Can someone explain to me the pig flu vaccine fear? I didn’t bother looking into it because I’m lazy, not because I think the government is going to inject me with ebola. Checking out other Tumblr posts tagged with “h1n1” I notice a lot of young people expressing a deep mistrust of the vaccine. I remember half hearing about a Republican fear tactic to link the idea of the swine flu vaccine with “socialized medicine” and therefore probably “death” - which is stupid, but are teenagers really falling for that?
"The House’s Affordable Health Care for America Act would force millions of people to buy high-cost, low-coverage insurance policies from private companies. It would funnel hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars that could be used to do something useful about health care into the pockets of the insurance giants. It capitulates on even the half-measure of the “public option” of a government-run alternative for the uninsured. It gives up on effective regulation of all but the worst practices of the medical-insurance complex. It contains an appalling concession to the anti-abortion fanatics that would be the most expansive government restriction yet imposed on women’s right to choose."
http://awesome.good.is/transparency/web/0910/healthcareless/flash.html
“Opponents of the public option claim that by being forced to compete against the government, health care companies will be at an unfair advantage. But right now, health care companies hardly have to compete at all. In most states, one health care provider controls the vast share of the market, which allows them to raise premiums far faster than the wages of their customers rise. The market might be the best solution for health care, but right now, it’s being controlled by virtual monopolies in many states.”
"As has become well-known recently, a woman can be denied health insurance in eight states plus DC if she has been the victim of domestic abuse, because she is deemed a high risk to be abused again. … Apparently, being the victim of rape is also a pre-existing condition. … It means women may have to choose between getting help for abuse and rape – or risk losing health benefits."
Oh right, so they don’t leave me to die in the emergency room. Compelling.
Here’s the really nasty thing. I’ve been on health insurance steadily since pretty much forever. Usually it’s when you have a “lapse” of more than X months that they assign any issues as “pre-existing”. But since I told my doctor that I’d been experiencing some variety of stomach pain and anxiety for a few months, and had experienced it occasionally for 6 to 12 months before that (that went on record), my insurance company decided that anything she diagnosed me with (at that time it was Acid Reflux and Panic Disorder) was now a pre-existing condition, even though I had health insurance (albeit a different one) when experiencing those issues.
What’s the moral here - don’t tell your doctor if you’ve been dealing with a problem for awhile?? Seems like a lose-lose situation. Fortunately for me, after seeing a Naturopathic doctor, I found out that my problem was actually Food Allergies, so perhaps next time I get a bill, my insurance will have actually covered that.
"That’s a window into the flaws in our health care system: we offer titanium shoulder replacements for those who don’t really need them, but we let 32-year-old women die if they lose their health insurance. No wonder we spend so much on medical care, and yet have some health care statistics that are worse than Slovenia’s."
— NYTimes | NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF | The Body Count at Home
"Only single-payer, by redirecting the vast sums wasted annually on bureaucracy and paperwork back into care, can assure high-quality coverage for everyone with no net increase in U.S. health spending. Only single-payer can rein in costs. Lesser reforms, with or without a “public option,” won’t fix our broken system."
—
Physicians for a National Health Program wrote in an open letter to the president.
From the Socialist Worker article, When Health Care is a Right
This is a project started in 2007 by Daric Cheshire, 36, an artist/business owner in Portland, Oregon, as a response to the ongoing health care crisis.
The response was enthusiastic, and it’s grown to where the bands have been embraced by people who just want to draw attention to the problem, whether they’re insured or not. As he puts it, the message of the band is:
“I’m uninsured. You may not know why, but now you know my face. Maybe I look like you or someone you love. I’m uninsured and scared of being without health insurance in this country. Maybe my health is already suffering from lack of health care. Today it’s me, tomorrow it could be you.”
What a great idea. As Michael Moore showed us in “Sicko,” none of us really have health insurance - we have the illusion of health insurance.
If you want to get one of the bands, you can click here. If you can’t afford it, he’ll send you one, anyway.
That’s so awesome. SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE NOW!!!
