Cover the Uninsured Week | Arthritis Information
From the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation "Cover the Uninsured Week" campaign website:
"Forty-seven million Americans are uninsured. Nearly 9 million of them are children. More than 8 out of 10 are in working families. They are our friends, neighbors and colleagues--forced to gamble every day that they won't get sick or injured.
Living without health insurance is a risk no one should have to take.
Cover the Uninsured, a project of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is a national effort to highlight the fact that too many Americans are living without health insurance and to demand solutions from our nation's leaders.
We know that reaching the goal of affordable and stable health care will require changes in public policy. Through Cover the Uninsured, we are working to build and sustain broad-based support for change.
This includes raising awareness and building support among policy-makers, health care professionals, grassroots advocates, faith leaders, the business community and active citizens through
Cover the Uninsured Week and reaching out to enroll eligible uninsured families in public health coverage programs during the annual Back-to-School Campaign.
Cover the Uninsured Week 2008 will take place April 27 – May 3 with thousands of activities across the country. We hope you will join the nation in helping make health coverage for the uninsured a top priority.
To learn how you can get involved in Cover the Uninsured Week 2008, please visit Get Involved.
See:
http://covertheuninsured.org/about/
Joy, just finished "Sick Around the World". I'm voting for Japan!
Pip
Hi Pip,
I thought this worthwhile to post about because it encourages and furthers discussion about changing our health care system. Even the insured will be affected by rising health care costs if nothing is done.
Hope you found the PBS Frontline program: Sick Around the World, interesting. When folks talk about universal health care, they often think about Canada and Britain, but this program looks at the health care systems of not only the UK, but also Japan, Taiwan, Switzerland and Germany -- all democratic, capitalistic countries. They cover all their citizens and pay less to do so than in the US that leaves 47 million uncovered. Also, in these countries no one ever goes bankrupt because of medical bills.
Another interesting fact, four of the countries in the program have private insurance companies, but they are nonprofit.
Its an enlightening hour program which can viewed online, or read about at the following website:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/etc/synopsis.html
As far as most interesting systems -- Germany's insurance plan covers health spas for stress or chronic conditions.
D
i have no medical bills at all in the uk.. at first i saw the people on the forum
seeing this doc that doc, and thought maybe because money is involved
that the treatment and degree of health care is far superior to ours..
some of the docs you see and some of the tests-scans i have never heard of..
allso your waiting times for operations etc seem a lot shorter than ours..
saying that i see a few still unhappy whith there rheumatologist...
sometimes my treatment is rubbish but at least it is free rubbish..
i think paying for treatment would be a huge burden..
Boney
Hi Boney,
In the program, Sick Around the World, two older British women were interviewed, and they remarked they had never received a medical bill in their life. In Taiwan, they use an electronic health card for directing bill. In the US it is estimated that 20% or more of health care costs is spent on administrative costs or paperwork.
The health care systems in the 5 countries in this program may not be perfect, but they spend a lot less than the US, who spends the most of all the countries in the world. US health care costs are going up, the number of uninsured is growing -- we need change, and maybe we can borrow from what works in these other countries and implement a health care system that provides affordable, efficient, quality health care for all.
Joie2008-04-28 10:51:36the uk system is paid for by taxes. we pay high taxes on everything.. hospitals are
being closed.. the ones we have are understaffed and nurses underpaid. i feel in time
this country will adopt a us style health care sytem.. the only people in the uk who pay
medical bills are those that go private to the top specialists. or some people get health
insurance in order to get health care.. i have been waiting one about 1month now for a dexa scan and probably many more months yet.it can take over a wk to get to see a gp.
1 example i bust a tendon in my thumb went to hospital. we can fix that we will send
a appointment in the post.. 2yrs later i get a letter saying if you still want this done
sign here and you will stay on the waiting list
An excerpt from the program "Sick Around the World" about the UK's health care system:
"The NHS is now trying some free-market tactics like "pay-for-performance," where doctors are paid more if they get good results controlling chronic diseases like diabetes. And now patients can choose where they go for medical procedures, forcing hospitals to compete head to head.
While such initiatives have helped reduce waiting times for elective surgeries, Times of London health editor Nigel Hawkes thinks the NHS hasn't made enough progress. "We're now in a world in which people are much more demanding, and I think that the NHS is not very effective at delivering in that modern, market-orientated world."
One positive thing about the NHS mentioned in the program is that they have very good prevention programs. Much of US health care costs are due to preventable diseases and conditions like diabetes, heart disease, obesity -- if people are educated, have access to treatment and monitoring, health care spending could be reduced in these areas.
the goverment are about to bring in regulare cholestoral and high bp testing for people over a certain age .. something new.. i think there are pros and cons to any system .. as i say
if i had to pay for every visit and treatments this would put the pressure on..
on the other hand the doc may have more time and actually listen to me..
i do have to say that in a emergency situation the care is there.
I'm just worried about us. How many of us are in trouble financially because we can't afford our co-pays. And with meds being tiered - there goes a lot of the big guns for these diseases.
You know, GoGo used to post about 'arthritis school' and I thought she was joking. You know, like the 'school of hard knocks'. But one day i figured out she was serious. They basically send her to school to learn about controling her disease and include therapies that help her heal. And I thought - how many of us would benefit from something similar?
Pip
Wish I had time to post some tidbits I saw about these issues from the dr. blogs.....maybe tomorrow...saw some dissing of 'wellness', some sarcasm about universal healthcare....
before ra i never had a pc or new what internet was... but now i have
all the time in the world and nothing better else to do..
How much money could be saved, not to mention a better quality of life for the patient, if prevention or better management of chronic conditions were emphasized. I think I read somewhere that 75% of medical costs were for chronic conditions and a large % were for preventable diseases. (I'm gonna have to keep notes. :-)
Are we relying too much on drugs and surgeries to fix us? Don't get me wrong, drug treatments and surgeries keep us going, are life savers, life extenders, but in this era of unmanageable, skyrocketing health care costs preventive measures would not only keep folks a little healthier, but be very cost effective.
Hello again Boney,
I just wanted to respond to your comment that in the UK you pay high taxes.
Here in the US we pay federal tax on our income (I pay 18%, others may pay more or less); part of this money goes into paying for government health programs that pay for health care for the elderly, disabled, poor, low-income children and veterans. I also pay state income tax, property tax, and sales tax on purchases other than food and drugs.
I'm retired, so my retirement agency pays for most of my health insurance. My sister has an individual health plan and pays 0 a month. My friend is employed, and her employer pays most of her health insurance premium. My cousin is 71 and is on Medicare, a federal plan for those over 65, but also pays for a supplemental plan. Her husband receives health care through the Veterans Administration. We all pay copays for prescription drugs and some services. If your employer doesn't provide insurance, or if you are unemployed, NOT over 65, NOT disabled, NOT poor, or NOT retired w/coverage, and you can't afford insurance, then you go without health care. In the US there is a growing number of working people whose only access to heath care is in hospitals emergency rooms. So you see what a patchwork health care system we have, and some say inequitable.
In the US we spend 16% of our nation's economy (GDP) on health care (and its projected to increase to 20% by 2016- 20cents out of every ). The percentage of GDP spent on health care in the 5 countries from the Sick Around the World program are: UK - 8.3%; Japan 8%; Germany - 10.7%; Taiwan - 6.3%; and Switzerland - 11.6%. And in these countries that spend less than the US, they cover all their citizens -- we leave out 47 million.
Joie2008-04-28 14:51:51An excerpt from an article in the newspaper, San Francisco Chronicle:
"Polls show health care a growing concern"
Victoria Colliver, April 29, 2008
A new poll shows concerns over rising health care costs have kept pace with other major economic worries - second only to skyrocketing gas prices and tied with getting a job or raise that pays enough to cover increased living expenses.
The survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, being released today, found that 44 percent of the more than 2,000 adults interviewed April 3 to 13 ranked paying for gas as a serious problem, compared with 29 percent for jobs and 28 percent for health care.
A study from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, also released today, showed that the cost of health insurance for the average family in California increased 34 percent from 2001 to 2005, slightly higher than the national figure of 30 percent.
Among all states, California had the 12th largest increase in family premiums. In California, the average family annual premium increased from ,898 in 2001 to ,551 in 2005. Texas, at nearly 40 percent, had the highest percentage increase, while Rhode Island's 2005 family average of ,924 topped the nation.
Insurance increases well outpaced pay raises. During that period, salaries increased 9 percent for families in California and just 3 percent nationwide.
"In virtually every state, you're seeing significant premium increases over a four-year period that are not at all being kept up with by family income," said Brian Quinn, program officer for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The foundation, along with researchers from the University of Minnesota, released the study as part of the group's sixth-annual "Cover the Uninsured Week" awareness campaign.
For complete article see:
Joie2008-04-29 09:14:24
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