Star,

May your weekend by "donnybrook-free."  ;-)

I remember the utter disbelief and shock as we watched what was happening on TV.  And then I remember the absolute quiet…for days. 

We were in Naples, FL at the time.  On Sept 12 we had a small hurricane that never made the news…Hurricane Gabrielle did a lot of damage along the Gulf because of a tidal surge.  We spent several days helping clean up the beach…it was a good break to get away from television. 

When we could finally get on a plane to fly back to Ohio, the airport was like a ghost town; the plane was nearly empty.  There were no real security measures at that point, but I remember we were given metal cutlery except for a plastic knife!  There was a very suspicious looking and acting male passenger sitting near us.  (Remember, the hijacking pilots learned to fly in Ft. Myers, where we took off from.)  My husband and I were prepared to take him out or die trying.  We kept our metal forks through the entire flight, figuring we could stab him if necessary.

Suspicious male passenger nearly ran off the plane when we landed and headed straight to a restroom.  (He’d been in the plane restroom about 4 times in the course of 2 1/2 hours and he’d been into the overhead compartment an equal number of times during the flight.)  To this day, I believe he was an escaping terrorist.

Liz,

Thank you.  You’ve crystallized the issues beautifully.  Now…can we get anyone in DC to listen?

Well said Stacy,

Thanks for jumping in while I was off exercising!  

Beep,

I see Stacy has already replied…and pretty much wrote what I would have.  Thanks, Stacy.  I’m so sorry you, Beep, have chronic health issues and that they started while you are so young.  You’ve really been dealt a bum hand. In no way did I mean irresponsibility contributed to the situation you now find yourself in.  I think you’re in the minority, and I should have specified I was not referring to people with genetic or chronic disease.

Educating ourselves about nutrition would be a start.  Learn to read and understand labels.  I also think we need to pay more attention to how much a doctor’s visit or hospital stay costs.  Most of us happily pay our little co-pay and have no idea how much the insurance company is picking up. If I decided to have a face lift or some other procedure not covered by insurance, you can be darn sure I would shop around, negotiate and get the cost in writing before I went under the knife. I learned at a very early age that no one cares about my well-being as much as I do, so I don’t trust anyone else, including doctors,  to make my decisions.  Guess I believe a good dose of skepticism is always healthy;-)

Deber,

Lee, as informed Americans know, every state has its problems.

Huh…did you mean to reply to me?  I observed that Liz seems to have started a Texas-bashing thread.  It was a little poke with a wink at Liz…not at Texas.

Thanks Stacy,

I was aware of most of what you say…but not the Medicare stuff.  Can’t believe they don’t recognize totally separate conditions at the same time.  My eye doctor mentioned that Medicare has cut their reimbursements by 3% the last few years…and that they will cut by 10% this coming year! That means the uninsured are asked to pick up medicare shortfalls too.

My dad is retired government and military.  He has TriCare for Life as a supplemental insurance…which pays for everything Medicare doesn’t.   I’ve always suspected the doctors get some sort of kickback or are partial owners of testing equipment, since they send Dad for every sophisticated and expensive test available, on a regular basis; and they did the same thing to my mom when she was alive.  Doctors literally treat my dad like an ATM machine!

I guess my point is, where there is opportunity for abuse of a system, people will take advantage.  But the uninsured need health care and the rest of us have to pay for it, one way or another.  So far we just pay the hospitals directly with inflated prices, which is pretty efficient.  But that doesn’t get those uninsured patients to doctors for check ups…only to emergency rooms. But most counties have health departments that offer free or nearly free services. 

I know most people think health care is a "right."  I think it’s an individual responsibility.   I think all of us need to bargain with our health care providers; ask questions; ask for a cheaper drug or treatment.  We put more effort into buying cars than we do into shopping for health care.  As I said before, we have to own this problem.

I know I’m just rambling…but, as I also said before, I’m no genius.  I don’t have any answers.

Well said Doe, 

I like your thinking.

There’s no doubt that parts of our health care system are broken, but I think we need to address reform in stages.  As I’ve said before, this is too important to have politicians making the decisions…we need a small committee of geniuses without political agendas to formulate a plan.  They need to break down all the segments of the beast; detail where the problems are; propose specific ways to address each problem and how to pay for the solutions.

I would look at Medicare first.  We keep hearing that billions of dollars are wasted in this program.  Fix that…get rid of the fraud and waste.  Then use the new and improved Medicare as a model or expand it.  Maybe we need to lower the age of Medicare eligibility to 45 or 50 with a fee schedule based on salary.

This cadre of geniuses should also look at the health care plan Congress is covered by…and the plan covering all other government employees.  Those are government-run plans, paid for with tax dollars.  How are they working…what needs to be fixed there?  Can either of these plans be expanded?

The geniuses should study hospital fees.  How are the fees determined?  Why do they charge an uninsured person $400 for a blood test and only charge Blue Cross $75 for the same test?  (I made up those figures to illustrate my point.)

Somehow, people need to take responsibility for their own health.  They need to own the problem.  I compare it to the difference between leased cars and owned vehicles…people are much more likely to perform the maintenance on vehicles they own. 

I think we need to look at torte reform, not because so much money is awarded in medical lawsuits, but because the threat of same drives up the cost of insurance for doctors and hospitals and it causes doctors to order more tests than are necessary.

Obviously, I’m not a candidate for the genius cadre since I have more questions than answers…but I guess that’s where we start…with questions.