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Help With Healthcare Insurance Reform…

We are in the final push with the Healthcare Insurance Reform. Where can you help? Well the truth is our democracy is only as strong we  make it.

FOUR takeaways:

number ONE)

All of us need to speak up with persistence and clarity in support of health reform.

Call your representative now: http://j.mp/amfINg

If you’re in Colorado- call Representative Markey – 4th district, http://betsymarkey.house.gov/

number TWO)

• Insurance reforms to protect consumers from insurance company worst-practices – like denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions, capping total coverage, and dropping or watering down coverage when you get sick and need it most
• Consumer protections that will restrict how much of your premium dollars insurance companies can spend on marketing, profits, and salaries
• Creation of a health exchange to increase consumer choice and guarantee coverage
• Affordable health options, with subsidies for working families and a hardship waiver
• Tax credits to help small businesses afford coverage
• Making preventive care completely free – with no co-payments or deductibles
• Lowering the cost of health care for our seniors
• Improving the quality and extending the life of Medicare
• Ensuring that reform is not only fully paid for, but actually significantly reduces the federal deficit

number THREE)

The numbers are clear according to yesterday’s Congressional Budget Office’s report  (via WSJ)-

• The tab in the first decade for expanding coverage is $940 billion. After penalty payments by workers and employers without coverage and other items like taxes on “Cadillac” health plans, the net cost of added coverage would be $794 million.
• The projected budget deficit would shrink by $138 billion over 10 years.
• Some 32 million uninsured will get health insurance. Of those, 19 million people would start getting coverage in 2014.
• Medicare spending would be reduced by 1.4% annually and Medicare’s solvency would be extended by at least nine years.
• Federal spending for health-insurance exchanges would be $466 billion over the decade, intended mostly to help people who don’t get coverage through work.

number FOUR)

Here is a letter I recently recieved by Dr. Faisal Qazi,  neurologist and former President of the American Muslim Health Professionals-

March 18th, 2010

The naysayers have stated their case and have miserably failed to provide conclusive solutions to the healthcare crisis.

When the healthcare community has put forth its most innovative and novel solutions for a system that is at a breaking point, and when an overwhelming majority of physicians, nurses, public health professionals, and patients support the provisions embedded in this healthcare bill, and when renowned institutions such as Mayo Clinic have come up with the very same ideas to deal with the key challenges in our healthcare system, I, for the life of me, fail to grasp as to where the controversy in this debate is coming from.

One place to look is the President’s summit with the congressional leaders a few weeks ago.  The opposition presented only non-ideas.  In fact the physicians in that group offered odd solutions and provided inadequately thought out answers to the complex problems we face in today’s healthcare crisis.

So if reform doesn’t go through, what do I tell my patient whose condition has deteriorated as a result of cancer and who sat in my office literally crying with distress as he couldn’t afford his medications having hit the donut hole?  What do I tell the patient who I saw in the ER with stroke and who did not know that he had developed risks for it such as Diabetes and Hypertension because he had to work two jobs and then overtime - none of which provided him with insurance coverage or an opportunity to pursue preventive care? And what of my patients who are stuck in jobs limiting their scope and potential just because they will not be covered by anyone once they leave their jobs?  I for one cannot stand by and see the plight of these people without believing that I operate in a system which is broken and doesn’t work for the people it is intended to serve.

I think the administration has taken a courageous stand to move the process of reform forward.  It is time we take this step to halt insurance company abuses and provide coverage to millions. It is time to give President Obama a chance to make right what has gone extremely wrong with this healthcare system.

| if I knew all the words I would write myself out of here. |