Health Care Reform PP11

I believe that it is every persons fundamental right to health care. Why? I personally have had to experience being without health care insurance when we moved here from L.A. My husband and I had only been married a year and failed to update his medical insurance options and that left me and my sons without health coverage for the entire first year we lived here in AZ. I remember thinking I hope none of us gets sick or hurt because we aren't going to be able to go to the doctor or hospital without it costing us a fortune. Well that possibility turned into reality in late November of 2003. My youngest son came down with a cold and for the first 3 days I kept him home and tried to keep him well hydrated, but that didn't work. He eventually wound up in the emergency room and I was presented with a bill for about $4000. I couldn't believe that an 8 hour visit to the emergency room could cost so much and then I had no clue how we were even going to pay the bill. Part of my keeping my son home without consulting the doctor initially was because I was hoping he would get better before getting worse to avoid getting that type of bill. It is sad to know that you have to risk your child's life or your own just to make sure you don't go into debt. I remember thinking how unfair it is to not be able to just take my kids or myself to the doctor when I needed to without having to think about the cost of co-pays and residual bills that insurance would not cover. Even today, I will not go to the doctor because my co-pay is $30 for my regular doctor and $45 for a specialist...these are costs that I can't afford to pay due to being unemployed for almost the last year. I like the other countries and how people who are covered under NHS don't have to think like me about co-pays and is my pain really worth the trip to the doctor this time or should I just ignore what's going on with my body. I have a prescription that is about to run out within the next 5 days and it burns me to know that I don't have the money to get a refill and it burns me even more knowing that I have to pay $50 just to get it filled. That is on the cheap side of my prescriptions. So, people like me should not have to choose between their health or eating for the next week because that co-pay could feed a family for a week or put gas in someone's car to continue to work. I have never understood why the U.S. doesn't regulate the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical companies from making these huge profits off people. Whether you are rich or poor, no one should have to go without preventative care or emergency care or medications that can keep someone living longer just because they don't have health care coverage. The U.S. should've been the country to set the standards across the world for health care for all, but we have failed miserably on that front. We are too rich a country to allow for our own fellow Americans to be without the fundamental right to access awesome health care and at no charge to us.

Healthcare Rationing PP10

I believe the author does a good job on making his argument for rationing health care. Although, according to this article rationing has already been going on for years, the real dilemma that he talks about is the difference between how much are we willing to spend to save a human life vs. setting a dollar limit to save a life. The fact that there is are so many variables involved such as if you have no health insurance then you will fall into the group of people that will ultimately get 20% less health care in a medical situation vs. someone with health insurance who will get 37% more health care. I believe it really falls on the values people place on life, what's important to live and what they can ultimately live without. The ethical side of this is that until someone has that unfortunate illness befall a loved one and they experience who much that loved one's life means to them then other people who have never had to experience such dilemma will say that they don't want t foot the bill for others that could benefit from a life saving drug or treatment that will cause other people's premiums to go up if covered by insurance. Peter touches on that when he discusses that government puts a dollar limit and rations out how much should be spent on health care programs each year. The governments and health insurances bottom line, as Peter says, it to get as much bang for their buck without spending a whole lot on the front end. We all have a limit that we are willing to place even on ourselves as far as what we deem is worth saving even our own lives. I just wish there were an easier way to really make health care fair for everyone no matter what the circumstances.

Alternative Medicine PP9

I am all for an alternative to conventional medicine treatments, but would prefer that those alternatives have been tested and clinical trials done to show the pros and cons of that alternative medicines use. I do not, however, believe that publicly funded health programs should pay for these types of treatments when they have not been used in clinical trials to come to a general consensus of what the pros and cons are of their use and what the potential dangers are for using them if you are already taking some other conventional drug or herb. Standards of practice and quality needs to be ascertained to one: keep unscrupulous peddlers with false claims and tainted product from becoming a problem and two: herbs can also harm given certain circumstances and anything that is strong enough to make a chemical change in your body will have some side effects and those side effects need to be known. In addition, without some sort of clinical trials and testing done, there is the potential for harm and ineffectiveness with the use of herbs or alternative medicines since some studies have shown that there are varying amounts of the actual herb in most products. With the cost of current health care today, many people are turning to alternative medicine options and self-medicating so why not change the old way of teaching and training our doctors and physicians to also include the study of mind/body interactions and the body's natural potential healing and start laying a medical foundation for the use of botanical medicine and other alternative medicine therapies? There is a natural synergy of whole herbs and mind/body interactions that could potentially be way more effective than that of man-made chemical treatments. But again, before I agree to publicly funded health care programs footing the bill for these alternative options I need to see the studies that go along with these alternatives.