There has been a lot of political wrangling and talk recently about cutting health benefits for illegal aliens.
Not to mention the incidents in Florida. (Is FLorida still part of the union or what?) The political momentum against cutting benefits to the underprivileged and under insured changed after the 2008 national election. During the election a concerted effort was made on the part of the Democratic nominees to demonstrate clearly the fact that there was a glaring disparity between the "haves and the have nots" when it came to health care availability. AARP ran a series of infomercials, and a started a website
Divided We Fall, depicting real patients telling their own stories of how they became bankrupt after an illness even though they had private insurance coverage at the time of the illness or injury. Then candidate Barrack Obama quoted states on the millions who have shared this fate. The under insured.
It seems that a while back, gradually, insidiously the health insurance corporations have changed the rules and increased the cost of insurance. To keep the rates affordable they simply gave you less and less coverage for the same rate. This has now progressed to the point that many people now have what boils down to a discount card and not "real" insurance. That is are under insured. When presented with any moderate health crisis your share of the health care costs in deductibles and co-payments will overwhelm the vast majority of the families making less than 250,000 a year.
Despite this now there is a group pushing for making sure that illegal aliens do not get any health coverage because we, the taxpayer, are paying for it. Thus reducing costs, goes the arguement for this action, to the State and local municipalities. Sounds great in theory but...not so great in practice.
Case in point Long Beach Wilson High School. It seems the 170 students and faculty at Wilson High School in Long Beach, a city in Southern California, was exposed to a contagious form of Tuberculosis or TB, and must now testing and possible prophylactic treatment with antibiotics to prevent getting TB. Testing involves injecting an altered strain of the TB mycobacteria under the skin of the inner forearm and waiting several days for a reaction. If a reaction occurs chest X-rays and antibiotics may follow. A similar incident was recorded in September when 400 were exposed and required testing at the same school. Just one question? How much does that cost? How much does it cost if you or one of your children get TB or worse are exposed to it and don't find out til much later. TB, by the way is spread through the air. A cough, a sneeze, a handshake and you may acquire a fatal disease. Nice!
TB was on the decline in California, although rates have been higher in California than the rest of the country at 7 per 100,000 people. It is higher in
"Racial minorities and foreign-born people continued to be disproportionately affected by the disease. In California, there were 22.9 cases of TB for every 100,000 Asian American residents; 8.7 for blacks; and 7.6 for Latinos. The rate was 1.6 per 100,000 for whites and 1.8 for Native Americans."This would seem to support, again, the not so new argument repeatedly made by health care professionals, that is more cost effective to treat illegals and the underprivileged if only to save our own hides for being exposed to the contagious and deadly diseases that they will undoubtibely share with us!
The fall from grace of science and well "rational thinking" during the religious rights and Bush reign over policy has been nearly forgotten. But thank the stars or God, we're back baby!
Can we just put these ridiculous arguments to rest and realize that what is good for your neighbor is good for you too! Pray on it please!
PS to Eve re:
For many small business owners, health care system is "Sicko" I must say as a small business owner: I'm still living in fear!
