 doctors. But let's be really wild and double that number. If we passed a bill that gave out 50,000 $100,000 scholarships to medical school, it would cost $5 billion. In comparison to the money we've doled out for bailouts in the past year, that's chump change. And since there aren't 50,000 extra spaces in medical schools for next fall, we'll need to roll this out over several years. So, we're looking at $1 billion a year for five years.
Is this such a big problem?
My reaction to the second interview is to point to my plan as laid out above. We need more doctors and nurses (we need a similar scholarship program for nursing school -- and some work rules to make a career in nursing more attractive than it is right now). So, lets include provisions in the health care reform bill to get more doctors and nurses into the field and see that they are paid fairly for their work.
If the American health care system can't handle Americans, it needs to be reformed so it can. It simply isn't acceptable to lock out 50 million people to keep from inconveniencing the other 250 million. I've got news for you, the other 250 million are already inconvenienced.
Affordable health care for everyone isn't a boondoggle. It's just common sense.