Health care in america

it is my distinct pleasure to introduce spadoman as our newest contributor. spadoman is a storyteller of the highest caliber and spins his yarns at round circle. he and his wife started a weekly peace vigil in their hometown and have been there 40 consecutive weeks, unfortunately. he keeps a weekly journal at spadoman’s peace blog. without further ado….-Betmo

Talk about a National Health Care Plan is nothing new. There has been a lot of talk, especially since one of the Democratic Presidential front runners, Hillary Clinton, has tried to implement a health care plan before, when she was the first lady. We all know the basics. Canada has a National health care plan. All Canadians supposedly have equal access to health care. And in Sweden, they have it too. We have also been told that these two countries pay very high taxes to have this National plan. I personally don’t know the particulars of either countries National plan.

It is a political ideal, this paying of taxes. Generally, on the face of it, Republicans don’t want to have to pay more in taxes, and that taxes should be cut. Democrats are okay with some taxation, as long as the people with higher incomes pay a lot of it and the poorer of the lot get some kind of a break. Republicans also like to have private businesses take care of things and let the people pay for it, however they can, instead of taxes paying for these goods and services. Democrats think taxes should pay for certain things, like health care. It’s not so easy. The whole capitalistic idea is not so easy to comprehend, let alone implement, in today’s very complex society. And since we do have a capitalistic platform that this country is run on, therein lies the majority of the problem with not only health care, but with anything that has to do with money.

Baseball, and professional sports in general, run on this capitalistic principle. But there are some different rules that come into play. For example, an owner has a team. The owner pays the players. The players play the game. Major League Baseball decides that they will pay their players so much money and that each team has a ceiling, or a maximum amount that they are allowed to spend for players. This is called a salary cap. A team might have a salary cap of, say, one hundred million dollars. They can spread this around any way they wish. 20 players all get five million dollars a piece. Or pay one guy ninety million, and spread the other ten million dollars out to the other 24 players. The owner decides who gets what. But each team has a different salary cap. Each team gets a different amount of revenue from the money made when a game is shown on TV and advertising is sold. There is a complicated mechanism to decide what teams gets the most, and what team gets the least. Of course the team that gets less of a salary cap, doesn’t get the pick of the crop. That means that better players, the ones that command higher prices, go play for the team that gets more revenue and therefore has more money to spend on players. They become better teams because they can afford better players.

Let’s look at health care the same way for a minute. Say that you have a higher salary cap than someone else. The salary cap here is how much you have to spend on health care from your paycheck. Joe Blow works for a good Fortune 500 company in management and the corporation pays the premiums for his health care. Mr. Blow only pays a small percentage for the health care of anyone in his family. Mr. Blow has access to health care and whenever he or anyone in his family has a medical issue, they go to the appropriate medical care facility, be it a hospital or a clinic, for care, and seldom have to pay any bills associated with medical care. A small co-pay for each visit and a small amount of co-pay for a prescription. These small amounts are easily taken care of because the Blows’ have a steady income and cash available in the bank as savings if not just some cash on hand. A ten dollar co-pay for some pills is no problem. People like the Blows’ get better rates on their car insurance, are able to utilize tax loopholes, have access to credit when unexpected problems arise and are able to generally have more money because they make a good salary and may have some financial skills.

Now lets look at Julio Rodriguez. Julio’s salary cap for health care isn’t as high as the Blows’. Julio works for a company that pays him only what they have to pay him. There is not a demand for his services because he is semi skilled at the labor he performs. If he wants to make more money, he must go somewhere else. This company will hire someone immediately at these low wages if Julio leaves. Besides, it will be hard for Julio to get another job at all because many places won’t hire someone with dark skin and a Mexican name. By the way, Julio is an American citizen, was born in this country to people who legally immigrated here from Mexico two generations ago. They do not pay anything for his health care. Julio has access to a health care plan, but he has to pay for it. Money is taken out of every check he makes to pay for a plan so he can have health care. If he wants his family to have health care, he has to have more money taken out of his check. And if anyone uses that health care, he still has to pay the co-pay amounts for visits and prescriptions. The Rodriguez’s don’t have much money in their checking account and have no savings at all. It is hard for them to pay the co-pay money as all that is left from a paycheck is used to pay bills, buy gas and eat. The Rodriguez’s pay a high rate of auto insurance because his credit isn’t as good as some people. He pays higher rates for interest when he does buy car and has to get a loan. Any borrowing is hard to come by when an emergency arises. Julio works with many other people who get paid the same and receive the same benefits. His best friend, Bill Ward, has the exact same problem with his families health care issues. Bill Ward is also an American citizen. His great grand parents immigrated to this country two generations ago as well from Ireland.

Using this example, you can see that if the government were to ask Joe Blow to pay more taxes so he and his family can have health care, Joe might say “No”, because he doesn’t need any more health care benefits and he doesn’t want to pay more money for something he already has. Julio Rodriguez and Bill Ward would gladly pay higher taxes so they would be able to get more money on their paychecks because they no longer would have to pay so much for the health care for their families. Surely the amount of the higher tax would not be as much as the health care deductions. Julio and Bill would actually take home more money each payday. Joe would take home less. Add to this scenario the person that has a job that doesn’t offer health care at any cost. Or overtime for that matter. The sole responsibility to have health care is on the back of this worker. The cost is so high, that to pay for health care, his family would not be able to do simple things like eat healthy nutritional food or enjoy a simple pleasure of life like have ice cream with their child’s birthday cake on that special day. The argument can be made by some people that everyone had a chance to get an education and get a good job. Julio or the other guy I talk about, his name withheld by request, (he is embarrassed that he doesn’t make as much money as Joe or Julio), had the same opportunity to get an education and get a job with better benefits and higher pay.

But that isn’t true for a wide variety of reasons. These opportunities are not available for every individual. There are barriers in place that make it impossible for some. Discrimination barriers because of color or Nationality. Gender barriers. Barriers because the parents had no foresight and didn’t teach the value of education or downplayed it. Poverty is taken into the equation and used as another way to discriminate. Add to this the same problem that plagues those with no health insurance, that is, no money to afford more and better education. Surely, there are people of every race that have money problems or other problems that they have controlled with their own hand that makes it hard to get a good education that would lead to a good job and better pay. Some people just screwed it up for themselves earlier on in life. But some didn’t. Some are just left out because they are from poor families or are discriminated against or just don’t have any skills.

I don’t know each persons individual situation. Some of you reading this have health insurance, some of you don’t, and some of you have some sort of something, but it is so restrictive that you’d be better off paying for the health care you need rather than file a claim with the insurance you have because they’ll raise your rates. When money is the only way to have something in a capitalistic society, then there is a percentage of the population that will have health care, and a percentage that won’t. The percentage that doesn’t have health care probably won’t be the target market of new cars and trucks or investment services offered by on-line brokers or insurance companies. They will, however, be the target market for the beer manufacturers and the get-rich-quick programs offered on TV as paid advertising programs. It is the nature of the beast. The corporations offering health care are huge and profitable. The more profitable they are, the more investors buy stock and the price of this stock goes up. Investors make money and the prices go up to pay the stockholders. The costs then rise and more people can’t afford health care. But other large corporations that also made money can afford to give their employees a health care plan. And the smaller ones go out of business or lay people off or cut benefits, like health care programs. There is only so much money. If you live in a town of one thousand people and there is a hardware store, the store sells to one thousand people. If another hardware store moves into town, then between the two stores, there is only one thousand people. They will either be satisfied with 500 customers a piece, or the competition will decide who makes the most money.

I have always been puzzled by something. In TV automobile ads, the offer for zero percent financing is available for “well qualified” buyers. If you don’t have these qualifications, which are usually perfect credit and a balanced income to expense ratio, you must pay more. Same at a bank savings account. You get a free toaster by opening a five thousand dollar savings account. I tell you, if I had five grand, I’d go out and buy not only a toaster, but a new frying pan for the eggs and bacon. This system is set up to reward those that, for whatever reason, have more money, and punish those that don’t have as much, for whatever reason. To the rich, it isn’t punishment that the poor don’t have what they have. But to the poor, it is sheer punishment to see others being happy with what is touted as “Quality of Life” and the “American Dream”. There will be no health care for everyone. Just like Alex Rodriguez will never play baseball for the Twins. A certain salary cap is needed for the likes of him, just like a certain salary cap is needed to have health care. Health care providers are a huge business in America. These large corporations won’t sit back and take less money for their stockholders. Even small fringe businesses that sell health care premiums to people are a big business when taken as an industry of themselves. Money is at hand here and there is only so much to go around. A government sponsored health care plan could never pay the billions and billions of dollars that are in circulation with the health care providers and the fringe industries.

Do you think the system needs fixing? Or do you feel it is not broken? Do you think the Nation should have a National Health Care Plan for every American? If you respond to these questions, please tell us the bare bones situation in your household. Do you have health care? Do you pay for it? Is there anything you don’t have that you wish you did have, and you would if you didn’t have to pay so much for health care? Be reasonable, wanting a Cadillac instead of a Ford doesn’t count. I’m talking about having a car at all because of health care costs. Or do you just don’t have health care and are taking your chances? Do you rely on Catholic Charities or Lutheran Brotherhood? Welfare or some other program? Hypothetically, what would you do if you had a child or a loved one and they would not treat them for a sickness because you couldn’t pay for it? I wait to hear from you. I’m sure there is a perspective I don’t know about. In my opinion, the cost of this war in Iraq, almost 500 billion dollars so far and more is being asked for, a lot of health care could have been provided along with a lot of education. That’s all this is, my perspective. We each have our own situation.

tags: health care