I like change even for health care

When I was sitting with my wife in the doctor’s office the other day I made the statement that I felt like wandering again. It was the first time I had said it out loud, but it is also how I think. We have lived in our present house almost as long as I have lived in any house since graduating from high school in 1961.

I like change. I like going into the unknown. It is probably more from my self confidence and the fact that I get bored doing the same thing for too long. I plan each move finding out all I can about housing, jobs, the area. I even plan down to the number of boxes I will need for packing. Even with all this several things always go wrong.

So I find it very difficult to understand the present situation with the health care dilemma. During the election health care was one of the top election issues, now it comes time do something and people almost want a guarantee that no matter what is done it will work just as advertised. They do not want to change. Those that are not for it give you all the reasons why it won’t work or why not to do it.

The health care issue is a modern day challenge. Health care coverage as we know it started, according to PBS, during World War II. Companies could not give pay raises so in order to entice new hires they started paying for the employee’s health insurance as an added benefit. Fast forward and sixty years later one of the first things companies take away or limit is health care.

From World War II on health insurance coverage has been a hot potato. Some people want health care coverage to be like taking a trip. You have to do with what you can afford or do without. They expect people with little or no money to stay in a tent in a camp ground, much like many people who are unemployed now do to make it through each day.

The more money you have the better place you stay. People who are doing a little better stay at Econo Lodge others at the Holiday Inn and others at one of the world’s best five star hotels. There are those who feel that is how it should be with health care.

If you have no insurance or have limited insurance you should get the same care as those people who have the money to get the best of care. The problem is that no matter how you feel about who should get health insurance and who shouldn’t that is not the way it is and complaining about it does not change it.

We live in a time when health diagnosing has taken on a life of its own. Every week some new piece of equipment comes out or a procedure is discovered that helps improve our life and extend our life expectancy. Going right along with the those changes are the advancements in medications. The problem is that most of this equipment cost a lot more money than you can imagine, and many medications are the same way so health care cost goes up.

When it comes to medication people who can’t pay don’t get it or only buy what they can afford and then they are not taking it as prescribed. This invariably leads to more health problems that eventually have to be dealt with in a hospital – whether they can afford it or not.

Then there is the massive waste in health care. I can write forever on what I have witnessed, but the most disgusting incident was what I heard. I had a period when I spent a couple of days each month in a local hospital until they could perform surgery in a major hospital to correct a problem that may have started back in my days of military service.

After one of those hospital stays I received the bill and noticed several charges on it that were wrong. I called the hospital and told them about it. After looking over my records the individual told me what difference does it make to you, your insurance will pay for it. That happened about eight years ago.

There is also the third rail of health care, computerized records. I am amazed at how many medical facilities I have been in over the last two years that still depend on writing everything down. Then there are those facilities that have a combination of writing and computerized records. It is not as if the computer age just started, in reality the computer age for computers in business started about the same time that health care really took hold, in the 1950’s and 1960’s.

Then there is proverbial health care elephant in the room  - end of life care. When is it just not worth the cost to keep a person going. In almost all cases it is more for the benefit of the family to not lose a loved one than the real concern for the health and comfort of the loved one, who in the cases I’m talking about doesn’t know what is going on anyway. I am talking about an 85 old mother or father, who has lived their life and there is no hope for them to recover. Hospice helps to take care of many of these situations but there are just as many, if not more, situations where the family says do all you can to keep them alive.

You would think that with all that could be done to change health insurance the discussion about it would have changed more than it has. I thought that when President Obama was elected and health care was one of the top issues that it would finally come true. Now it appears that it will be another difficult fight, with the same old tactics. I think that what people are really afraid of is a change in the system. Unless there is a change it will continue on the path it is now continuing to take more of our personal income and gross domestic product.

It is amazing that after almost six decades the health care debate continues. FDR wanted to do something about national health care, but social security was to important and they didn’t want to chance not passing the social security bill. The one thing about health care that has always been the same is that someone is always against it.

Terms used to rally people on one side of the debate and to scare people on the other side of the debate have varied. It was interesting to recently learn that when President Truman tried to get a health program going it was called, “A Communist plot, by a House subcommittee,” according to PBS. Today they use the word socialism to provide the same instant scare that communism provided in the 1950’ and 60’s.

I was surprised to learn that back in the 1950’s unions did not want national health care, because they thought they could get a better deal from Ford, GM or Chrysler during contract negotiations. Now the unions are for some type of national health care. That probably is, in part, because health care has been one of the major cost that has put the auto industry in the position it is in.

Something has to be done. Workers can no longer find jobs for life and companies can no longer afford to pay for the health care their employees deserve. Retirees that have worked all their life and told that health care is part of their retirement benefit, are learning that is not the case.

Why can’t everyone just admit that no plan will be perfect, but we have to make a change and then after its going they will to make the necessary changes to improve on whatever plan is passed..