Public Option Part II: Do you wish he was dead?
Dear Congress:
I’ve written about him here. He’s an early middle age working class guy. He’s been trying to work off a mountain of debt, but like Sisyphus pushing the rock, he never quite did…He has a wife (also not employed right now) and a dog. Up until December he had a job.
(Guess that unlike super rich Wall Streeters his employer was not too big to fail.)
Shortly afterward (33 days I think) he was diagnosed with throat cancer. He was uninsured. Somehow…he got the treatment he needed at a Bigshot Reasearch Hospital, which parenthetically, was the same hospital that treated me for cancer and saved my life back in 1991.
Because of that, I was brimming with positive when I spoke to him. They’d saved me, they would save him.
No doubt.
And they did. He’s recovering now. I couldn’t be happier.
He got his first bill this week for the twelve weeks of inpatient radiation.
75,000.00
He just looked at it and laughed. You have to when you get a bill that big.
What the hell else can you do?
And who loses? He does because a bankruptcy just went through on earlier bills, so this one cannot go on it.
The Bigshot Teaching Hospital also loses because instead of being reimbursed for less than they’d like to be…they get nothing. Nada. Not a Dime.
If he’d had a Public Option he could have been subsidized under…
the teaching hospital would have gotten *some* reimbursement for his care.
What would the opponents of health care reform have done, I wonder…said, “Make him go away?”
I suppose I should be glad there isn’t a “Futile Care,” law in his state yet…
Going Dark for awhile
Sudden financial implosion. The Medicare may get gone too.
Catch you on the flipside…I’ll still be dropping by facebook.
Entire life
h/t to Goldfish’s twitter and Claire Lewis’ Livejournal:
UK’s Parliament is considering a bill that may pass *today.* this would immunize those who transport patients to assisted suicide clinics abroad for terminal illness (Dignitas) from prosecution. Claire Lewis excellent piece has a couple of paragraphs that I see as key, not just to the fight against the Duty to Die folks, but to broader understanding of disability/impairment in general.
Member of Parliament Baroness Campbell of Surbiton
Crossbench Peer speaks out:
Disabled people who experience progressive conditions understand far more than non-disabled people about what it is live with these pressures. We know what is acceptable as disease or disability progresses, and for the huge number of us who say no to assisted suicide, it is because we fear the changing culture such an amendment would bring. People without experience of disability, including our friends and families cannot predict what each stage of our personal journey will mean. Furthermore, financial and emotional conflicts of interest will always present an added burden to the situation. A law decriminalising assisted suicide would undoubtedly place disabled people under pressure to end their lives early to relieve the burden on relatives, carers (in the US read “caregivers” )or the state….
Disabled people have been largely silent in this debate which has been carried out in the media by clerics, non-disabled commentators and a small handful of individuals with terminal conditions who are supported by Dignity in Dying. Until large numbers of people like us are present to engage in this highly complex and ethical debate, we must strongly oppose any device such as Lord Falconer’s amendment to get assisted dying in through the back door.
A Quote from the US Declaration of Independence
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
It’s fireworks time out east, ours in the Rockies will follow on later.
Happy independence day,
Per the AP first go-round at a public option
in the Senate is here. h/t to Big Orange
(Thank you Senator Kennedy and Senator Dodd)
My first quibble with it is that the ‘incentives’ for employers to keep insuring their workers are not going to help much, but I think they felt they had to set it up this way to get the costs down from 1trillion to 615 million over ten years…A fee of 750.00 per fulltime employee or 375 for a part timer that an employer chooses not to insure…..isn’t much. (far less than they’re presently paying the for profits in business premium.
My second quibble….well actually I don’t have any right yet.
More details are now here
