We all seem to be having a problem with communication on this health care issue. As a health care professional, I thought I would try to clarify some things for those of you who are adrift with the whole health-care-reform concept. Let's start with some definitions, as I see them:
Health: This is what you have when you are not sick at all.
Health Insurance: This is a financial instrument you purchase from a third party which pays for your doctor and hospital bills when you are sick. It's actually sickness insurance, but they didn't want to call it that for obvious reasons.
Health Care: This is what you get when you are sick to restore your health. It is so expensive in the United States that it is usually paid for by the government or by a health insurance (sickness insurance) company, which also gets help from the United States government.
Wellness: This does not have anything to do with rural water supplies. This is a vague term which refers to combined physical and mental state of good functional ability, whether you are healthy or coping with sickness.
Well being: This is another vague term which refers to your "I'm-OK factor". In other words, when you feel OK, if either healthy or coping with sickness, you might be considered to have a state of well being.
Reform: This basically means fixing or improving upon something that is no longer functional.
Now, let me explain a few basic facts about health care:
1. No human being goes through life with his/her health in tact. No matter how much yogurt you eat with active cultures or green tea you drink, you will get sick, if you aren't already. The absence of 120-year-old Christian Scientists attests to this fact.
2. Many of you are already sick and don't know it. No, that's not a wise crack. Disease is often slow and progressive as you age and things happen to your body. In the U.S., you will get very little warning about this until something goes badly wrong, because the health care here is reactive or remedial, not proactive or preventive.
3. Remedial health care, based in emergency and intensive-care medicine, is much more expensive than preventive health care. In other words, if you put off getting treatment for sickness, it costs more, whether you have health insurance or not.
4. Ultimately, taxpayers already pay for the health care of the uninsured and many of the insured, whether they themselves are taxpayers or not. Since hospitals cannot refuse treatment to the seriously sick, they treat everyone and bill the government for any deficits caused by treating people without health insurance or with deficient health insurance. This is called "free care", which is a misnomer, because we are all paying for it already.
5. Health insurance companies are able to pay for all those cheery TV commercials, build those nice buildings and hire all those paper-pushers by NOT paying for health care whenever possible. In other words, they are in the business of collecting money (monthly premiums) and then working hard to avoid spending it on the people who pay the premiums. (Question: Would you pay a monthly fee to someone to pay your utility bills and then expect to have to ask them if you can turn on a light bulb when it's dark?)
6. Every full-time Federal employee gets affordable access to a superior health insurance policy to any that you as an individual could ever afford to buy. That includes Republican members of Congress!
Now, I hope that clears up some misconceptions about how all this works, or doesn't. You will get sick, or already are in some way without knowing it. The only way for us to get good health care is for everyone to participate in the health care system, even when they are well. Insurance companies are needless middlemen, who profit from not helping people who pay them.
So, a fair public insurance plan would have been the solution to your health care needs now and in the future. If you supported the people who have eliminated that option, you really blew it for yourself and everyone else. Maybe you should drop a line to Scott Brown.
