Guaranteed Healthcare

The healthcare crisis is not just bankrupting our economy—it is relentlessly impoverishing Americans.  Recent data highlights cuts in wages, gaps in life expectancy, and a healthcare industry that looks more like Bear Stearns everyday.  None of this will be solved until we make politicians get serious about health care reform.

The Washington Post notes healthcare costs are destroying wages in this country.

They write:

 …spiraling health-care costs have been whacking away at their wages. Even though workers are producing more, inflation-adjusted median family income has dipped 2.6 percent -- or nearly $1,000 annually since 2000….

Benefits now devour 30.2 percent of employers' compensation costs, with the remaining money going to wages, the Labor Department reported this month. That is up from 27.4 percent in 2000.

And now the eternal question—why doesn’t corporate America want to solve the healthcare crisis?  They don’t support genuine healthcare reform, but clearly they should:

Employers report that the unpredictable and often uncontrollable cost of health-care coverage is among their major concerns. Nearly nine out of 10 firms that responded to a National Association of Manufacturers survey last year named the cost of health insurance as one of their top-three worries -- ranking it higher than government regulation, competition from imports or finding qualified employees.

While this happens, states across the country are slashing the budget for Medicaid, which serves poor people.  In California, they’re going to cut payments by 10 %.

All of which should explain why some hospitals are asking for your credit records at the same time they ask for your medical records.

While we’re paying through the nose, the NY Times reports a growing gap in life expectancy.  In other words, our healthcare system works for the wealthy, and not for the rest of us.  That’s not ok:

New government research has found “large and growing” disparities in life expectancy for richer and poorer Americans, paralleling the growth of income inequality in the last two decades. …

One of the researchers, Gopal K. Singh, a demographer at the Department of Health and Human Services, said “the growing inequalities in life expectancy” mirrored trends in infant mortality and in death from heart disease and certain cancers.

Demonstrating the moral limits of the “on your own society,” a conservative economist has come up with a way to blame poor people for dying early:

“People with more education tend to have a longer time horizon,” Mr. {Thomas P.} Miller [an economist at the American Enterprise Institute] said. “They are more likely to look at the long-term consequences of their health behavior. They are more assertive in seeking out treatments and more likely to adhere to treatment advice from physicians.”

Meanwhile, the fight for guaranteed healthcare continues.  4,000 RNs throughout California continue their strike against the mercenary Sutter chain, and its pattern of endangering patients.