TW: I still think many folks believe health care reform is focused on providing more health care to the poor. It is not. It is focused on those working and middle class folks who for various reasons struggle to obtain care. Amongst other attributes, universal care would facilitate labor market participation by those currently likely to drop out due to health reasons. More importantly how would the nattering nabobs of health care reform negativity address the situation outlined below.
From Economist describing a Nic Kristof story from NYT:
"...what it's like to have a brain disease in America when you don't have health insurance. John Brodniak, a sawmill worker from Mr Kristof's hometown in Oregon, was diagnosed this spring with an abnormal growth of blood vessels in the brain which periodically leaks, causing him intense pain, blackouts, and memory loss. He was 23.
'With John unable to work, he lost his job — and his insurance coverage. [His wife] Esther had insurance for herself and for her two children (from a previous marriage) through her job building manufactured homes. But she couldn’t add John to her plan because of his pre-existing condition.
Without insurance, John has been unable to get surgery or even help managing the pain. When he collapses or suffers particularly excruciating headaches, Esther rushes him to the emergency room of one hospital or another, but an E.R. can’t do much for him. One hospital has told them not to come back unless he gets insurance, they say.
Esther used up her family leave time to look after her new husband. “Then I went back to work, and he fell several times,” she said. “I told my boss that I had to quit. Taking care of John was more important than building someone else’s house.”
That meant that the couple had no income—and no insurance for anyone in the family, including the children. Neighbors have helped, and a community program has paid the rent so that they are not homeless. But bills are piling up, and John and Esther don’t know how they will cope.
The doctors warn that pressure from the growth could lead a major blood vessel nearby to burst, killing him. “They tell me I’m a time bomb,” John said.'
When Ted Kennedy died in August, a number of right-wing commentators made the absurd suggestion that creating a universal health-insurance system in America was risky because, in such a system, the 77-year-old Mr Kennedy might not have been eligible for the high-quality care he received for a possibly inoperable brain tumour in the final year of his life. John Brodniak is a young, healthy man dying of an operable brain growth because America's current insurance system will not cover him.
Mr Brodniak's story is not without its complications: he has qualified for an Oregon Medicaid programme, but no hospital in the area will accept its low reimbursement rates for the treatment he needs. The health-reform plan currently moving through Congress would remedy such situations by requiring private insurance plans to accept people like Mr Brodniak, regardless of pre-existing conditions, and providing subsidies for those too poor to afford private plans. But the main point is that the idea that people might be refused urgent, life-saving medical care for fiscal reasons isn't some kind of future dystopia. It's the way things are right now. If we call that a "death panel", we're all sitting on it, and John Brodniak is waiting for our verdict."
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2009/11/we_have_met_the_death_panel
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