As a pharmacist here in Aroostook, I frequently see heartbreaking examples of people who can’t afford to pay for necessary health care. A farmer, worried about his raspy voice, did not seek health care because he had no health insurance. Finally, his wife went to work for Burrelle’s in order to get insurance. By the time he was diagnosed with throat cancer and started to get treatment, it was too late, and he died within four to six months. Another man without insurance, diagnosed with cancer, decided not to get treatment rather than risk leaving his family with the burden of debt. He, too, died within six months. A young woman disabled by schizophrenia was kicked off Medicaid under new restrictions imposed by the state of Maine. Her mother does not know how the family will pay for her medication, which can cost into the thousands of dollars a month for people with serious mental illnesses. Another fellow with a small-engines repair business works every day, but can’t afford the high costs of individual insurance and was dropped from Medicaid as a childless adult. He has serious health problems including diabetes and carotid arteries, and he has to go to Canada to buy medications he can afford.
With such widespread need for affordable health care for everyone, I don’t see how Maine can afford to cut Medicaid instead of expanding it as provided for in the Affordable Health Care act. Such an expansion would alleviate some of these problems. Instead of reforming the system to better provide health care that is more affordable, better quality and more efficient, Maine under this administration is taking whole groups of people off DHHS programs who have no other way to pay for health care. The patient with schizophrenia is young. With proper care now, many of these patients will recover enough to go to work and become taxpayers. Without treatment, they are far more likely to remain permanently disabled.
It’s the saddest thing to me that Maine is attacking health care to balance the budget and giving tax breaks to the richest 1 percent. At the same time, we are failing to improve our economy. For every dollar spent on Medicaid, the state gets two to three dollars back from the federal government. This money is spent right here in the state and creates jobs in the health care industry, long-term jobs with good benefits, clean jobs that don’t pollute the environment. Maine has the oldest population in the nation on average and is very close to having the largest number of retirees with only Florida having more by a small percent. Considering that, you can’t find a better job creator than the health care industry.
Ultimately, we need a universal, single-payer system to better compete globally. The Aroostook logging industry suffers in competition with Canada. Their workers can work for cheaper wages and still come out ahead because they have a universal single-payer system. Sixty percent of bankruptcies nationwide are caused by health care problems. Over 50 percent of personal bankruptcies are caused by health care costs. We need a single-payer system to compete globally.
According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, “The United States has the highest per capita health expenditures of any country in the OECD [Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development]. The U.S. spends 15.7 percent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on health care compared to 8.4 percent for the United Kingdom, 8.1 percent for Japan, 10.4 percent for Germany, and 10.1 percent for Canada. Yet all the other countries mentioned have a higher life expectancy at birth and lower infant mortality rate than the U.S.” ( http://suite101.com/article/universal-health-care-how-other-nations-compare-to-us-a289836).
All evidence I know of supports that universal health care makes people happier, healthier, less stressed and less prone to violence. If elected to the Maine House of Representatives, I will work for better health care for all because it is the right humanitarian thing to do and because it is the right thing to do for our economy.
Darrell Adams is a 2012 Democratic candidate for District 6 of the Maine State House of Representatives including Blaine, Bridgewater, Easton, Fort Fairfield, Mars Hill and Westfield.
Very well stated sir. If only people would listen to the facts instead of the trumpeting of right wing ideology blowing nonsense all the time, things would improve for the people of Maine.
Most Americans are opposed to government healthcare but are unaware that other countries provide numerous examples of how universal healthcare can be effectively achieved through the private sector. For those sorts of solutions to work, however, healthcare consumers need to be seen as more than chickens to be plucked for profit and that is what Obamacare seeks to begin to address. It isn’t government healthcare, it is government telling insurers and healthcare services providers to stop their self-dealing and become more efficient. It is also telling healthcare consumers to stop counting on others to pay for their healthcare costs, a notion conservatives loved until it became part of Obamacare. It is the closest the US is likely to come to universal healthcare.
There’s no reason government can’t provide government-paid-for health care: it’s done so in the military forever, for instance. But the Affordable Care Act is an over-long, confusing mess that will probably profit political donors more than patients: it needs to be repealed and its replacement, if any, carefully and openly developed.
Speak to someone from England who has what
this country is shoving at us and see how wonderful
it is. The stories of the people who can’t afford or don’t
have healthcare insurance are sad. How about the stories
of people who are extremely happy and satisfied that they
have healthcare insurance and work to have it. How about
stopping illegals from getting freebies at the hospitals and make
them pay for what supposedly a citizen can’t get free.
If this obamacare is so wonderful, why is it our illustrious politicians
who slammed this through aren’t included? Do you really think Pelosi
or Boener are going to stand in line at a hospital or at a doctor’s office?
Hey…it’s going to be just marvy for you…someone else is paying for it.
Obviously, this was written by one of the lobbyists for a Single Payer system. It is a fluid recitation of the arguments put forth for decades; many of which have never been seriously scrutinized by the Media or this politician.
Take this statement:
Infant mortality. Canadian babies are more likely to live than American babies. In the United States, infant mortality is 50.8 per 10,000 live births, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), That’s 23% higher than in Canada, where infant mortality is 41.4 per 1000 live births, according to the OECD.
The writer apparently is ignorant about the relationship between preterm births and infant mortality; and in turn ignorant about the factors behind pre-term births in developing countrie, their rapid rise, and the consequent rise in infant mortality.
Once he reads Born Too Soon: The Global Action Report on Preterm Birth and puts away his moronic partisan bashing; he will learn that when compared to Canada, the U.S. is a leading country in regard to pre-term births.
More pre-term births; a higher rate of infant mortality.
The world’s developed countries have seen their average rate of premature births double to 6 percent since 1995, despite efforts to reduce the phenomenon, according to a report released on Wednesday.
“Worldwide, 15 million of the 135 million babies born in 2010 were premature and 1.1 million died, according to the “Born Too Soon” report, which was compiled as part of the United Nations’ “Every Woman Every Child” initiative..
Japan is one of the lowest.
As far as I can see, there is no relationship to whether health care is socialized, but more on whether the country is developed or not.
….another reason to stay away from ‘inorganic foods’ and stuff from U. of Phoenix.
The ability of an advanced health care system to enable pre-term births and manage birth defects that would have resulted in abortions in other nations enables so many pre-terms to occur.
…the downside of ability to preserve life is a higher mortality rate.