moyers & maher
Boy if one person can totally sum up the health care sitch in the U.S., that person is Bill Moyers. This interview with him by Bill Maher is about ten minutes long. It is also, if you are a U.S. citizen trapped in the snarl of health care politics, right now ten of the most important minutes you may spend in your life.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qgOG-c0oLE]
0 Responses to moyers & maher
Bravo! This also illustrates the problem with getting the healthcare message out, you need 10-20 mins. to do it. The healthcare issue is not a soundbite. Sadly, the Average American’s attention span is like 30sec. which is why we are where we are…
Well yeah, when it takes ten minutes to explain health care and ten seconds to say “they’re killing granny!,” we are sort of left with a small demographic to defend health care reform.
A wonderful interview and thank you for posting it. If nothing else, I completely agree with Moyers regarding the idea that Obama should come out fighting for this and results be damned.
If he were to win, we would all win. If he were to lose, he would have helped set the stage for the next round of fighting.
I recently read a posting on the web site of the English comedian Stephen Fry whereby some Tory member of Parliament, discussing the current healthcare debate in the States, said, and I’m paraphrasing, “Even with all its problems, (the NHS) we (Tories) wouldn’t dream of dismantling it.”
Moyers is brilliant.
As I’ve pointed out elsewhere, Canada has a national call in radio show hosted by Rex Murphy called Cross Country Checkup. In February he interviewed the head of the Canadian Medical Association, Dr. Robert Ouellet, about the challenges facing the Canadian system. (From what I can glean, they’re having some problems from some misguided budget cuts to their medical training programs a few years ago.) The focus of the show was, “Should Canada be looking at alternatives to its current health care system?”
After the interview, they took calls, and three of the first four callers basically responded, “NO!! Don’t tamper with the Canadian health care system … we might end up like the U.S.!” Dr. Ouellet had to rush to reassure them that no, the U.S. system was not one of the alternatives being considered, they were looking at France, Belgium, the UK, Germany, etc.
It would have been kind of funny, if it weren’t for the fact that we Americans are the butt of the ‘joke’ that is our for-profit method of financing health care.
I am still trying to figure out what will happen to those such as myself who already have health care. Will my premiums go down rather than go up every year as it has for the last few years?
Well one thing that will happen is, if you get sick, the insurance company cannot rifle through its records to find some excuse to deny the claim and cannot discontinue your insurance on you when you get sick. That is a regular practice right now so people with insurance who think they are covered who get sick suddenly are not covered. Part of the health care reform act is meant to stop that and to regulate insurance company behavior. But I have a whole thing about this in another post, what will happen, and what won’t, scroll or I will find it for you in a bit.
[Basically, if you are covered, you will not immediately experience any change, it will be just the same for you.]
My health insurance is almost three hundred bucks a month. I am tempted to go with cheaper coverage but 80/20 is a good ratio.
Sweetie, you cannot change providers or coverage, the second you do they will cut coverage for anything related to past health issues.
Not providers but coverage. I will ask Aetna because if so they failed to mention that important piece of information. They did say, however, that if I wanted to switch back/upgrade I’d have to go through the whole approval process again. I no longer have a preexisting condition but they might try to find something.
Then again, maybe not.
Also, I should elaborate that I purchased this insurance long after my three major surgeries (having had Blue Cross before) and they did not use it against me.