Lone Star Democracy Builders Association

The author Malcolm Gladwell has a new blog, and one of his first posts was talking about how his views on universal health care have changed since the early 1990s. In writing about this, he's provided a really useful metaphor for understanding why health care shouldn't be something that's the responsibility of our employers:

"The closest I can come is to imagine if we had employer-based subways in New York. You could ride the subway if you had a job. But if you lost your job, you would either have to walk or pay a prohibitively expensive subway surcharge. Of course, if you lost your job you would need the subway more than ever, because you couldn't afford taxis and you would need to travel around looking for work. Right? In any case, what logical connection is there between employment and transportation?"

You can read the entire posting at Malcolm's site.

Posted by Ben at 7:22 PM in Health Care & How To Communicate | Permalink

Ben mentioned Medicaid in his post about Wal-Mart, and I had mixed feelings. I do believe that Wal-Mart should be providing affordable health insurance for its workers, but with the number of people in this state and country who are eligible for Medicaid or CHIP but not enrolled...I'm almost grateful that they're doing outreach!

But here's what I've been thinking over the past few days.

In February 2004, 1 in 9 Texans relied on Medicaid for either health insurance or long-term care (source: Medicaid In Perspective by HHSC).

I'm as concerned about health care cost inflation as the next girl, but aren't we missing a more fundamental problem here?
Why the heck are 1 in 9 Texans so poor that they have to depend on Medicaid for help?! The Federal Poverty Line (FPL) for a family of four was $18,850 in 2004. Children ages 6-18 are only covered if their family income is under that line. While the income limits are more generous for younger children, it only goes as high as 185% of the FPL ($34,872) for newborns up to their first birthday.

It boggles my mind that getting people to an economic status where they don't qualify for Medicaid isn't the focus of the discussion. I know we believe we lost the War on Poverty, but COME ON, people. Get a grip on the real issue here. Move these families out of poverty, cut almost 25% of your Medicaid budget, since that's the proportion of Medicaid costs attributed to children. Some of those kids would move into CHIP with a rise in family income, but hey, we get a better federal match rate for that. ;)

Can't we have positive, inspiring goals anymore?

Posted by Skye at 8:52 PM in Health Care | Permalink

An opinion piece in the NYTimes proposes to do away with the Surgeon General and replace the position with a National Nurse. Makes sense to me if we're really interested in cheaper (preventative) health care.

Posted by GlennM at 4:12 PM in Health Care | Permalink

I was wanting to hear more about health care instead of Social Security, and Krugman comes to the rescue.

Quotes below.

Continue reading "Krugman on health care" »

Posted by GlennM at 11:44 AM in Health Care | Permalink