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Feb

9

The Coming Health Crisis – It’s Almost Here!

Posted By: 'Okie' | 11:03 pm — 2/9/2005 | Comments Off See comments below:

This AM Hugh Hewitt remarks that the cost of the newly implemented “prescription drug benefit” is huge. That’s some kind of understatement! According to the Washington Post article (registration required) that Hugh links to:

The White House released budget figures yesterday indicating that the new Medicare prescription drug benefit will cost more than $1.2 trillion in the coming decade, a much higher price tag than President Bush suggested when he narrowly won passage of the law in late 2003.

The projections represent the most complete picture to date of how much the program will cost after it begins next year. The expense of the new drug benefit has been a source of much controversy since the day Congress approved it, with Democrats and some Republicans complaining that the White House has consistently low-balled the expected cost to the government. … “

That’s some chunk-o’-change! The article goes into detail on how much the Feds will save by having some of the increase offset by payments from insurers and from shifting some of the responsibilities from Medicaid to Medicare, so that the states would have to chip in their 2-quadzillion-cents worth, wonder who’ll get to pay for that? But all of this trillion dollars and cents here or there is not addressing the big picture.

My generation, the Baby Boomers, are getting to that age where we will be needing an ever increasing amount of health care. In today’s world, and even more so in tomorrow’s, that means an increasing dependency on prescription drug therapies. I grew up in my parent’s drug store, in the ’50s & ’60s, and worked there in the early ’70s. I saw then the number of older folks that survived their various ills and diseases with weekly, or monthly, prescriptions that lasted as long as they did. I’m already there today, and I’m just past the half-century mark.

So what we have to face personally, as communities and as a nation is what could very quickly be a health care crisis beyond the imagination of this generation. Never before have we, as a group, been told “NO” to what we really want or need. On an individual basis, sure, but not as a generation. Cheap, and in states like CA, free education? No problem. Tons of available credit? Ditto. HUD, Fanny Mae, low-interest housing loans and even lower re-fi’s? Sure. Employer provided health care for white collar, and union or government jobs? Definitely!

But what about now? What happens when we lose that job, start a business to participate in the “Ownership Society”, have, or want to, finally retire? Medicare, Medicaid, supplemental insurance, private insurance if we’re wealthy and if it’s allowed? How much should we spend on ourselves in our final two months of life, two weeks or two days? Statistically, more is spent on health care measures those last few months or weeks before death, except for sudden death, than in one’s entire life. Where does society’s financial responsibility to the individual end, and to what extent is the individual responsible for him or her self?

I’m making these as questions as I don’t have the answers. But these are the very questions that must be answered by our elected politicians in the near future in order to tackle the very real problems of what to do about health care in the United States. Putting off making the hard decisions only risks tragedy and collapse of the system as a whole. Look what happened just this winter’s flu season because we have not husbanded our vaccine manufacturing system in a prudent manner, allowing our nation to be dependent upon only a few makers of the vitally important influenza vaccine. When one went down, the entire supply chain was compromised, and many that should have been vaccinated, were not.

We feel that it is our birthright to have the latest wonder drugs, artificial hearts, organ transplants, etc., but who pays for all this modern medical magic? But hey, so what if it costs a drug company “billions” of dollars and years or decades of testing to bring out a single pharmaceutical, that’s not our problem. We want everything easy, cheap, or even free. And by the way, screw those guys, they make too much money for their investors anyway! So much for capitalism in regards to the drug industry. If they can’t make money for their shareholders in that business, they might as well be making detergent!

So I guess this has now turned into a rant, the second for the day. Like I have all my life, I will turn to the wisdom of my parents and follow in their footsteps. They made sure that they had insurance to cover the bad tidings in life, denying themselves some things in order to pay the premiums on the policies that mattered. For my mom, she had supplemental hospital insurance that covered everything that Medicare didn’t, which must have been a great deal indeed, as her last few months were spent in and out of intensive care.

As we grow older and get closer to the time of our own deaths, we need to make the tough choices about when to allow extraordinary measures and when to sign DNRs and face our day of destiny with dignity. What is the fiscal responsibility to our childrens’ generation in regards to our having those last few days of existence, whose cost could cripple their economy if it is a burden left solely to them via government supplied and funded health care? The bottom line is that we must be individually responsible for our own health care as much as is humanly possible, and help those who truly cannot help themselves via private charity and some government assistance. How much assistance? That is the question — and for our generation, we don’t yet have an answer. (db)

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 9th, 2005 at 11:03 pm and is filed under Focus On Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.  |  Print This Post Print This Post  |  Email This Post Email This Post

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