Health Care

We are down to the wire on health care reform. It has been a dizzying time. There have been so many issues, most of them so hard to understand! Most of us look at this issue through our personal prisms. If you are young and 'invincible' and only watch Fox News or listen to the hard right radio shows, your knee jerk reaction is that all this smacks of the dreaded word, which you actually never looked up: "socialism", let alone thought about.

Or maybe you are young and invincible and have no health insurance, and still don't think hard about any issues not pertaining to you so you just think "Whatever.. Doesn't apply to me." You need to get on board.

In a Kristoff column in the paper today I noted some statistics. The United States is lagging far behind every developed country in every area of health. We are so behind many other countries in the benchmarks of infant mortality, healthy births, etc. We lag in these milestones until (UNTIL!) we look at our elderly population - the folks over 65, and then the United States comes out on top. Could this be because of Medicare, the government program that ensures that every single person over the age of 65 has access to decent health care??

This week I have had some health issues, nothing major, and I will tell you that I have had personal experience of splendid care on the Medicare dime. I go to a local clinic to a family practice group and I have rarely ever seen a child there. I believe this is because the families in this area do not have insurance. In emergencies they go to the ER at the local hospital.

But we oldsters confidently step up to our local doctors and clinics, pay a nominal co-pay, and in many instances pay nothing. And so we avert health disasters, and if they strike, we can deal thanks to Medicare.

Why are we talking about sending Granny off on an ice floe?? Granny is just fine on Medicare (and she knows that Hospice is always there just in case). What we really need to think about are the kids who rarely get to their checkups, never see a dentist. Their parents need to have checkups as well, need to have dentistry, need to have the option of taking their kids to a family doctor (such as I have!) who knows them and is following their health history. What we need is Medicare for everyone.

The so called government option is great! Just ask anyone sixty-five or over. That's all I'm saying.