Rush (hearts) Hawaiian health care–and Obama?
Not to worry! Limbaugh the Lionheart is still okay. It’s his brain folks may have to worry about if he realizes the consequences of what he said after his hospitalization over Christmas in Hawaii (where Obama AND Pelosi were staying–hmmm…) for heartburn (or something).
“Based on what happened here to me, I don’t think there’s one thing wrong with the American health care system. It is working just fine, just dandy.”
At The New Republic, Anthony Wright, executive director of Health Access California, the statewide health care consumer advocacy coalition, explains why Rush was so happy (apart from having tons of money others don’t have):
Hawaii’s health care system is distinct from the rest of the country, in that they passed a version of health reform decades ago, in 1974. The Hawaii Pre-Paid Health Care Act includes a requirement for employers to provide health coverage to their workers. As you may know, a similar requirement on large employers is a key part of the reform now pending in Congress.
And the employer requirement seems, by and large, to have succeeded. It has increased coverage–just under 8 percent of the state’s population is uninsured, second only to Massachusetts–and access to care. At the same time, Hawaii still has some of the lowest health care costs in the nation, despite its high cost of living and without an apparent decrease in quality–as Limbaugh himself discovered…
Read the rest here.
On top of that, the hospital didn’t find the cause of his chest pains. It is actually common to have chest pain or abdominal pain serious enough to warrant a trip to the emergency room, and then for the hospital to find no cause, so it doesn’t reflect at all poorly on the hospital. But the best that can be said about the quality of the care Limbaugh received is that the doctors were smart enough not to try to treat him for something he didn’t have. So it is somewhat of a mystery why this incident should be proof of the greatness of American health care.
I know it’s not necessary to point this out, but: “I had a positive experience; therefore there is no problem” is a five-year-old’s reasoning, even if it weren’t oblivious to larger realities. One doesn’t need to know anything about where Limbaugh was treated (or not treated) to recognize that someone who says “Based on what happened here to me, I don’t think there’s one thing wrong with the American health care system. It is working just fine, just dandy” is not someone whose opinions about public policy should be taken very seriously.
In related news: in August The Daily Show dug up some old (but not that old) footage of Glenn Beck making the opposite “argument” — his ordeal proved how broken the system is. Obviously, that was before health-care reform looked like it would benefit the Democrats. That clip is here.
Interesting point, David N. He seems happy that he was treated quickly and kindly, almost an echo of Bush’s line that we have health care because anyone can go to an ER. If Limbaugh had suffered a heart attack or needed major treatment, it would have been a better test.
Still, illuminating about the Hawaiian experience.
Contrary to popular belief and what the name would suggest, ‘Heart Burn’ is not related to either the heart, nor any rapid oxidization causing infra-red radiation. Most common causes of ‘heart burn’ are either an excess of (stomach) acid or a faulty (stomach) sphincter and the inability to retain said acid. This incident therefore does not conclusively prove that Mr. Limbaugh either has or does not have a heart, but is illuminative on other aspects of his anatomy.
In all seriousness I am glad he is alright.
Amazing. Multi-millionaires receive excellent health care. Who would have guessed? Well, then, let’s just drop the whole health care reform thing, because it works for the people who really matter.
Hawaii has more than 25% of the population enrolled in Kaiser Permenente HMO.
Which should be a national model for health care. Doctors are salaried and have no motivation for getting paid for superfluous/unnessesary proceedures. And Kaiser has best preventive care. =another cost saver.
Wow, there are a lot of other bloggers reading and connecting to this blog, aren’t there?
Yes, I noticed that–some look like spam types. But perhaps “Rush Limbaugh” sets off all kinds of SEO alarms.
Kind of a pain. I think I can turn off the pingback alerts.
Oh, great, David, you wrote his name again – now get ready for another round :-)
It’s like the great sport of Google-whacking – remember that? When you find one, you can’t blog about it, because that becomes the 2nd hit :-)
I think I turned it off! So we’re safe….But fewer clicks.
I am the anti-blogger, perhaps inspired by my PoliticsDaily editor Melinda Henneberger, who told folks leaving terrible comments on an obit of Deborah Howell, a greatly admired journalist (and promoter of religion coverage, bless her) who died tragically, that they should go elsewhere:
Of course without clicks, where will PD be? And that would leave me yet more time to clog up dotCommonweal…
I echo Ed Gleason’s kudos for Kaiser Permanente. Peter Nixon might as well.
I wasn’t too keen about getting it but, on retirement, I had to be covered as a DP and what my partner had was Kaiser. So —.
So far, 7 years on, I have NO complaints, find the quality of medicine to be very good, the computerization of medical records has sped data access up trememdously, and, one thing that I like, my medical records have been downloaded onto a memory stick, which I take with me when traveling. Haven’t had to use it yet, but it’s nice to have when traveling in Turkey, Israel, etc.
I really don’t know why the KP program hasn’t been pushed as a model for healthcare reform.
It’s possible that one may find damaging info about any health care plan. But we might hold our kudos for Kaiser as there seems a lot of criticism directed its way.
http://kaiserpapers.org/
http://corphq.livejournal.com/
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jul/26/local/me-kaiser26
http://kaiserpapers.org/spit.html
Well friends whatever you may think of health care, rest assured, that like in Canada and the UK, it will be debated now for decades and decades. However, it will not be reversed.
I do not have a horse in this race or a dog in this fight or whatever the expression is, however, I will share one anecdote that my wife shared just tonight about a colleague at work.
He requires gall bladder surgery. How it works is that he shows up at the hospital and waits in line. The hospital only has funding to do x number of gall bladder surgeries per day. Once that quota is filled, he has to return. On the third day he returned and was turned away and told that the surgeon is now flying out. He will have to wait until another arrives.
Now neither my wife nor he are by any stretch right wing, in fact they have very little political views at all except as it pertains to First Nation issues (both being first nation people). However, he commented that a dog has a better chance of getting surgery than a human being. How much would a gall bladder surgery cost 2 – 3 K would be my bet.
But there isn’t a snowballs chance in hell that we will ever go to privatized care in Canada (not that I want it). In fact, the Tories are accused of trying to import American styled health care (Canadians LOVE Michael Moore) in every single election. One of the most oft cited images is a politician holding up a visa card next to a health card and saying here is what THEY want you to use for your health.
Moral of the story – bill passes and public health care like Canada and the UK will follow.
To borrow a phrase everyone will recognize, I would say ditto to Ed’s comment regarding Kaiser Permanente.
We have used Kaiser for many years, and they provide good medical care at a reasonable price. What more would one want from health insurance? Plus, all the doctors are usually in one building!
Hi, George, experiences like your friend’s circulate down here and scare the pants off everyone. :-)
For those of us in the US, it’s important to keep in mind that the proposed health care reform, in both houses, will NOT result in nationalized health care. From what I can tell, essentially it will consist of government subsidies for private health care insurers, who in turn will be paying private medical practices to deliver health care. For most of us, it won’t “look and feel” much different (or different at all) from what we currently experience.
I don’t find George D’s story credible. All hospitals can only do X number of surgeries per day, since no hospital has an infinite number of operating rooms and staff. And what they do is schedule the operations. They don’t have everyone needing surgery come to the hospital every day and wait in line.
There are fairly elaborate preparations for gallbladder surgery (enema the night before, no eating after midnight). It is difficult to imagine hospitals requiring people to prepare for surgery three days in a row and wait in line each day on the chance that they will get an operation that day.
I can believe people would be on a waiting list for surgery, but I just can’t believe people would be told to come back day after day and wait in line.
David:
Believe it.
Whatever the reason, he required gall bladder surgery, went for three days and does not have it. That is certain.
I do not have a family doctor and cannot get a family doctor. So I go to a walk in clinic if I need anything and wait for 4 hours.
Or go to emergency.
But emergency rooms are complaining that they are being used as primary health deliverers.
Jim:
It is a two way street. Stories of people becoming bankrupt when they get sick circulates up here and scares people to death.
Irrespective of anything else, one thing is for certain, in Canadian politics health care is frequently at the top of the agenda dwarfing every other topic.
KIm Campbell, who was an interim Conservative Prime Minister, once said that health care simply cannot be debated publicly. (!!!)
I repeat I have no problem with the Cdn system and have experience with it. It is simply the way it is and the vast majority of Canadians like it and do not want to see what is referred to derogatorily as a US styled health system.
But I do think that American Catholics really have to do some soul searching. In the riches country on earth, the stories of people literally dying and going broke because they get sick is just plain immoral. Period.
Many of you many have seen this, but also may not have. It is worth the hour to watch:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/view/?utm_campaign=viewpage&utm_medium=grid&utm_source=grid
In Sick Around the World, FRONTLINE teams up with veteran Washington Post foreign correspondent T.R. Reid to find out how five other capitalist democracies — the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, Taiwan and Switzerland — deliver health care, and what the United States might learn from their successes and their failures
Reid’s first stop is the U.K., where the government-run National Health Service (NHS) is funded through taxes. “Every single person who’s born in the U.K. will use the NHS,” says Whittington Hospital CEO David Sloman, “and none of them will be presented a bill at any point during that time.” Often dismissed in America as “socialized medicine,” 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.”
Reid reports next from Japan, which boasts the second largest economy and the best health statistics in the world. The Japanese go to the doctor three times as often as Americans, have more than twice as many MRI scans, use more drugs, and spend more days in the hospital. Yet Japan spends about half as much on health care per capita as the United States.
One secret to Japan’s success? By law, everyone must buy health insurance — either through an employer or a community plan — and, unlike in the U.S., insurers cannot turn down a patient for a pre-existing illness, nor are they allowed to make a profit.
Reid’s journey then takes him to Germany, the country that invented the concept of a national health care system. For its 80 million people, Germany offers universal health care, including medical, dental, mental health, homeopathy and spa treatment. Professor Karl Lauterbach, a member of the German parliament, describes it as “a system where the rich pay for the poor and where the ill are covered by the healthy.” As they do in Japan, medical providers must charge standard prices. This keeps costs down, but it also means physicians in Germany earn between half and two-thirds as much as their U.S. counterparts.
In the 1990s, Taiwan researched many health care systems before settling on one where the government collects the money and pays providers. But the delivery of health care is left to the market. Every person in Taiwan has a “smart card” containing all of his or her relevant health information, and bills are paid automatically. But the Taiwanese are spending too little to sustain their health care system, according to Princeton’s Tsung-mei Cheng, who advised the Taiwanese government. “As we speak, the government is borrowing from banks to pay what there isn’t enough to pay the providers,” she told FRONTLINE.
Reid’s last stop is Switzerland, a country which, like Taiwan, set out to reform a system that did not cover all its citizens. In 1994, a national referendum approved a law called LAMal (“the sickness”), which set up a universal health care system that, among other things, restricted insurance companies from making a profit on basic medical care. The Swiss example shows health care reform is possible, even in a highly capitalist country with powerful insurance and pharmaceutical companies.
Today, Swiss politicians from the right and left enthusiastically support universal health care. “Everybody has a right to health care,” says Pascal Couchepin, the current president of Switzerland. “It is a profound need for people to be sure that if they are struck by destiny … they can have a good health system.”