MaxedOutMama
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Working On It
The write-up of the Boots-Joy stimulus plan.
While you're waiting, Galen has returned to the blogging business. He is a very serious medical blogger, but he can also be exceptionally funny. His new home is here, and he diverts himself today with a look at the containment that's breaking out in the Federal Reserve Laboratory.
Galen also pointed me to this Coyote post about a doctor who is trying to provide medical care to the uninsured. Cost - $79 monthly, plus $10 copay each visit. His problem - the state wants to shut his clinic down because it claims he is running an unregulated insurance plan. Words fail me - read the post.
As Joy commented earlier, it is more important to get people health care than insurance, and if you want to be brutally honest about it, primary care is where most real problems get averted. That's what people need the most - and good primary care is where you get the cost savings.
Honestly, this is how most people GOT primary health care when I was a kid. In PA (when I was a teenager) we went to the old doctor my Mom's grandfather had used since the 30's. In the 50s, you paid $25 a month and that would cover your family, plus a bit for visits. That was a lot of money back then. For hospitalization, people had major medical if anything. But you could get most things done at that doctor's, and they almost always handed you any prescription medicine right then. You could get minor surgery, etc. X-rays.
Galen has the best succinct discussion of the Medicare pressures on his blog I have seen. Also see this.
If you are feeling too intimidated, stop and look at this brief video. It has a happy ending. Expertise plus paying attention can produce seeming miracles. We need to move from this sort of politics to that sort of execution.
While you're waiting, Galen has returned to the blogging business. He is a very serious medical blogger, but he can also be exceptionally funny. His new home is here, and he diverts himself today with a look at the containment that's breaking out in the Federal Reserve Laboratory.
Galen also pointed me to this Coyote post about a doctor who is trying to provide medical care to the uninsured. Cost - $79 monthly, plus $10 copay each visit. His problem - the state wants to shut his clinic down because it claims he is running an unregulated insurance plan. Words fail me - read the post.
As Joy commented earlier, it is more important to get people health care than insurance, and if you want to be brutally honest about it, primary care is where most real problems get averted. That's what people need the most - and good primary care is where you get the cost savings.
Honestly, this is how most people GOT primary health care when I was a kid. In PA (when I was a teenager) we went to the old doctor my Mom's grandfather had used since the 30's. In the 50s, you paid $25 a month and that would cover your family, plus a bit for visits. That was a lot of money back then. For hospitalization, people had major medical if anything. But you could get most things done at that doctor's, and they almost always handed you any prescription medicine right then. You could get minor surgery, etc. X-rays.
Galen has the best succinct discussion of the Medicare pressures on his blog I have seen. Also see this.
If you are feeling too intimidated, stop and look at this brief video. It has a happy ending. Expertise plus paying attention can produce seeming miracles. We need to move from this sort of politics to that sort of execution.
