How Obamacare will eliminate some immorality in the health insurance system
Lexicon
1. Paradox: We're a first-rate economy with first-rate medical research and equipment but a fourth-rate health care provider.
2. America's quilt payment system: a crazy, overlapping pay system resulting in chaos, wasted money, and conflicting systems with no one willing to take accountability (29). Tens of millions of Americans are uncovered. See waste in the US healthcare system.
3. Moral bankruptcy argument: We allow children to go to bed with an earache, toothache, or asthma attack because we don't provide a basic human need in the world's wealthiest country (30).
4. Prevention argument: Prevention would save us billions of dollars a year. One source, American Public Health Association, says we will save 16.5 billion a year with prevention.
5. Avoidable mortality (32): How well does a country treat curable diseases? America is last in the world. We're also last for quality of life at 60, a benchmark for general health. We also the worst developed country for infant mortality (33).
6. American Health Care Money: American health care costs are number one and the providers make more profit than any providers in any other country. But we have the worst health care of all developed nations. American doctors make two or three times as much money as other doctors from other countries (35). But the biggest reasons for our bloated health costs are the way we manage health care and the complexity of our health system (36).
7. America's shame: America is the only developed country that relies on profit-making health insurance companies for essential health care (36). We refuse to embrace the non-profit model even though countries that use it have superior health care.
8. American System of Not Helping: Health care companies don't want to spend money on helping people: The less they spend on health care, the safer their CEOs and the higher their stocks (37). Don't help people; spend money on administrative costs. America's administrative costs are the highest in the world. Unlike other countries, American health care companies are motivated to deny claims.
9. Guaranteed issue: Countries, except the US, guarantee service to all people while the US health companies cherry-pick their customers based on a risk assessment (38). Other countries also have individual mandate, which means all citizens feed the pool of money for health insurance (39).
10. The Lose Your Job Lose Your Health Insurance Model: This horrible model is unique to America. No other wealthy country uses it because it is immoral (40). This is shocking for me to read about because all my life I've heard this mantra: "America is the greatest country in the world!"
11. Administrative Monstrosity Model: Complicated, confusing health care model that makes maximum money for health care providers and minimizes quality health care: It's unique to America (44).
Moral Reasons for Supporting Some Form of Universal Healthcare
1. Letting people die from illnessness that could have been treated is unacceptable in a developed country, especially when the US is the only country that allows this. We're not a member of the Zero Club.
2. For-Profit model doesn't work.
3. All other developed countries have a successful model of universal healthcare.
4. We spend more money per person but are in dead last.
Review Questions
What is the paradox of the American health care system?
See pages 28 and 29.
We are a system of the haves and the have-nots like Nikki White.
America has the best facilities and doctors but is the highest in “avoidable mortality” (32).
America also ranks low in survival rate from diseases.
More young people die in America than in other rich countries (33).
America is at bottom for health at age 60.
America is dead last in keeping newborn babies alive (33).
See infant mortality rates on page 34.
While ranking worst in all the above categories, America has the highest cost of health care, another paradox (34). One reason is that doctors, nurses and other health care providers and staff make more money than their counterparts in other countries.
This extra income is necessary for inflated college costs and malpractice insurance (34).
But these salaries are a tiny factor. The two huge factors are the way we manage our health system and the unnecessary complexity of our health care system (35).
Profit motive is so important in America, that United States is only country in the world that denies coverage for fear of individuals being at special risk for getting sick (38).
Other countries have one health care system; America has or “crazy quilt” or jigsaw puzzle of different pieces that don’t fit together (41).
Billing is so complicated in America that it’s the only country who has to hire “compilers,” middlemen who “compile the bills that doctors submit and then shuttle them through the payment system” (43).
How should French health care allay the anxieties people have about adopting the Bismarck system?
No waits, no denial of services; full access to best services; affordable care through employer and government paying private hospitals (like Kaiser). The French Ministry dictates what hospitals can charge for services to keep costs down.
The World Health Organization ranks France number one in the world.
Part II Common Arguments For and Against Universal and Socialized Health Care
The Atlantic: "Why I Oppose National Health Care"
Five Arguments for Universal Health Care . . .
Worst Arguments Against Universal Healthcare
Arguments Against Universal Health Care in America
Part III. American Exceptionalism, Hubris, and Our Health Care Crisis
Americans resist learning from other countires who have better health care in part because of American Exceptionalism, the belief that America is the light in the darkness, the salt of the earth and as such is entitled to influence the world, not the other way around (difficult to reconcile the idea of American Exceptionalism with a country that was founded on a slavery economy).
The Myth of American Exceptionalism in FP
The Myth of American Exceptionalism in The National Interest
The End of American Exceptionalism by Peter Beinart
Student Errors
1. My mother told me to help the other children, seeing I was the oldest, I thought it was a great idea.
2. I did bad and and got spanked, my little brothers did the same and got spanked as well.
3. My learned helplessness came in childhood, I was told I was like my younger brothers.
4. It was never their intention to have an affair, Eileen just wanted a tutor.
5. Love has no name, love has a final destination.
6. Tian is not only concerned with losing his job, he also has to manage his mother.
7. Tian sees no way out, he can't ask his mother to leave.
8. Meifen has time on her side, she's an old sly fox who's played this game before.
9. Dave had only a few girlfriends and both of them left him; leaving him to feel rejected and hurt.
10. The characters from Ja Jin's stories suffer from learned helplessness caused by self-reinforcement and solipsism.
11. Conjuration happens as people speak. (Harry Potter language)
12. He doesn't care about his wife's thoughts because of his solipsism coming from low self-esteem.
13. The Third Eye gives a person a feeling of enlightenment and allows them to find freedom from the shackles that imprisoned them in their learned helplessness and personal issues.
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