The lonely consumer

One of the trends which troubles me a little in the U.S. health care debate is the push to foist “choice” on us. Giving individuals “choice” seems to be the new panacea for health care, as if we didn’t already have some choices – here in the land of the “free market.” If only individual [...]

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Mom

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything about my mother, but it hasn’t been because nothing’s happening. I just don’t know what to say, or if I want to say it. That makes it sound kind of bad, but it isn’t; not really anyway.
The second sudden recovery came and went, but it was encouraging [...]

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Universal health care and democracy

From the book Sick, by Jonathan Cohn:
To its critics on the political right, universal health care is an imposition on liberty that weakens individual initiative. But this is the classic bait-and-switch of modern conservatism – to make us forget that in a democracy, the government is merely an expression of our will and resources as [...]

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Here I go again – lets talk about health care

Twice in two days! That’s how many times someone said (to me) some variation of: “don’t people who live in countries with universal health care have almost half of their pay taken in taxes, to pay for their health care?”
If this was just one person who said it twice, or even one person who was [...]

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Health insurance and mental health

One of the supposed hallmarks of the U.S. system of providing health care is choice. “Don’t let the socialist boogeyman come and force you to see a doctor trained in Guatemala!” You may not realize it, but that’s pretty funny (not the bit about Guatemala… the part about choice). Well, it doesn’t quite rise to [...]

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Acceding to my wife’s demands

First of all, I’d like to give myself a great big pat on the back for spelling “acceding” correctly on the first try. I have it on good authority that if there’s a gene responsible for good spelling, the Kauffman family doesn’t have it.
So what is this demand and why am I acceding to it? [...]

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Who are you calling a socialist?

It occurs to me that even private health insurance represents a kind of “socialized” medicine. If I may be so bold, I’d like to tell you what I think of private insurance: the bastard child of socialism and capitalism. The idea behind insurance is to pool resources with a larger group, so that individual members [...]

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Intellectual consistency

Who am I to call for consistency of thought? I can’t keep my mind on the straight and arrow for a day, let alone a lifetime of policy decisions. Still, I got a kick out of a line I read in an article this weekend (I can’t for the life of me remember which one). [...]

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Broken

Earlier this week my mother was hospitalized involuntarily under the provisions of a Florida Law known as the “Baker Act.” When the legal requirement for the hospital to hold her expired, and they determined that her benefits (through her health insurance) had been used up, she was shipped out to the first facility that would [...]

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What a difference a day makes

Today’s events will be a boon to bank accounts, but it’s unclear wether medical outcomes will benefit or suffer. Yesterday, phone interviews with assisted living facilities produced the conclusion that my mother needed more care than they could provide. Today, with the Baker Act placement ending and my mother’s insurance coverage exhausted, the hospital has [...]

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