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You wouldn’t know that from the distortions about the reform legislation peddled as fact by Republican critics from Gov. Haley Barbour to several GOPers in the state’s congressional delegation. Their goal is to confuse Mississippians and create doubts about the overriding case for the measures.
Their criticisms, however, do not address the fact that nowhere in the U.S. is the health care crisis more acute than the state of Mississippi.
Dr. Marianne Hill, senior economist of the state College Board’s policy research center, in the center’s January, 2010 economic report gives an overview of how pending health reform legislation would impact the cost, availability and quality of health care in Mississippi.
She cites statistics for a number of health care categories illustrating that Mississippi is now adversely impacted by its standing near the bottom of nearly every health care category. As she points out, the legislation making its way through Congress addresses the three basic problem areas affecting Mississippi: cost of health insurance, availability of coverage and quality of care.
Hill’s report details available data in several categories to show how Mississippi stands in comparison with the rest of the nation, plus the impact of the data.
n Health insurance coverage: (U.S. Census figures) Nationally, 20 percent of the population from ages 19 to 64 lack coverage. In Mississippi, 24 percent lack coverage.
n Risk of death forthose without coverage: Nationally, 40 percent higher risk, translating into nearly 45,000 annually. In Mississippi, the rate of persons dying linked to lack of appropriate care is 142 per 100,000, the highest in the nation, this according to the State Score Card of the Commonwealth Fund.
n Increased cost of health coverage: Nationally, an annual average increase between 1991 and 2004 was 5.5 percent. In Mississippi, the annual average increase was 6.7 percent.
Add to the above that Mississippi has the highest rate of infant mortality, plus the highest rate of teenage births, both categories would obviously benefit from much broader health care coverage as indicated by the World Health Organization’s website referenced in Hill’s article. The WHO shows that in countries with universal health care infant mortality is multiple times less than in the U.S.
Of course, that gets back to the basic premise of why President Obama has made reforming health care his primary initiative. For seven decades, presidents from both parties have vainly tried to reform the health care system so no American will be left without available care. Yet, we remain the only industrialized nation without universal health care.
The health insurance industry has always put up roadblocks, just as it is now, using fronts such as the Lewin Group, which poses as a nonpartisan research outfit but actually is owned by a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group, the health insurance giant. It gets Republicans in Congress to mouth their bogus information.
In a recent mailing piece to Mississippi voters, Republican Sen. Roger Wicker cited Lewin as his source for a claim that 119 million Americans could lose their private coverage under a “public option” plan contained in the House-passed reform bill. The assumption is millions would give up their private insurance plan if given a government alternative. The Congressional Budget Office has projected that only 10 to 11 million would switch.
Meantime, Mississippians should be cautioned that when they hear Haley Barbour attack provisions in the health care reform legislation, he is speaking as one of the GOP’s national attack team to scuttle any Obama legislative initiative.
Bill Minor, a nationally honored journalist, has covered Mississippi politics since 1947. Contact him at P.O. Box 1243, Jackson, MS 39215-1243, or e-mail at edinman@earthlink.net.
Both the AMA and the ANA support radical health care change. The national representing organizations of physicians and nurses understand rightfully that practioneers will not be effected by health care reform other than to be allowed to practice medicine and nursing with less administrative intrusion.
History is indeed being played out today. The history of the late 19th and early 20th century that saw the rise of the Robber Barrons and the Gilded Age. An age when very few people had control of most of the money and the backing of the corrupt Republican Party. It took the great American and true Republican Teddy Roosevelt to reset both the moral and financial compass of the United States.
An example of closed door policy making occured during the Bush regime when he invited Big Pharmaceutical companies to the Map Room of the White House to write the Medicare Prescription Drug Benifit. There was no debate, no imput, simply a take it or leave it bill presented to his Rubber Stamp Congress.
In this part of the country where health care jobs are the mainstay of the economy it is hard to realize and harder to justify the need for reform. To many famalies have been fed the lie that health care reform will cost the average nurse or technician their job. Look who is fostering the lie: ADMINISTRATION and corn pone hillbillies that actually beleive that the Republican party represents them. Health care reform will not affect the salaries or job security of health care providers. It will though have a dramatic impact on the quantity of health care administrators and their salaries.
Madison et. al are dead in the mortal sense but they are very much alive in the spiritual sense. Their ideas, dreams, and ambitions live today in the constitution.
"squared" tells us people can get health care, "for free". Nothing is free and someone must pay for people that cannot pay for health care. My argument is that adequate health care dollars already exist to provide health care for every person in the United States. The problem lies in the abuse of these funds by a very small majority of profiteers.
We can either be above board and say that all people deserve the same level of health care or we can continue to use the same rationing system that exist now where people with jobs get adequate health care while the have nots get the left overs in the form of minimum treatment.
This past month 85,000 citizens lost their jobs. In two months will those people be labeled beggers and lay abouts when they need free health care ? Our health care cannot be tied to our ability to work. The economy is as we see now out of the hands of the individual worker.
There is one benifit of universal health care that should strike a sweet chord with Republicans and War Mongers. Universal health Care ensures a healthy 17-25 year old age group to fight the Petroleum Wars.
Jefferson and Madison were not Federalist but Liberals. They should not be mentioned in the same context as Adams, Washington, Payne, and others. The chief difference is that they beleived government existed only to ensure the welfare of the citizens. Federalist (like John Adams, George Bush Jr., Barney Franks, Dick Cheney) beleive that government exist as a means of rule over the individual.
Personally I am a follower of Jefferson and Madison. For me government should exist only to build and maintain commercial infrastructure, provide for the common defense, and the general welfare of the citizen.
The current Health Care is a burdon on Free Enterprise that aides no one but big insurance and hospitals. Seventeen percent of our GDP goes toward health care. There is no shortage of health care dollars only a misuse and abuse of health care dollars.
Would the population not rise up if some company put a toll booth on highway 45 and demanded a toll for every vehicle that passed ? Of course and it should be the same for health care. The government provides by far the bulk of dollars hospitals receive and the government has a moral obligation to ensure that those dollars are spent only for the benifit of the general population and to fulfill the constitutional mandate of "PROVIDE FOR THE GENERAL WELFARE".
I agree with anti-state that people are uneducated. The governemnt does not owe people a job, a free pass, or the other perks that it hands out. It does owe the citizens some things and one of those constitutional debts is to ensure the general welfare of the citizens.
If left to me the government would exist to provide roads, rails, a strong military, police protection, and health care, PERIOD. On the other hand Social Security and Medicare are bought and paid for by the recipient. All working people are paying Medicare taxs and all medicare recipients are paying insurance premiums. This might not be the best way to do it but for now it is the only way available and big insurance cannot be trusted to fairly oversee medicare.
The chief problem for now is that for some reason hospitals and big insurance have brainwashed the citizens into beleiving that they (hospitals et.al) deserve seven figure salaries, private jets, vacation homes, and that the people should pay for those extras. This is outside the constitution and it is a crime that federal tax dollars are going to support opulant life styles while many people have zero health care coverage.
For every part of our lives turned over to gov't and the tax-feeding bureaucrats, there is that much less liberty and freedom retained by the individuals. That may be acceptable to mike and many others but it is abhorrant to me, jefferson, washington, madison, etc.
When people wake up and become as outraged at the looting and pilfering by our inept federal and state governments as they are by medical providers and insurance companies making a profit, we may have hope. But I'm not holding my breath.
If Mississippi had poor health care coverage there would not be constant construction at all of the hospitals across the state.
It is obvious that the health care dollars are their it is even more obvious that they are seriously misappropriated.
I disagree with "anti-state" that health Care coverage is not a right. it is one of the few rights mentioned in the constitution "LIFE" being the key word. On the other hand hospitals and other health care institutions do not have the right to build monuments to themselves with tax payer dollars. Health car in all cases should and must be a break even business. Anything left over after salaries etc. should be returned to the government from which it came or the Insurance company.
To make a profit off of my illness is not a right addressed in our constitution. Free Enterprise does not give a person or business the right to profit off of the misfortunes of fellow citizens. That comes from the bible that Neo coservs are always thumping.
What gummint worshiping bozos like minor conveniently leave out is that healthcare, like any other service, must be paid for. It is not a "right." As soon as the gummint gets involved, guess what will happen? You got it...the costs will go up and the quality will go down. Those countries with universal healthcare also have rationed medicine, long waits for tests and fewer choices for patients.
Idiots like minor long for the gummint to take over every single facet of our lives. Instead of recognizing that existing gummint intrusion in healthcare is mainly to blame for the high costs (e.g. medicaid and medicare subsidies which must be absorbed and passed on to you and me), minor and his ilk believe all of mankind's woes can be solved by even more gummint intrusion. How has the federal gummint welfare program worked for the poorest sectors of our state since instituted in the 1960s and trumpeted by statists like Minor? That's what I thought.
My feeling is if we wont to lose even more jobs put them right back in office,if not get people that really wants whats best for us no matter what party they belong to but then you go back to they will say or do what they have to to get elected,i have found any!
Iagree that we need it more than any state.