GO OBAMACARE! Or, as it's actually called, GO PATIENT PROTECTION AND AFFORDABLE CARE ACT! I still believe in you!
Well, stepping into the Austin Doubletree hotel for the Healthcare Conference was pretty intimidating. I had to skip Thursday and Friday classes to be there and while that was a disappointment, it was more than worth it. I’m in no way a healthcare buff and I’m just now breaking into the basics of Economics with my Principles class, but it was truly something. Especially Dr. Nancy Dickey – she’s the president of the Texas A&M Health Science Center and the vice chancellor for health affairs for The Texas A&M University System – and while I’m actually very against the creepiness that is A&M university, she was an amazing speaker.
Surrounded by well-dressed economists, teachers, chair people, CPPP people, healthcare professionals, Texas legislatures and the like, all their spoons tinkling in coffee cups and their lips all pursed in interest or boredom, I took notes over Dr. Dickey’s: “Who’s Got the Roadmap? Health Reform, TX Style.” I had my doubts about this as I’m not much of a “TX Style” person, but very quickly I became impressed. She stated the general September 23rd goals promised by Obama’s Healthcare as follows:
• Allow parents to keep children on insurance till age 26 (whoo-hoo!)
• Eliminate lifetime limits on coverage
• And, I can’t believe this hasn’t always been outright illegal, prohibit insurers from rescinding benefits if beneficiaries become ill
And I’m happy to report that these have been met. And this is a big step forward. Of course, my major question continues to be that we all already know TX is a shit-lined black hole of health care, but how are we supposed to fix any of it without first fixing the absolutely deplorable evil education system issues in TX? Of course, then a woman on the panel made the absolutely stunning comment that “We all know Texas has a great education system” … and that’s when I realized how much of this was already lost. Much of the wonderful and impressive proposals and hopes put forward at this conference intimidated me in their scope and filled me with hope for America’s future healthcare systems and reform – but it also depressed me to hear such a great denial of such a large problem in TX that could greatly help in the solution of these related issues. Healthcare is not an island-problem. It’s a problem interrelated with class conflicts, education issues, poverty, etc, etc, etc. Of course, it was reassuring to hear all the great murmurings at my table of “Great education system? WHAT education system?”
Anyhoo, another big problem facing us is the Craven Physician Paradox: where “the public” everyone kept referring to either absolutely listen to their physician instead of outside clinical expertise while still stand in their physician’s way as what spooks them out of prescribing anything themselves and referring said spooky patients to those same specialists … At some point, it has to be the physician’s responsibility to simply diagnose and treat their patients – if they won’t trust their own educations then why I am even making a pit stop in their offices to begin with?
There was a great listing over those two days of issues upon issues within America’s healthcare system, but, I’m pleased to report, I’ve rarely found so many hopeful people. We have the means to fix this staggering problem – we’re all just waiting on November at this point.
But why should anyone have to wait any longer for healthcare reform? When do we all finally say: now is the time? We’ve waited long enough.
Here's the Center for Public Policy Priorities (they're the Good Guys) website for more information over the conference:
http://cppp.org/events/event_details.php?eid=274
ciao for now neighborinos
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