"Privatized" healthcare system is leaving some children behind
posted by
Wally
1:07 PM
Bush and the Republicans are so fond of the phrase "No Child Left Behind" that you can hardly get through an interview or press release from one of them without hearing that mantra at least once. Yet, when it comes to health care, that phrase seems to be conspicuously absent from their vocabulary.
Just last week Bush was threatening to veto a children's health insurance bill because "it would be too expensive and would constitute a first step toward government-funded universal health coverage." He simply refuses to adequately fund public health initiatives for anyone, even children.
Now, according to a study published in the Aug. 8 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, even children who's parents pay for health insurance for them are often unable to get the vaccines they need to prevent many easily preventable childhood illnesses.Thanks to an increasingly complex coverage system, many U.S. kids who are privately insured are actually having more trouble getting recommended vaccines than kids who have no insurance at all, experts say.
"We need to be able to support the public sector safety net so these children have some place to go, because right now, they have nowhere to go," said lead researcher Dr. Grace M. Lee, assistant professor of ambulatory care and prevention and pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, Children's Hospital Boston and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care.
Children with private health insurance often have plans that don't cover all the recommended vaccines, or the vaccine may be covered but not its administration.
In 2000, an estimated 14 percent of children aged 0 to 17 were underinsured in the United States, according to background information in the study. These children may be referred to public health clinics, but now, it seems, those clinics are no longer able to provide the needed vaccines. If your insurance won't even pay to have your kid immunized to help prevent them from getting sick, do you think they'll be willing to pay for needed (but expensive) treatments when they do?
I personally spend over $8,000 a year on insurance for myself and my wife (medical, dental, pharmaceutical), taken out of my paycheck. And that is subsidized through work. And I don't have kids. And I have an HMO, so who knows if that will pay for the care I need when it comes time that I need it.
The Republicans talk about not wanting to raise taxes to pay for healthcare, and how expensive it would be. Guess what, I pay 800 a year for Medicare, on top of my own private insurance premiums. I can't believe that expanding Medicare to cover everyone would cost 10 times as much. Even if it did, the 8 grand taken out of my paycheck every year in taxes to pay for Medicare for everyone would be exactly as painful as the 8 grand I pay for my own private insurance. Except then I wouldn't have to pay deductibles or co-pays on top of it. Plus, I'd be supporting the medical care of the entire community of man, and not just selfishly taking care of myself.
Like Michael Moore so aptly demonstrates in his movie Sicko, our Privatized health care system is horribly broken. And even the insured children are being left behind.
No Child Left Behind
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