Canadians on Canadian Health Care

Mike,

How about (aboot) posting the following link on your Viaticum blog:



These Canadian health care professionals giving a compelling explanation of the way it works up there and are encouraging us to head down the same road.

Barry

Blogging Invitational--Health Care Reform

Monthly Blog invitational. I will post your thoughts on this blog site related to this topic: the Health Care Reform debate.

I moved this post back to the top of the page to encourage you to take a side. Send me your thoughts by email. I will post them all here.

Send submissions to: mbroute66@charter.net Include your name if you want credit.

Monday, August 17, 2009

First Guest Blogger-- Barry Ritter who writes:
My view is that it is time that we mature, evolve or move forward in thinking our fellow man is worth having health-care. This idea that we become less by helping a person in need is at best bad behavior and at most turning ourselves into gulag Nazis is patently ridiculous. Can we not see that the attitude of the health insurance industry is to make huge unconscionable profits off the back of human suffering and death is certainly barbaric and needs to pass away?

My opinion is that it is time to grow up. Our young nation is woefully behind the world in health care and needs radical change. I voted for President Obama for this reason among others.

Barry Ritter
Comments welcome

Second Guest Blogger--Bill Gruhn

Great idea setting up a blog. Here's my comments.

It still puzzles me why people think we as a collective should provide things people have since primordial times provided for themselves. If you provide people with food and shelter, they don't necessarily become model citizens. Many never provide themselves with anything and their children run amok. Nature has been cruel long before capitalism entered the picture. If you provide healthcare, people will not save and the majority of people are able to provide some kind of insurance for themselves. People in China save 40% of their income because they have no safety net to speak of.

People admire the health plans of European designs but fail to realize that the benefits of welfare states distort the way business is done in those countries. Only large corporations can handle such an environment. America is unique in the number of small businesses it encourages. If you pile up obligations upon them, it will transform how business is done in America and it won't be America any longer.

I favor the conservative idea of restructuring insurance pools among the states and everybody having a health saving account for catastrophic illnesses. Insurance shouldn't be connected with work at all nor need the government be an insurance market. There needs to be a moderate and middle ground between collectivism and self reliance.

Bill Gruhn

From Simmie Berroya McMillan Today at 11:05am

[Personal note deleted]

I'm still not resolved on the issue at hand (health care reform). I can understand the fears of the people. I don't think we've had such a progressive president in such a long time that the people are feeling the rocking of the boat, and it's frightening them. On the other hand, change has been needed for a long time. So, we need these progressive moves if we are to further the cause of the brotherhood of man. The Ultra conservatives want to continue dualistic practices to further their own agenda of the haves vs. the have-nots, the Jews vs. the Arabs, the Christians vs. the non christian, and so on and so forth.

Maybe the answer lies not so much in government intervention, as it does in the health care providers (doctors, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies) willingness to forgo the bottom line enough to show compassion and mercy towards those who have no means to pay for their services. Of course, this would piss off the insurance companies, who I suspect are the real culprits in this matter. Should then, however, the government further regulate the insurance companies? Probably not. I'm sure there are already some regulations in place to protect the consumer. With the consumer already up in arms about the situation, they wouldn't like that either.

Has the government (with Obama at the helm) awakened a sleeping giant here? By the time it's all over, maybe Obama will be sorry he ever brought it to the table. It will be interesting to see who comes out on top.

Simmie
From Sim's World: http://simmcmillan.typepad.com/simsworld/


Not My Words, but...
John Mackey's Campaign Against Single-Payer
Boycott Whole Foods
By RUSSELL MOKHIBER in Counterpunch

John Mackey is a right wing libertarian.
He’s a union buster.
He believes that corporations should not be criminally prosecuted for their crimes.
He has just launched a campaign to defeat a single payer national health insurance system.
And he’s the CEO of Whole Foods.
Primo hangout of liberal Democratic yuppies.
read more: http://www.counterpunch.org/mokhiber08132009.html

'Christians' Could Care Less About 45 Million Without Health Care

From my blog roll Catholics for Obama: http://catholicsforobama.blogspot.com/2009/08/christians-could-care-less-about-45.html

Conservative Protestants say U.S. health care system 'is working'

WASHINGTON — Conservative Christian groups on Wednesday (Aug. 26) ramped up opposition to health care reform, saying the current system "has problems" but "it is working."

Members of the newly formed Freedom Federation, includes, among others, the American Family Association, the Church of God in Christ, Concerned Women for America, Family Research Council Action, Liberty University and the Traditional Values Coalition.

On abortion, Federation members said they are concerned that although the word "abortion" does not appear in the draft bills, it will be paid for by the government under the proposed reform....

I'm still not resolved on the issue at hand (health care reform).

Simmie Berroya McMillan
Today at 11:05am
[Personal note deleted]

I'm still not resolved on the issue at hand (health care reform). I can understand the fears of the people. I don't think we've had such a progressive president in such a long time that the people are feeling the rocking of the boat, and it's frightening them. On the other hand, change has been needed for a long time. So, we need these progressive moves if we are to further the cause of the brotherhood of man. The Ultra conservatives want to continue dualistic practices to further their own agenda of the haves vs. the have-nots, the Jews vs. the Arabs, the Christians vs. the non christian, and so on and so forth.

Maybe the answer lies not so much in government intervention, as it does in the health care providers (doctors, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies) willingness to forgo the bottom line enough to show compassion and mercy towards those who have no means to pay for their services. Of course, this would piss off the insurance companies, who I suspect are the real culprits in this matter. Should then, however, the government further regulate the insurance companies? Probably not. I'm sure there are already some regulations in place to protect the consumer. With the consumer already up in arms about the situation, they wouldn't like that either.

Has the government (with Obama at the helm) awakened a sleeping giant here? By the time it's all over, maybe Obama will be sorry he ever brought it to the table. It will be interesting to see who comes out on top.

Simmie
From Sim's World: http://simmcmillan.typepad.com/simsworld/

Socialized Medicine and All That Jazz

From My Friend Seraph (Miguel Rosada) at Seraph Sayshttp://seraph-says.blogspot.com/ :

Socialized Medicine and All That Jazz
Did you hear they are going to do away with private insurance? What are you going to do when they socialize medicine doc? Whatever will happen if they implement universal health care?

It seems I get these types of questions all the time now as the health care debate continues. I have been hesitant to answer not sure of the particulars of all the plans being thrown around....but upon further thought here it is; When there is health coverage for all ... I will hang my stethoscope and take a day off!

Many health care providers, in cooperation with medical societies, churches and other civic organizations throughout our nation volunteer their time and skills to care for people who fall into the category of uninsured. One such charitable venture is the Oasis clinic, founded by my wife, a concerned nurse. It began over 15 years ago, hosted by our local parish, served by wonderful volunteers throughout the years, a place where countless people who are needy and ill have been treated for free. While it is always a blessing to serve others in the name of Christ, this experience has been quite an eye opener!

The uninsured are not some sort of invisible plague, or a mythical class invoked by liberals in Congress, they are real people for whom the system has failed! Many that we treat in our little clinic work and pay taxes, but are unable to purchase insurance because of prohibitive cost! Even for those who are fortunate enough to work where insurance is offered, the choice is often between health are coverage and food or paying their utilities; no choice at all! Because of this lack of affordable access to even basic care, people often wait despite concerning symptoms, and come to clinic with advanced problems. Some wait until there is no choice but to seek help at a hospital Emergency Room.

Even as we commend all who volunteer, we must acknowledge that the care they are able to offer, though given with competence and caring, is not nearly enough to meet the many needs! While politicians, the rich , the lucky, the elderly and very poor complain about the coverage they do have, our unwillingness to extend that right to others stands out as a stain on our society. The status quo we have lived with keeps people at risk, abuses the good will of people of faith and enables inaction!!!

I am all for choice in health care! Choose your hospitals, have choice for your medications choose your doctor..choose me! However, as I see it, that is hardly the issue in our health care fiasco! The issue is that many have no choice at all; it can not get any worse for them! As far as doctors and others who take of their own time, talent and treasure to help the uninsured, it can only improve!

Maybe, when there is universal health care in our country, doctors can actually get paid for the countless hours of free work, that now goes unpaid and unnoticed! And ...just maybe when I am not working I will not have to give up a well deserved day off!!!Blessings Seraph
Posted by seraph at 11:08 AM

PolitiFact | Abortion and the health care reform bill

Rep. Lois Capps, D-Calif., introduced an amendment to the health care plan that seeks to prohibit public funds from paying for abortions. Abortion has emerged as the latest hot button issue in an already contentious health care reform debate. While some talk about trying to make the bill "abortion neutral," neutrality is often in the eye of the beholder. We decided to wade into the debate to check out the facts surrounding a couple of the more popular claims being made about the plan's effect on abortion.

Read more at the source. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2009/aug/07/abortion-and-health-care-reform-bill/
Posted using ShareThis

PolitiFact | Boehner says Democrats' health care plan would subsidize abortions

After checking with factcheck.org and sending the email to friends, I received the information from PolitiFact found in this post and the next one. Now what do you think?
PolitiFact Boehner says Democrats' health care plan would subsidize abortions

Boehner says Democrats' health care plan would subsidize abortions

In an already contentious health care debate, the last thing the Obama administration wants is a fight over abortion.

The word "abortion" was never mentioned in the initial health care plans released by the House and Senate. The decision of whether to offer abortion coverage in the proposed public plan, then, would be left up to the health and human services secretary. Abortion opponents said that would allow Democrats to slip abortion into the plan as part of the standard coverage.

Posted using ShareThis

Abortion and Healthcare Reform by factcheck.org

http://www.factcheck.org/2009/08/abortion-which-side-is-fabricating/

I received this analysis by email from a friend. What do you think?

Despite what Obama said, the House bill would allow abortions to be covered by a federal plan and by federally subsidized private plans.
August 21, 2009
Updated: August 25, 2009

Summary
Will health care legislation mean "government funding of abortion"? President Obama said Wednesday that’s "not true" and among several "fabrications" being spread by "people who are bearing false witness." But abortion foes say it’s the president who’s making a false claim. "President Obama today brazenly misrepresented the abortion-related component" of health care legislation, said Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee. So which side is right?

The truth is that bills now before Congress don’t require federal money to be used for supporting abortion coverage. So the president is right to that limited extent. But it’s equally true that House and Senate legislation would allow a new "public" insurance plan to cover abortions, despite language added to the House bill that technically forbids using public funds to pay for them. Obama has said in the past that "reproductive services" would be covered by his public plan, so it’s likely that any new federal insurance plan would cover abortion unless Congress expressly prohibits that. Low- and moderate-income persons who would choose the "public plan" would qualify for federal subsidies to purchase it. Private plans that cover abortion also could be purchased with the help of federal subsidies. Therefore, we judge that the president goes too far when he calls the statements that government would be funding abortions "fabrications."


Shared via AddThis

Calvinism and Health Care Reform

As a Catholic, I am to give a preferential option to the poor. I reaffirm this in my baptismal vows whenever I participate in a baptism during Mass. I was thinking that in other Christian practice and thought, the opposite is sometimes true. When looking for links between Calvinism and the poor, I came across a statement by Ron Beasley, "Calvinism was born in Europe, but took root in the United States." Here is his response to my email asking if he thought Calvinism had a direct effect on the health care reform debate:

"Hello MikeI think that many of the inequality issues, including health care, in this country are the result of the strong Calvinist history of this country. You have because you were chosen by God to have and you don't have because God sees you as unworthy. That's why a few rich and powerful Oligarchs are able to control policy in this country and that includes health care. That is also what C-Street is all about except they carry it a bit further - if you were chosen you can do no wrong. This post doesn't directly speak of Calvinism but it does speak of about the Oligarchs who's power is the result of the Calvinist strain in America."

What do you think?

Other reading: Health care and poor relief in Protestant Europe, 1500-1700 By Dr. Andrew Cunningham, Ole Peter Grell

Whole Foods Boycott: 20,000 Facebook Members.

Mackey offers his two cents, buys boycott

August 19, 2009 in news with 3 CommentsTags: Economist, free market, market justice
Mr. Mackey gets more than he bargained for, and now one of several reasons why the boycott of Whole Foods will work:

From the Economist Magazine, August 18, 2009:
It is no good arguing that consumers are being unreasonable in boycotting the firm: Mr Mackey, who often celebrates the authority of the market as a mechanism for allowing people to vote with their money, knows as well as anyone that they are entitled to spend their hard-earned cash as they please. Customers are free to take their business elsewhere if they don’t like the views of the person running the firm, just as they might if they were disappointed that its Senegalese carrots were not organic.


Washington Post: Whole Foods Devotees Lash Out at CEO
August 19, 2009 in news with Leave a CommentTags: media coverage, washington post
From today’s Washington Post:
“A lot of people have been paying a premium for the Whole Foods brand for years,” said Mark Rosenthal, a playwright living in Massachusetts who founded the Boycott Whole Foods group a few days ago. It has nearly 14,000 members. “A lot of people are sad to look at this corporation and see that it is just like any other, if not worse.”
Read the rest at the Washington Posts’s website.

NPR Radio preparing segment on WF boycott
August 19, 2009 in action items, news with 2 CommentsTags: austin, npr
Austin, TX. Central Market North. 10am. Outdoor deck. NPR correspondent John Burnett will be there to measure the pulse of the group.
John Burnett: Correspondent, National Desk, Austin
Former Whole Foods Shoppers and supporters of the boycott should attend to express your disapointment with Whole Foods Market CEO and Founder, Mr. Mackey. Don’t forget to show your support for the boycott. If you have a Whole Foods bag, please consider using tape (removable is good), paint, or other material to deface the trademark, then bring with you. If you have Whole Foods receipts laying about the house, bring the most expensive one. (Also take a picture of it and send it to us. Please mark out personal information. We will post them publicly for you. )

Where to shop: nationwide alternatives to Whole Foods
August 18, 2009 in more info, where to shop with 6 CommentsTags: local, national, shopping
Shop at a farmers market:http://apps.ams.usda.gov/FarmersMarkets/
Join a CSA:http://www.localharvest.org/csa/
Find a food co-op near you:http://www.coopdirectory.org/directory.htm
Search for other organic food stores:http://www.organicstorelocator.com/

CNN: Whole Foods caught in health care flap
August 18, 2009 in news with Leave a Comment
From CNNMoney.com:
Whole Foods’ CEO John Mackey is known for his tendency to shoot from the hip.
This time, Mackey may have shot himself — and his company’s brand — in the foot by getting too personal on the very public issue of health care reform which has sparked calls to boycott the grocer.
“Certainly when our customers tell us they are unhappy to extent that they are boycotting our stores, we are concerned,” said Libba Letton, spokeswoman for Whole Foods. “We don’t want them to leave us.”
Read the rest at CNN.com.

Why we’re here.
August 18, 2009 in about us with 9 Comments
John Mackey, CEO and co-founder of Whole Foods wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on August 12, 2009 quoting Margaret Thatcher and suggesting that healthcare is a commodity that only the rich, like him, deserve.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052970204251404574342170072865070.html
Whole Foods has built its brand with the dollars of deceived progressives. Let them know your money will no longer go to support Whole Foods’ anti-union, anti-health insurance reform, right-wing activities.

For more information go to the Boycott Whole Foods website: http://wholeboycott.com/

How American Health Care Killed My Father

Another view of the current condition of American healthcare. Worth the read.

After the needless death of his father, the author, a business executive, began a personal exploration of a health-care industry that for years has delivered poor service and irregular quality at astonishingly high cost. It is a system, he argues, that is not worth preserving in anything like its current form. And the health-care reform now being contemplated will not fix it. Here’s a radical solution to an agonizing problem.
by David Goldhill
How American Health Care Killed My Father

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200909/health-care

Dave Lindorff: 10 Questions to Ask If You Find Yourself at an ObamaCare Town Hall Meeting

1. If Canada's single-payer system is so god-awful, why have repeated Conservative governments at the provincial and national level in Canada never touched it? Canada is a democracy. If Canadians don't like their health care system, why haven't they gotten rid of it in 35 years? Since the system there is run by the separate provinces, many of which are very politically conservative, why has not one province ever tried to get rid of single-payer?

To read questions 2-10:
Dave Lindorff: 10 Questions to Ask If You Find Yourself at an ObamaCare Town Hall Meeting

Shared via AddThis

"Rome teaches"

"Rome teaches"
Most of the world has lived five centuries since the 16th Century. Some professional anti-Catholics, however, have merely lived the 16th Century five times and are now heading into their sixth century of barren, clueless, pedantic disputations. In the course of this, they have managed to work themselves into a curious state wherein they carefully scrutinize the Catholic tradition for any loopholes they can find, while almost completely missing the forest for the trees. A great deal of this is due to the fact that they continually attribute to "Rome" ideas which are all over the place in the apostolic teaching, including in Churches that have not been in communion with Rome for a thousand years (for instance, the sinlessness of Mary and her Assumption (or Dormition as our Eastern brethren call it)). Working on the bizarre notion that the Catholic Church is a sort of spiritual totalitarian police state where that which is not forbidden is compulsory, all ideas found within that tradition are prefaced with the simple declarative state "Rome teaches", as though the entire Catholic faith consists of a series of bulletins issued by the Pope, which the faithful read, salute smartly, and march out in ranks and rows to proclaim. The notion that there could be broadly believed ideas which the faithful understand in varying ways, talk about, wonder over, and which Rome "teaches" only in the sense that she recognizes as part of the mind of the faithful for many long aeons.... none of that seems to be present to the ardent anti-Catholic. It's all a world of binary dogmas delivered by fiat from the Chair of Peter.

I like this post on Mark Shea's blog read more here: http://markshea.blogspot.com/2009/08/rome-teaches.html
What do you think?

From Little House

I take a momentary break from my re-posting to give you this, my effort at an article for the Roundtable. Feel free to tell me what you think.

This is now the second time in a year I have been asked to write the Roundtable piece: From Little House. Each time I think, what do I have to say? It is the people we share our lives with who have compelling stories and much to say to us mostly comfortable and affluent writers and readers of the Roundtable. Maybe next time I will pass the buck to someone who lives with us at Little House or who works with us with the Downtown Teens. But for now, I will tell a little of my story.

Pope Benedict recently issued a new encyclical entitled: "Caritas In Veritate" ("Love in Truth") Among other things, it brought to my mind two of the essential tenets of social justice: solidarity and subsidiarity. Please be careful of the knee jerk to the word subsidiarity and I will try to explain. I liberally borrow a favorite phrase from my friend, Miguel, who always says “I moved to Honduras to live and pray with the poor”. After a two year retreat of sorts learning to live simply in rural Maryland, I decided it was time for me to move back to the Midwest to live and work and pray with the poor. It is not enough for me to live in solidarity, but I, as I am closest to the situation, must contribute something to the lifting of the burdens others bear—susidiarity in so far as I am able and competent. Subsidiarity is an organizing principle that states that matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest, closest or least centralized competent authority. In other words, I cannot expect the government or some other distant entity to take care of what is directly in front of me if I have the means to do so. This does not mean that I don’t expect governments and other institutions to do their part. I mostly hope they don’t get in my way and that they help me with the resources to deal with the matter at hand. I already knew that with my privileged background and wealth of friends, I could never be poor in the economic sense. Because of the resources at my disposal, if I chose to live in solidarity with the poor, I was obligated to also work and pray practicing subsidiarity with the poor.

After a year of living in Saint Louis and working for the National Farmworker Ministry, I longed for something more concrete and closer to home. The farm workers, after all were in California, and Oregon and Washington and North Carolina. I was in Saint Louis.

When the opportunity arose, I jumped from the frying pan into the fire of housing opportunity and community organizing in my neighborhood. I began working with Pruitt-Igoe Development Corporation (PIDC) for the next eight years developing and maintaining low-income housing which is decent and affordable. During that time, we faced many challenges and tragedies from Goliath developers to the death of loved ones and friends. One of our triumphs in the face of these hardships was the formation of a neighborhood, youth, workforce training program. Resurrected from the ashes of the death of a young man in our neighborhood named Christian, arose the PIDC sponsored group calling themselves the Downtown Teens.

With the support of our friends and numerous benefactors the Downtown Teens is in its eighth year. During those eight years, we have demolished (I prefer to say disassembled), built, painted, plastered, landscaped, and cleaned to the tune of $153,000 in payroll for over 125 teens. We have seen our teens through high school, some in college and others in their first jobs. Our oldest “teen” is now 27 and has a house and family. Though the program has cost me much of my life savings to run, I am much richer for it. My love for each of our teens is like that for my own child. The heartaches and the pride are the same as well. I feel their pain to the extent I am able—solidarity, and try to do something about it—subsidiarity.

Another opportunity presented itself five years ago. Mary Ann McGivern was moving to New York and needed someone to takeover and to maintain Little House, a.k.a Ella Dickson house. Teka and I did not exactly leap at the chance, but after praying, we felt a mutual calling to continue the work of Little House. Throughout the past eight years, including these past five at Little House, Teka continues to ask me the question: “why do you want to be involved in low-income rental housing?” My answer is always the same in one form or another: “if not us, who?” The principles of solidarity and subsidiarity are in my face again. There are so many people out there who for various reasons do not qualify for other housing opportunities. But let’s face it, during any given month one or more of our residents can’t pay all or sometimes any of their rent. This can create hardship on us to pay the bills that come with owning and maintaining a very large and very old house. It also affords us the opportunity to continue to act in the best interest of the least of these—who are each much more heroic then ourselves. They face obstacles I have never faced--and they overcome.

So in light of the principles of solidarity and subsidiarity, who am I? The Samaritan, taking from my own pocket or do I look for an institution to solve the problem? Do I do to the least of these or do I seek a government agency to do something? I must do both. Relieve the immediate problem to the extent I am able and work for systemic change to counteract the causes of suffering. But who am I preaching to but the choir? Their stories and yours, their faith and yours, their lives and yours are truly inspirational and inextricably linked to one another and to me—but thanks for listening to me anyway. Pray with and for me as I live and work and pray with the poor-who I found out is really me.