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Name:
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copperline
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Subject:
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A national healthcare system
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Date:
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4/1/2012 9:03:02 PM
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This
is a really interesting article that i’ll use to make a pro-universal
healthcare argument to the forum. BTW,
i just bought a new asbestos monitor just to prepare for the flaming i expect
to get… i must be in the mood to be
abused….
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137358/sonia-shah/when-superbugs-attack?page=show
Case
in point: the recent discovery of naturally
occurring super-nasty infection that has the potential to become a world-wide killer
as it mutates & becomes more infectious.
Right now, it’s primarily in india.
However, the indian national medical health care system is so fragmented
into areas of vastly underserved (poor) people, and vastly over-treated (rich)
people. Because it came into existence in
this society, the bug stands a much better chance of developing and spreading,
well beyond the boundaries of the indian border.
For
those interested, check out the article for more details while i jump to my
point: i believe having a fragmented
& uncoordinated Health Care system(or should i make that systems) like we currently is not going
to protect the state of our nation’s health over time, in fact, it’s going to
make it worse. As the healthcare demand
grows and healthcare expenses rise, the population stratifies into groups of
haves and have-nots. Certainly, those
people who don’t get adequate health care suffer terribly. But the
article points to a larger problem: antibiotic
resistant bugs are actually promoted by the lack of uniform healthcare… more
easily allowing them to mutate into a more transmissible incarnation… becoming
more damaging and less stoppable.
What
we have in the US is a patchwork system
primarily designed around profit-seeking medical corporations, insurance corporations battling each other for
market share while spending huge sums on that administrative portion of your
healthcare dollar, consumers who frequently
can’t make sense of their insurance options, mazes of regulations to comply
with, hungry lawyers….. A country where
pharmaceutical companies buy TV time to convince me that depression hurts and
tell me that Cialis will really jazz up my life.
it
seems to me that only a highly centralized and uniform healthcare system, with
the ability to reach the largest possible number of the US population is the
only answer. That, i think, fairly well
points me toward favoring a single-payer system… like a nationwide Medicare
program might look. The article describes
what an unplanned system looks like (as currently in india). Chaotic, ineffective, unfair and unable to
respond to national healthcare needs
because it developed around market
forces. This ineffective, fragmented national health
care system can then actually promote bugs that have potential to become epidemic,
leading to some pretty horrifying scenes i had hoped to only see in a movie…. i don’t base my argument simply on some
apocalyptic scenario of mass devastation, but this article describes a really
frightening nation-wide health crisis for india that’s on the verge of being
exported into the developed world. i
think that if universal healthcare isn’t going to be available anytime in the
future of the US, then we won’t be prepared for treating problems like bird
flu, and now NDM-1 as they arrive.
Maybe
not now, but sometime in the near future, i don’t think we will have any choice
except to have a Universal Healthcare System, with all it’s very likely flaws
and shortcomings… Not a cure for
everything, but better than where we are headed now. Everybody should hope it won’t take another Spanish
Flu-type calamity to prompt the changes we need, but i’ll readily admit it’s going
to be a hard pill to swallow. ;) Your thoughts?
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