Orthopedic surgeon Scott Barbour address the crowd gathered for a town hall style meeting about medical care reform in the gym of Georgia Highlands College Saturday morning. (Lindy Dugger Cordell, RN-T.com)
Insurance agent and panelist James Trussell, who has Parkinson's Disease, discusses his own problems obtaining health insurance due to his disease and his concerns about universal health care during a town hall style meeting about medical reform in the gym of Georgia Highlands College Saturday morning. (Lindy Dugger Cordell, RN-T.com)
“I want to know locally why couldn’t a consortium between those who manage SPLOST, along with county credit unions and doctors provide their own health care plans to the community.” – Frank Adams of Rome, retired
“I’m here to make sure the truth is told, to make sure people understand the implications of the different plans being offered in public debate. All we want is a public option, because thousands of people die every year without health care coverage.” — Skyler Akins, Silver Creek graduate student at the University of West Georgia in political science
“My biggest concern right now is the increasing cost. But I’m hoping I can learn something while I’m here as well. I’d just like to hear what some people who are really knowledgable say what they have to think.” – Steve Robinson of Rome, retired electrician
“Being in health care, me and my husband are concerned about where it’s headed and not just professionally. I want good health care, which is a direct effect for how the money is handled in the industry.” Susan Shell of Rome, Harbin orthopedics department manager
Georgia Congressman Phil Gingrey talks about working with the health care reform issue in Washington D.C. in the United States Senate during the town hall meeting at Georgia Highlands College Saturday morning. (Lindy Dugger Cordell, RN-T.com)
Roman Paul Jackson asked a five-member panel at the town hall on health care Friday if they believed Federal government employees should be the first to have to sign up for a universal health care system on Saturday. (Kevin Myrick/RN-T)
People gathered for a town hall style meeting at the Georgia Highlands College gym about proposed health care reform in the federal government listen to panelists discuss issues Saturday morning. (Lindy Dugger Cordell, RN-T.com)
Congressman Phil Gingrey, R-Marietta, along with a panel that included James Trussell, chief volunteer officer of the Northwest Georgia Parkinson Disease Association Inc., urologist Mark Haber, orthopedic surgeon Scott Barbour and dermatologist Tom Sandwich all expressed opposition to the health care reform plan proposed by Democrats and spearheaded by President Barack Obama.
Those who attended the town hall meeting seemed to agree something must be done about the cost of health care, but there doesn’t seem to be much agreement on how to fix the problem.
“My biggest concern right now is the increasing cost,” said Steve Robinson, a retired electrician who hoped to learn more about proposals before Congress.
Gingrey said America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 would take control out of the hands of doctors and patients and place it into the hands of a panel that would choose which procedures would be used in patient care.
“A doctor would have to follow those recommendations because they don’t want to be sued,” he said. “Being a doctor is not so much a science but an art. There’s a sixth sense to doing this type of work that can’t be done scientifically.”
Floyd County’s George Harper, organizer for the ad-hoc committee called the Get Well Party, said he didn’t feel there were any credible alternatives provided at the two-hour session.
“I think most of what we heard down there today was blaming the government or government bureaucrats for all the problems in the system, when in fact it’s the insurance companies who deny coverage and health care providers who try to dictate what they can practice,” he said. “I think they had the wrong emphasis on the problem.”
The doctors on the panel, along with Trussell, who also suffers from Parkinson’s disease and works in the insurance industry and is uninsured because of his illness, agreed with Gingrey that federal mandates about how care should be provided would be “unacceptable,” according to Trussell.
Harper discussed his own struggle through the health care system as a survivor of kidney failure and a successful transplant patient. He said he was able to make it through the past 20 years of struggles with the help of Medicare.
“I think the most cost efficient way to do it would be to have a universal plan which would cover everyone. It would be the best way to spread the risk and reduce the cost,” Harper said. “There’s a lot of opposition to it in the United States, and that’s why Obama and the leadership in Congress are looking for a way to do it for something less than that and provide options.”
Harper added Medicare is one reason why he was still alive to be able to attend the town hall meeting Saturday, and said it had helped others survive catastrophic illnesses as well.
“Medicare is a good program, but it’s a program heavily subsidized by the American taxpayer,” Gingrey said in response to Harper’s statement.
What Roman Paul Jackson wanted to know was if everyone who works for the federal government would be forced to use a Congress-passed system.
“What’s good for the goose is good for the gander,” Gingrey conjectured.
Small business owner Janice Attaway, who was uninsured for 10 years, asked the panel what would happen if businesses were forced either to provide insurance coverage for their employees or buy into a government mandated program.
The panel didn’t have much of an answer, but they pointed to polling numbers indicating a large majority of people are happy with their current insurance plans.
Roman Frank Adams had a novel solution to the problem of health care financing in the United States: fund it locally through special purpose sales taxes partnering with credit unions and make the plan available to everyone who wishes to buy in.
“We should let people invest into the program and then be able to take out low interest loans if their health care costs became too expensive,” he said.
Doctors agreed that funding not the quality of care is what needs to be fixed.
“Our current health care system is not fine, and it needs to be changed,” said Haber, who was representing docs4patientcare.org. “But the current bill doesn’t fix the underlying problems in the system.”
Many government run systems, like the Veterans Administration, have failed the public in both cost and care, said Sandwich, who has a private practice in South Georgia. He pointed to the cases of veterans being exposed to hepatitis and HIV, along with poor care at Walter Reed Medical Center in Bethesda, Md.
In his final remarks, Gingrey offered a number of options that he said would help drive down costs, including reforms in health care liability and stripping out federal and state mandates that insurance providers pass onto their customers.
Click here to see the text of America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009.
How about just taking out a higher percentage of our paychecks for medicare based on income and just let everyone into the system, whether you are working or not. Maybe pay a little higher percentage for higher income workers vs. the lowest income workers.
Do away with medicaid and just have everyone on medicare.
No private insurance at all.
Everyone is on the same health care plan so the government would have control of the care we get or don't get access to.
It will eventually turn into this anyway with a government health plan option.
With the penalty of 2.5 percent of pay on individuals and 8 percent on employers and a 2500 dollar fine for being treated in an emergency room without being insured, everyone will be on the government plan after a few years anyway.
Why not be honest about it and just go about it straight up instead of using the back door to get everyone on the same government health plan?
SENATORS WHO SIGNED LETTER OPPOSING PUBLIC HEALTH PLAN TOOK $17.7 MILLION IN CAMPAIGN DONATIONS FROM HEALTH CARE AND INSURANCE INDUSTRIES
Public Campaign Action Fund analysis finds that nine Republican Senators took nearly $2 million on average over their careers
Washington, D.C. – The nine Republican Senators who sent a letter today to President Barack Obama to express their opposition to a central part of his health care plan have benefited greatly from health care and insurance industry donations, a new analysis from Public Campaign Action Fund shows.
The Senators have collectively taken $17.7 million from insurance and health care interests, according to data analyzed at the Center for Responsive Politics website, opensecrets.org. That amounts to nearly $2 million per Senator over their careers.
“Americans want a government that is responsive to our needs, not a Congress that listens to its donors from the insurance and health care industry,” commented David Donnelly, national campaigns director of Public Campaign Action Fund. “These Senators appear to be carrying water for their donors at the expense of advancing health care reform.”
All nine Senators sit on the Senate Finance Committee, which is actively engaged in debating health care reform. The nine signers include Senators Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), Jim Bunning (R-Ky.), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), John Ensign (R-Nev.), Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), and John Cornyn (R-Texas). Senator Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) was the committee’s only Republican Senator not to sign. Sen. Snowe has taken $1.1 million from the same interests, less than all but two of the signers.
Is it any surprise that their self-interest matters more to them than the interest of the public at large?
Is it any surprise that one of Dr. Gingrey's steps to reduce healthcare costs is to limit lawsuits against medical malpractice? Even eliminating malpractice suits altogether wouldn't lower costs enough to make healthcare affordable for the uninsured.
Capping malpractice awards is only the first step in scapping patients' rights in the interest of saving money for doctors, not for the general public.
Who's looking out for you?
Contributions to Phil Gingrey's 2008 campaign by Industry:
Healthcare professionals: $359,281
Insurance: $41,950
Pharmaceuticals / Healthcare products: $41,400
Hospitals, Nursing Homes: $19,050
They would rather have a fancy car,cell phone, cable tv, and buy lottery tickets and beer along with eating out everyday."
In the middle of what is an otherwise well reasoned and thoughtful comment, this nasty little unsubstantiated factoid caused me to question your entire argument, anonymous. Until you can produce fact-based statistics showing who this "lot" of uninsured actually are, that they are on record as to their reasons for not having coverage, in addition to their consumer habits, I have to dismiss this as no better than the "welfare cadillacs" and "welfare queens" straw men of the Reagan era. It undermines your credibility as an unbiased observer.
What you seem to be groping to identify is a segment of society that is relatively uneducated, ignorant, and careless. It could well be that these people's level of education and intelligence in health care matters is as much a product of their socioeconomic and family backgrounds as it is of "choice." They are a burden on the system, yes. But to eliminate thesthem from the health care debate -- or even to use them as a pretext for questioning government intervention in health care reform -- rather than see them as an opportunity to begin reforming American health from the ground up, is simply callous and shortsighted.
If you could buy liability coverage only when you know you will run in to another car and everybody else did the same thing we would all be uninsured.
Insurance only works if a lot of people pay in a little so in case of damage the insurance can pay a lot.
On my street everybody got a new roof to the tune of 12k per house last month because of the hail. Insurance companies did not collect that much money in premiums in our area to cover that, the people in other parts of the country that have not had hail or storms are paying for that. When I read the comments below I notice that people want to be covered but they do not want to pay. Men don't want to pay for pregnancies (even though they cause them) and I don't really want to pay for my neighbors prostate problem. Some things are so big we have to let government take care of them.
We can't opt out of the postal service. We read how upset people in Atlanta got when the size of the fire department was reduced. We let government manage many important aspects of our safety and security, why not health care?
We are the only industrialized nation in the world without a functioning health care system. Why do we think we are less able to manage that than the French or German or Canadian government.
Are those nations smarter or more capable than we are?
You still have to find a way to pay for it, but it would be far less money doing this than creating a new government run health plan
I think it is more about controlling the people than providing health care.
How about reforming medicare and medicaid to get the extreme waste out of those programs?
The people who make the rules and oversee those programs need to be replaced by some people who have some common sense and have not worked in government before but have worked in health care. Then again, that is not the way it works. The politicians have to pay each other off with funding and earmarks. NO common sense is allowed.
Why do we need the government to take over the health care industry? What we do need is for the government to get out of the way of the health insurance companies and let them write policies that cover what a person wants to pay for.
I would like a policy that covers only major health problems, not a trip to see a doctor for a minor illness or injury.
Part of the reason the cost of health care is so out of control is that the doctors have to order all kinds of tests to keep from getting sued. They have to pay very large amounts of money for malpractice insurance.
It would be nice if more medical clinics could be opened by allowing nurses and physician assistants to see people with minor health concerns and write them a prescription if they need it.
Also force medical schools to quit limiting their enrollment to keep the number of doctors down to inflate the amount charged by existing doctors.
They have been doing that for years. Also the dental schools have been doing that for years. The existing doctors and dentists have managed to get some schools closed or cut way back to keep the number of graduates down so they don't have to compete in a free marketplace.
A lot of uninsured just don't want to buy insurance.
They would rather have a fancy car,cell phone, cable tv, and buy lottery tickets and beer along with eating out everyday.
I don't hear any solutions by much of anyone.
Just giving free medical care by a government run health care plan can't work in the long run.
Someone has to pay for it.
We need to do something about the cost of health care.
Instead of health care, it seems it is really symptom care. We just treat the symptoms instead of going after what is causing the chronic ailments a lot people have now.
Just giving out pills only makes it worse in a lot of cases.
The politicians have too much at stake by cutting back prescription pill usage by educating people on how to do this. They would not get their money from the drug companies anymore.
If you keep on taxing the people who create the jobs, then there won't be any jobs. Those people will find a way to make money somewhere else.
Keep it up and this country will no longer exist in its present form a few years from now.
Our present tax and spend system just can't sustain itself in the long term.
The tax system needs to be changed to bring back the industry and jobs that have been run off to other countries.
If we could do that, then all this other stuff would be extremely easy to fix.