Obama on Healthcare Reform: Less Talk, Better Coverage

Recently, we have all been overwhelmed with talk about the proposed healthcare reform that many Democrats want to pass. President Barack Obama and volunteers that comprise of e-mail lists of the volunteers used during the elections and supporters of Barack Obama during the campaign have been on a major mission to pursuade patients, doctors, and politicians to join them.

The idea is to “cover all Americans”, mostly through government mandates to purchase insurance.
We currently have little information but still, there are already many supporters of the plan, but some others are not comfortable with parts of the proposed plans. Many who support the plan bring up the fact that there are many in this country who are uninsured.

This is where Medicare and Medicaid come up.

Medicare is a system of insurance that assists the elderly who are eligible for social security payments. While no system is infallible, many who are on Medicare are satisfied with it. For the elderly who wish to get what they consider better care, they are able to get supplemental insurance from many private insurers, often at a discount. Many senior citizens choose this option, and many who live in a single-payer system would also prefer to supplement their insurance with this option. Medicare is also available to the disabled.

Medicaid is a health insurance program for low-income people. States are required to cover many that wish to have insurance whose income is at or below the poverty level. They may cover those that make more as well, and often cover people with higher income levels if they are minors, are pregnant, infants, and others, and are required to cover children under 6 and pregnant women who make 133% of the poverty level or below. Children in foster care and some children who are adopted also receive Medicaid. Most states go beyond these federal mandates and choose to cover a much wider group of people.

The idea that all people who do not have insurance are too poor to afford it is not entirely true. Those that are too poor to afford insurance are covered by a state program, in the same way that people that are too poor to afford food are covered by programs to assist in that matter.

There may be some who have fallen on hard times and have bills to pay, but the idea of “repossessing” medical care will remain in science fiction movies and has not been a way of life for the American people, and people have bills of all sorts, not just those that are medical. The idea that someone is too poor to afford medical care, either in insurance form or with actual doctors, is more of a matter of personal opinion, as most who are actually poor are already covered with a government program.

This is where the issue comes in. I had a friend with two children and a mother who was ill. She took care of all of them - alone. They all went without health insurance for several years, even though the mother was very ill and had been in a serious accident leaving her with brain damage. With all that, high blood pressure and some other serious problems, the mother was denied medicare. The friend, who was taking care of her family made just enough so that they couldn't get medical help but she didn't qualify at work. When her son had to have emergency knee surgery, they finally gave her CHIP for her kids and gave her mother PCN which is a very, very, very scaled down version of Medicare - totally bare bones. Basically, it helped with her prescriptions.

At any rate, people think that the poor and the elderly are all insured and taken care of. That is not true. It is a fact that over 50% are, but it is also a fact that those who make even $10 too much are often denied care even if their doctor pleads for it.

Hopefully everyone from the president down on the left or the right will leave politics out of the heathcare issue and make sure everyone who needs it is taken care of with the new legislation.

Filed under: General-Medicare

Tags: coverage, General-Medicare, healthcare, medicaid, medicaid coverage, medicare coverage