John McCain, Preventive Healthcare, And A Little Reality

    At this point, I am only looking at one part of his healthcare view.

   McCain contends soaring health care costs are the result of treatment for chronic diseases, such as cancer, diabetes, lung problems and heart disease. He wants to provide incentives to improve preventive care and develop a national medical records network to enhance care of people with chronic diseases. "We need less use of hospitals and emergency rooms," McCain told the Register. "We need to pay for the medicine that is effective and reward better coordination of care."   USAToday

  I'm not sure what planet McCain is on, but it surely is not planet earth.

   I am one of his chronic disease carriers, having diabetes. This illness is an expensive disease to have to deal with, whether you take care of it or not. No matter what you do to keep diabetes under control, you are going to have problems with it now and then. Having dealt with this disease for some 36 years, I can tell McCain that preventive care is not going to help lower those healthcare cost that he is so concerned about. It may be a very small step in the right direction, but it doesn't come close.

   Think about it for a second, will you? What kind of preventive care can you take for cancer or diabetes? Cutting down or stopping your smoking helps reduce your chances of acquiring lung cancer, but what about the other types?

  I would submit that in order to bring down these costs and others, that medical insurance needs to be more affordable and that is not going to happen if the insurance providers get to continue to set the rates that you and I have to pay. You are screwed if you have a pre-existing condition to start with. I know from my own experiences, that you are not going to get any kind of decent coverage even if paying an outrageous $350 per month in premiums, or more.

  Just for the sake of argument though, let's look at the " preventive care " option. First off, I'll re-track my earlier words about preventive care not lowering over-all cost for healthcare. The problem with this approach, though, is that not all of us can afford the kinds of preventive care and/or early treatment that many of us may need.

  Example:

   20 years ago I had some of the best company paid health insurance that I have ever run across. My premiums were only something like $12 per week for myself, my wife, and one child. Living in a decent house which was cheap to rent, I could afford to make my treks to the doctors office every six months, have my eyes examined, and get my dental care taken care of for a very reasonable out-of- pocket expense. I was only making $9.25 an hour at work.

   Now lets move up to 2007. I was making $10. an hour with no company health insurance. I got my own insurance for $350 per month. I'm high risk so anything reasonable was out of the question. Diabetics hit that high risk area no matter how great of shape you are in. You are fucked! Throw in the rest of the cost of living money, and I still had no cash left over for those $70 doctor visits, before my $30 co-pay. Let's talk $1,500 before insurance would even begin coverage. Heck of a deductible isn't it?

   What about all of those people in this country with no insurance at all? Been there, done that. My diabetic expenses run at $400 per month. There is going to be at least one or two visits to the emergency room on a yearly basis because going to a doctor on a regular basis is out of the question. The last time that I did go see one, $40 for office visit,$140 for new insulin prescriptions, $46 for a simple blood test. $226 for an hour visit, all out of my own pocket.  That's just with a non-specialist! As if that isn't bad enough, try going to see a dentist. If you have no insurance and you need something done other than having a tooth pulled, you had better have some gold to sell or either some very good stocks to dump!

  Anyway. Preventive care is a great concept but it is useless if the average Joe cannot afford that preventive care. Affordability is the key here. If you don't want the tax-payers getting stuck with paying for my $3,500 emergency room visit, then make that " Preventive Care " affordable to myself and others.

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