Healthcare Reform - Congress in the Looking Glass

January 24, 2023

Jan 24, 2023

Good Day Healthcare Advocates

Every day we advocate for better healthcare for all of us is a good day. Thank you also to all of you advocates who have recently subscribed and to those who have asked for particular topics (use the comment button below). Some of the topics in work are the middlemen benefit managers and rural healthcare. Thank you.

Mission

The Healthcare delivery system in the United States is a patchwork that leaves much to be desired. It is the most expensive system among the top 35 industrial countries and covers far fewer participants delivering lower levels of quality care than many of our peer nations. This blog will provide:

Current problems in healthcare
Actions you can take
References

Current State of Affairs - Congress in the Looking Glass

We are busy lobbying this week for ProChoice Washington.

Some of the bills we are supporting are:

My Health, My Data Act to keep our health care data secure from bad actors like anti abortionists and law enforcement in other states who want to punish those who seek reproductive care (SB 5351/HB 1155)
End Cost Sharing for Abortion Care that makes sure that policies cover it at no additional cost so that money is not the stumbling block (SB 5242/HB 1115)
Keep Our Care Act that will keep hospital mergers from reducing levels of services offered (SB 5241/HB 1263). Religious hospital purchases another facility and decide they won’t offer reproductive healthcare.

I did a quick check of health care related bills submitted in Washington DC this morning and found 43. 11 of them wanted to eliminate Covid Restrictions, Restrict Abortions, Allow pharmacists not to dispense abortion medications if they don’t feel like it, eliminate the Affordable care act and any mandates associated with it (gut the plan).

I get it. Their idea of freedom is that they want to be free from vaccination, free to spread disease in a pandemic by not wearing a mask, free to not have health care, free to go bankrupt when the need health care and can’t pay for it, free to have the most expensive healthcare anywhere that makes it hard for our companies to compete worldwide, and free to tell women they can’t have abortions even if they are needed to save the mother’s life.

It really is like peering into Alice’s looking glass. These attitudes are just so backwards. Universal Healthcare in the US needs a hearing in Congress so we can all be free to be as productive as possible, free to make sure that our elderly and our children and all of us are as healthy as can be so we can enjoy our lives.

I grew up as a mathematician, software programmer and systems engineer and everything I learned there is that you have to design a plan for outcomes, good and bad. Lack of a designed health care system has brought us to a jumbled mess. 49% of us get health care from a job, lose the job and you can lose health care because COBRA is uber expensive. About 27% of us can’t afford health care and have to have 50 different states come up with different schemes to provide it via Medicaid and CHIP (Children’s Medicaid) and some can get it and some who need it can’t. About a ⅓ of us are retired and now have health insurance through Medicare but we either have a 20% copay (designed so that people won’t use the system and will die early) or we have handed over our health care to private insurance companies who stand between us and our doctors.

What a mess. But we can fix it. We have to decide we want to be healthy, more competitive with the rest of the world, and have better quality health care than we do now. We have to decide.

People running for elected office in 2020 received $500M in campaign contributions from healthcare providers and insurance companies. Those companies are not acting in your best interest. They paid $ 1/2B to get politicians to keep the current system in place so they can make as much as possible. It’s a lot of money for each of the politicians who took it. Top Democratic and Republican Senators took hundreds of thousands each. No wonder they won’t change. It won’t stop unless we make it stop. Our representatives need to know we want Universal Health Care now. They won’t do it unless they hear it over and over and over.

TELL THEM Over and Over and Over.

What You Can Do Today

Use RESISTBOT below or call your Senators and Representatives and tell them

“ My name is ________________ and I am your constituent in zipcode______________.

Thank you for representing me and my interests in Congress. We need to have Universal Healthcare and we need it now so that we can have higher quality, affordable care that covers everyone, frees us from medical bankruptcy and makes the US as competitive as can be. I want you to contact Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Pramila Jayapal and tell them you want to co sponsor their legislation and help your constituents. Please do this now.”