Thursday, June 28, 2007

My fix for health care.

OK, like I promised in the post below, this is my idea.
We need to move to a kind of single-payer/universal care that the rest of the civilized world has.

Health care to me is like clean water. It should be treated as such.
Your city provides clean, safe water to your house.
Not so they can make a ridiculous profit doing so, but so that we can have the water that we need.
And so should medical care be.

Steps one and two would be to change the VA and the Medicare system.

From day one of my idea, the VA medical system would cover without cost all active and retired military and their immediate families for regular care. End of story.
To help pay for this all of the war profiteers like Lockheed, Halliburton, Bechtel, KBR, etc.. would have to pay a piece of their profits every year into the VA system.
If they are going to profit from war, they can help pay for our service men and women to get health care.

Next would be to change Medicare so that anyone and everyone over the age of 65 is 100 percent covered for all medical services.
Of course, in both of these instances, they would get to bargain with the big pharma folks for better drug prices.

Now, on to everyone else.
From day one of my idea for all the other people not covered above, you would be covered by universal care via a single payer system in your state.
If you come to here to San Diego from Iowa for vacation and break your arm surfing, then our system takes care of you and cross charges the Iowa system.

For the military people, it would basically work the same way, any care needed that could not be handled at a VA Hospital would be done where needed and cross charged to the VA.
If they would rather have their families go to a local hospital in state where they live, they would opt out of the system.

This way, you would have regionally managed systems AND two large systems that would take care of all.

This plan is hereby trademarked.
But open to criticism, though I am probably right, and you are probably wrong.
Particularly if you think that the way it is now is good.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sounds good to me. But I would go further in completely dismantling the war profiteering system and the militarism of the country in general, freeing up hundreds of billions, part of which would easily fund health care for all.

Jay said...

While I can see Brad's point, to dismantle such a system overnight seems near impossible. I like your idea of having them pay into it, but I also think other funds would need to be secured until the program could stand on two legs.

Even further, our entire perspective on "health" needs an overhaul. I would favor a system that required people to assume (at least partial) financial responsibility for obesity and drug abuse related diseases. Maybe not the rehabilitation of them though, provided it's not their fifth time doing it.

Mike V. said...

Well, here's the thing, if you have people getting proper medical care in general (ALL PEOPLE), then I believe that there will be a chance to help those with destructive/addictive problems.
Drugs and booze and food issues might never be cured in a good number of people, but they can helped.
I'm certainly not saying we should elect a coke-head or a drunk as president, though..
Once was enough.

Tom Harper said...

I like your comparison to clean drinking water. It's the same with health care. If an entire town gets sick from polluted water, the whole town gets dragged down. Everybody loses.

Same with health coverage. Republicans are always blubbering about "a rising tide lifts all boats." With millions of sick and uninsured citizens, everybody loses. Universal health care would have that same effect of lifting all boats. Rightwingers have this phobia about people getting "something for nothing" unless you're a CEO.

Who Hijacked Our Country

Anonymous said...

Overnight is certainly impossible. Hell, dismantling it entirely is probably impossible. However, SO many of our problems would be fixed very simply by slashing all the money we send overseas to fund useless bases. And we can reinvest that money in to improving our own country.

Pie-in-the-sky idealism is not a part of my repertoire, that's for sure. But I really think that taking apart much of our military is an option that needs to be discussed.

As for a simple argument for health care, I could see using "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness" as a semi-constitutional guarantee of health care.

SheaNC said...

I like your plan, although I would simplify it to one system instead of two federal and 50 local ones. One system to cover everyone, aged, veteran, disabled, everyone.

Mike V. said...

my reasoning behind it is that the medicare and the VA system are already in place (though need work, of course) and I figured that it would be easier to manage on a state level.

bookster said...

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Mike V. said...

thanks for the visit, thanks for the visit, I will be stopping by and having a look.