The circle

Over the course of the year, I have looked at news articles about health care in the United States. I have found that one of the biggest obstacles to achieving universal health care is the circle that our government is going in. The House Democrats and republicans are unable to come to an agreement. When most of them agree that health care needs more funding, they cannot agree on how the money should be used. The republicans are hesitant when it comes to the sum of money that the Democrats want, but eventually they were able to compromise. The next problem is President Bush who has vetoed bills that would increase funding for health care. While much about the next eight years is uncertain, one thing that is certain is that there will be some change in our health care policies, most likely for the better.

These are Statistics about how much different western countries spend on health care. The United States is in a far last second to Denmark which still spends 19% more than we do on health care. This is ridiculous when we are such a large and developed country. We should be spending the most on health care, not the least.

McCain Pushes Choice as Health Care Fix

This article is about McCain's health care plan. While his competitors are proposing ways to provide universal health care coverage, McCain is proposing the opposite. McCain wants to get people to buy their own insurance instead of using that provided by their employers. He would give the people who did this a $2500 to $5000 tax cut. McCain believes that if people have to buy their insurance, it will force insurance companies to reduce their prices and improve the quality of their care. Critics say that McCain's plan has been tried before and has not worked, but he persists.
McCain also wants to increase the availability of preventative treatment and make it harder for patients to sue doctors. McCain's main argument is that if the government provides health care options for people then the people will not have as much choice.
McCain's arguments are not legitimate. With Both Clinton's and Obama's plans, people are able to keep their private insurance, but the government will provide care of those who cannot afford insurance or whose employers do not provide it. McCain proposed a tax cut for people who buy private insurance, but the insurance will cost more than the amount of money that these people save from the tax cut. On the whole, I have no idea how McCain is going to compete with Clinton's or Obama's plan.

Reuters. McCain Pushes Choice as Health Care Fix. Nytimes.com. April 29, 2008. <http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-usa-politics-mccain.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=health+care&st=nyt&oref=slogin>

A Study Finds end-of-life costs in S. Florida are among the highest in the nation

This article is about how much money hospitals in Florida spend on intensive care. These hospitals do many tests on patients, even when they are not necessary. People assume that their health care will be the best at these hospitals, but a recent study showed that this is not the case. The study showed that there are as many deaths at the high cost hospitals as at the low cost ones.
Doctors know that they can make more money by taking more tests. These hospitals are not as focused on patient comfort so much as patient care. The study showed that taking care of comfort is more important than taking tests, but that practice will not stop.
There have been lawsuits about the hospitals misusing medicare and charging incorrectly. Many patients have been decieved into beliveing that the higher costing care is the best care, but this study proves that this is not the case.

Dorschner, John. " A Study Finds end-of-life costs in S. Florida are among the highest in the nation."miamiherald.com. April 27, 2008. <http://www.miamiherald.com/living/health/story/510273.html>

project update

Over the course of the next few weeks, I will work to educate people about the issues with our health care system and possible solutions. So far I am planning to make a small mural outside of a popular restaurant (I have their permission) and I will tell people about the problems as they enter. After I have done this, the restaurant will hang up my mural as a part of a political graffiti wall that they are putting up. I also hope to paint a mural at the Berkeley free clinic however I am only working one step at a time.
The mural displays how the only people with health care are the ones who can pay for it. Everyone else must do without. I hope to educate people on the causes of the issue because everyone has witnessed the problems with our health care system whether personally or from afar.

Interview

I interviewed a woman who worked for Healthy San Francisco, Vanda Baptista. She runs the Eligibility and Enrollment Unit which interviews clients to see if they are eligible for the program. She started of by telling me about how popular the Healthy San Francisco program is. The program is constantly having to tell people that the coverage is not yet available for their financial group.
Healthy San Francisco is starting by covering everyone who lives at poverty level then working their way up. The program currently gives coverage to people living at 3 times the poverty level. People who are eligible for the Healthy San Francisco program must be between the ages of 18 and 65 because otherwise they could be cared for through medicare or medicaid.
Healthy San Francisco is able to pay for all of the services because patients will no longer need to go to the emergency room so all that saved money goes to Healthy San Francisco.
Healthy San Francisco has an assortment of doctors who speak many languages. It also has clinics that specialize in certain forms of health care. The program gives health care to anyone who has not had insurance for 90 days and fit the financial requirements. The Healthy San Francisco program hopes to give health care of every uninsured San Francisco resident over the course of the next five years. For more information see the enclosed link.

American Health care system: What health care system?

On Friday, I was talking about my project and then a man who was listening in joined the conversation. The man was from Britain and said that I should call my project, "American Health Care System: What Health Care System?" I thought that this was really interesting because the man was not from the United States. I was under the impression that our health care issues were only paid attention to in our country. It turns out that I was wrong. This man seemed to find our whole health system, or lack thereof, highly amusing. I was struck by how fast the man jumped into my conversation and how passionate he seemed to be about the topic. This made me realize how ridiculous our country must look to everyone else. If that isn't a reason to change our policy, what is?

cartoon

I found this comic on Google, it seemed to sum up the whole health care issue very succinctly. It showed how our whole society places so much emphasis on capitalism that we forget that sometimes government intervention can be helpful.

note: the headline on the newspaper that the father is holding. I think that it was an actual headline a few months ago. How sad, its not an exaggeration.

Health Care Horror Stories

This is an op-ed piece about how awful our health care system is. It highlights two tragic stories about women who died because they did not have health care. This article then links the stories to the presidential race because Hillary Clinton used these stories to " put a human face on the cruelty and injustice of the American health care system." While this article is clearly biased, it does provide some accurate insight into the horrors of our health care system. This article also shows how caught up or country is in seeing their favorite candidate picked for president. We often forget that the whole presidential race is about making changes for the better of our country; no matter who makes the changes in the end.
I think that this article is really interesting and clearly illustrates the problems that our health care system is facing. Although the article is biased, the author stuck to the facts and let us know when he was sharing his opinion.

Krugman, Paul. Health Care Horror Stories.New York Times. April 11, 2008. < http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/11/opinion/11krugman.html?scp=1&sq=health+care+horror+stories&st=nyt>

typical call

Here is an example of a typical massage that I would leave for Healthy San Francisco clients:
" Hello this is Theresa calling for (insert name). I am calling from San Francisco General Hospital in regards to the Healthy San Francisco program, please call us at your convenience at our office so that we can assign you to a clinic, please call if you have any questions or concerns.

If we reached the client, we would ask them for identification such as a birth date or social security number. If the client was interested in being assigned to a medical home, we would go through a list of the locations of the clinics and have the client stop us when we reached on near them. We would then assign them to that clinic and call the next person.

volunteer

I volunteered at the Health San Francisco financial office. While there, I called potential clients to help assign them to the medical home nearest them. It is a tedious process, many of the people signed up for this program have no phone, or do not speak english. According to one of the employees, of the 50 people who he has to call, he would speak to about twelve of them and only get about ten of them assigned to a clinic.

Healthy San Francisco

Healthy San Francisco is a program to provide health care for San Francisco residents who do not have health insurance. Of the 750,000 San Francisco residents, 82,000 do not have health coverage. The program provides care for anyone who has gone without health insurance for over 90 days.