How I Lost My Fear of Universal Health Care
Written by Melissa @PermissionToLive [11]
When I moved to Canada in 2008, I was a die-hard conservative Republican. So when I found out that we were going to be covered by Canada's Universal Health Care, I was somewhat disgusted. This meant we couldn't choose our own health coverage, or even opt out if we wanted too. It also meant that abortion was covered by our taxes, something I had always believed was horrible. I believed based on my politics that government mandated health care was a violation of my freedom.
When I got pregnant shortly after moving, I was apprehensive. Would I even be able to have a home birth like I had experienced with my first 2 babies? Universal Health Care meant less choice right? So I would be forced to do whatever the medical system dictated regardless of my feelings, because of the government mandate. I even talked some of having my baby across the border in the US, where I could pay out of pocket for whatever birth I wanted. So imagine my surprise when I discovered that midwives were not only covered by the Universal health care, they were encouraged! Even for hospital births. In Canada, midwives and doctors were both respected, and often worked together.
I went to my first midwife appointment and sat in the waiting room looking at the wall of informational pamphlets. I never went to the doctor growing up, we didn't have health insurance, and my parents preferred a conservative naturopathic doctor anyways. And the doctor I had used for my first 2 births was also a conservative Christian. So I had never seen information on birth control and STDs. One of the pamphlets read "Pregnant Unexpectedly?" so I picked it up, wondering what it would say. The pamphlet talked about adoption, parenthood, or abortion. It went through the basics of what each option would entail and ended by saying that these choices were up to you. I was horrified that they included abortion on the list of options, and the fact that the pamphlet was so balanced instead of "pro-life."
During my appointment that day, the midwife asked her initial round of questions including whether or not I had desired to become pregnant in the first place. Looking back I am not surprised she asked that, I was depressed at the time, (even though I did not list that on my medical chart) and very vocal about my views on birth control (it wasn't OK, ever.) No wonder she felt like she should ask if I was happy to be having this baby. But I was angry about the whole thing. In my mind, freedom was being violated, my rights were being decided for me by the evils of Universal Health Care.
Third-party groups ready multiple ads attacking health-care law
By Dan Eggen,
Conservative groups are gearing up to spend millions of dollars over the next three months on ads attacking President Obama’s health-care law and Democrats who support it, but in many cases voters will have no way of knowing who paid for the barrage.
The ads amount to the next wave of opposition to Obama’s health-care plan, which was upheld by the Supreme Court last month as constitutional under the federal government’s taxing authority. Some of the groups most active on the issue have received funding from health-care firms opposed to parts of the legislation.
The American Action Network (AAN), for example, is targeting House Democrats who voted for “Obamacare” with $1.2 million in digital ads, mailings and other efforts. As a tax-exempt “social welfare” organization, the group is not required to identify its funders to the public.
“How far will they go to protect Obama’s agenda?” a narrator asks in one digital ad, which equates a trio of New York Democrats with the Three Stooges comedy troupe. “Tell congressmen Bill Owens, Tim Bishop and Louise Slaughter to repeal the health care tax.”
Two donations to the group have emerged publicly from the health-care sector: $3 million in 2011 from insurance giant Aetna and $4.5 million in 2010 from the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association (PhRMA), Washington’s biggest drugmaker lobby.
Aetna and PhRMA officials say their contributions were made in support of general policies, not political ads.
I’ll Cover You
By MELISSA FEBOSMy girlfriend pressed her balled up sweatshirt against her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut, tears striping her temples. She lay on her back on the floor of our living room, feet tucked under the coffee table, head on a sheet-covered pillow, left arm outstretched. I knelt over her, the heat of my breath filling the yellow surgical mask, hands slick under sterile gloves. I delicately peeled up the corner of her bandage, the skin beneath it smooth and pale as onionskin. With every tug, I saw her chest heave. Gritting my teeth, I pried the plastic dressing from the tiny tube that led into her upper arm. It was mid-June, and the dressing had melted onto it. She kept her arm still, but I heard her moan through the sweatshirt. Heart thudding, and tears pricking my own eyes, I kept going, despite the refrain in my mind: I can't do this, I can't do this, I can't do this.
It is a terrible thing, to hurt the person you love most. As a former professional dominatrix, I have willfully hurt a lot of people (albeit in my more callous early 20s). Sometimes, while torturing my clients, a little voice whispered, Do you like this? What does that mean? I needn't have worried about my nascent sadistic streak; I can now say with complete assurance that I have no desire to hurt anyone who does not enjoy it.
Now I'm a writer - I still trade in fantasies. But I could never have imagined this: accompanying someone I love through the labyrinthine annals of treatment for a disease that the medical establishment doesn't yet understand. I never imagined asking for so much help. And I certainly never imagined having to pull a melted bandage off a tube that entered in a small hole in my lover's arm and led straight to her heart. But there I was. And I could do it, because I had to.
One night in February 2011, my girlfriend called me from Beth Israel Hospital in Manhattan. After months of increasingly debilitating symptoms, Sini's doctor had sent her to the emergency room because of an irregular heartbeat, in addition to air hunger, extreme pain in her joints, a migraine headache and severe exhaustion. For years, her doctor had been treating these symptoms individually. She had an inhaler, arthritis medication, headache medication and allergy pills - all with imperceptible effects.
Clicking with your doctor
Dr. Larry Cohan, a pediatrician who has always kept voluminous files on his patients from birth through college, is used to examining his young charges, questioning and quipping, while scribbling notes in the medical record. But a few years ago a third party came between him and his patients: a computer screen.
Prodded by the federal government, doctors are replacing their paper files with electronic records. There have been growing pains. As efficient as the technnology is, neither physicians nor patients want a computer screen separating them.
Another View: Affordable Care Act could become most costly entitlement
Supporters of the new reform law forget that there is no such thing as a free lunch.
By MARTIN JONES
Nancy Cummings thinks that the Affordable Care Act provides a brighter future for our health care system (Maine Voices, July 15), but her enthusiasm is misguided.
MaineCare cuts could lead to lawsuit, health advocates say
Posted July 21, 2012, at 2:48 p.m.
LEWISTON, Maine — Disagreement about what a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling, which upheld key provisions of the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, means for Maine could end up in federal court.
Ana Hicks, a senior policy adviser with the advocacy group Maine Equal Justice Partners, said Wednesday her organization could be among those that sue the state government if it proceeds with reductions in Medicaid programs. The cuts are part of a budget-balancing bill passed by lawmakers earlier this year.
Hicks’ organization, which has sued the state in the past when it believed Maine was not meeting requirements of federal law, is waiting to see whether Gov. Paul LePage’s administration proceeds with Medicaid cuts, which Equal Justice Partners says are illegal.
Hicks said she was waiting for direction from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on what states should do. She hopes Maine will wait for that guidance before implementing reductions.
In question is whether the state needs to apply for a federal waiver to make the changes, or whether the state can simply make amendments to its existing Medicaid plan and move forward with the reductions.
At stake are state programs, including MaineCare, the state’s Medicaid program, which covers about 24,000 income-eligible 19- and 20-year-olds. Dropping that coverage would save the state about $4 million.
Other changes in the budget would cut eligibility for the state’s Medicare Savings Plan and Drugs for the Elderly and Disabled Program. About 1,825 people would lose the Medicare benefits; 260 would lose the drug program benefits. The state would save about $3 million a year with these changes.
“We would hope they would not move forward,” Hicks said. “But if they do, we would then look at what our options would be to protect those people.”
Hicks said additional “guidance” to states from the federal government on implementing the law is expected soon.
Republican lawmakers who crafted the changes and passed them into law, largely without Democratic votes, have said state DHHS spending on health insurance programs for the poor is unsustainable and Maine can no longer afford such generous offerings.
Maine is one of 14 states in the nation to offer Medicaid coverage to 19- and 20-year-olds, and that inclusion has left others, including some with disabilities, on a waiting list for health care, Republicans argued.
LePage’s stance has been that the state must conserve and protect those services for the “most vulnerable” populations.
In health care, as in every area of public policy, it is important to consider both ends and means.
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