Letter to Obama from 4th Grade Teacher

[big brown horse]

She is still suffering complications of an enlarged heart and damaged lungs etc.

Yes she now has coverage through her father's company, but what about other folks out there who don't have that luxury?


That is who I worry about now. People who are in the same boat I was once in.

Yes we can work on other countries' children, and it makes us look so good. But when a hard working teacher (AMERICAN) with a sick child is constantly turned down over and over again WITH no hope (except to decieve the hospital into thinking I was from Mexico) (on paper, b/c I'm as blonde and as white as I can be!) to get her daughter's heart fixed...then something is seriously wrong.

Sorry I'm going off on a tangent...

 

[Blackbird]

Indeedy the government always has lots of ****ngs goin' on...

I think that one's perspective on welfare and universal healthcare and so forth depends quite a lot, like hugely, on whether you're feeling grumpy about high taxes and thinking mainly about lazy-ass able-bodied freeloaders who could perfectly well take care of all their problems on their own if they would just get off their tushies... or whether you are thinking mainly about the people who simply need a legitimate temporary tide-me-over or have problems going on that are not their fault (like genuine disability, or a very serious medical problem in selves or children) and just really canNOT be solved by hard work.

It also depends on which you think is worse, supporting some parasites on the system for the sake of all those who legitimately need help, or leaving those who legitimately need help in the lurch for the sake of making sure that nobody can be a freeloader.

Sort of a Rorschach (sp?) test, and not everyone is going to see things the same way, nor do I expect they ever will or even *should*.

It is worth everybody TRYING to see the legitimacy of the other side of the argument, though. Stretching is good exercise

Pat, personally in favor of making sure those in need are taken care of, even if the system is unable to fully filter out the freeloaders (though the system could be trying harder, IMO)

The question is really whether you think it's the governments job to take care of anybody.
You came into this world naked, you go out that way - what happens in between isn't the governments concern, it's yours.

For another view of this, I've been reading the Foxfire books lately, Most are familiar with these works, writings that would thrill any self-suffiency advocate with their honesty. One citation stuck in my head from just last night.

One of the interviewee's, and old woman was asked, "What do you think about the future."
Her response was that... "it will be bad day when we owe the government. When we are beholden to them, they will be able to take our lands and our rights and people wont be able to be free any more on their own land."

Some think that people need the government to take care of everyone, and we all should sacrifice what we have so that can happen. It's been a steady drumbeat since the turn of the 19th Century, and it starting to stick.

But I'm with the woman from the Foxfire book. Will we one day wake up and say, "O dang, we gave in too much. We cried for them to step in one too many times to solve our problems. Now we can't turn around, on land that was once ours, unless they tell us we can."

Some say we are, for all intents, already there.

Nothing I grew in my backyard, or raised on my land could have afforded the heart surgery my daughter had. What is your take on that?

Coming from his frame of mind.. I have a feeling you won't like his take on it..

 

[patandchickens]

The question is really whether you think it's the governments job to take care of anybody.
You came into this world naked, you go out that way - what happens in between isn't the governments concern, it's yours.

If a government is not intended to intervene in peoples' affairs in any way, not even to (on average) help people out, then I guess I am not seeing what a government *would* be for?

It is fair enough to believe that all levels of government, or even just some of them, should be abolished -- but then your problem is not with policies or politicians, it is with the entire system, and comments should probably be phrased as such.

And if you don't want government doing anything useful for people, I trust you are not driving on the highways that my taxes helped pay for; or not-getting-mugged-robbed-or-killed by miscreants that my tax dollars paid for people to put in jail or otherwise deter; and so forth and so on at great length.

I do not see how feeding starving children, for instance, is such a worse thing than anything else one might wish a government to do (supposing that one wishes there to be a government at all - and please observe that history does not reveal a splendid track record of things going well in places without government)

JMHO,

Pat

 

[davaroo]

Nothing I grew in my backyard, or raised on my land could have afforded the heart surgery my daughter had. What is your take on that?

What do I say? The same thing I always say. I say that the day you turned 18, you should have had one of two things happen:

1. Your medical withdrawals taken by the government from your earnings should be placed into a managed health care fund - not sent to government, mis-managed Medicare doles.
2. You should have placed an equal amount of money, each period you earned money, into the same account, made available to you as a self-employed worker.

Day after day, year after year, that money grows there at the normal 8-13%, which most any good managed investment earns.
You wont have access to it as some common passbook account... it is a growth fund, payable to you for medical costs only.
Knowing that, you will do your best to stay healthy, so as to get that money pile as large as you can.

Then when the need comes, the money will be there. As it stands today, you are banking on a promise from either an insurance company or the government.
The first is trying to pay as little as possible of their profit earnings on your money.
The other is trying to keep from paying out of a Medicare fund that currently cannot pay the many, many billions of dollars it has promised to pay for services already rendered.

The way to fix this problem is to stop doing the same things we have been doing.

- Health insurance companies profiteering with your money should be turned into non-profit fund management entities. That way they can insure, and not be tempted by greed.
- Our government? Well, they have sponsored health care for decades, now. How's that working out? Now you want them to get more of your money?

The thing social reformists always get {{ fuzzy }} on is this:

The 'wealth pie' doesn't have to be just one size, moved here and there and doled out under their control. The pie can grow, if we work it, and we can all get ever larger shares than we have now. This is what is called an upward economic spiral, as opposed to the seemingly more popular downward going one.

So privatize our health care money and get government out of it! Use it to invest it in American energy alternatives, eco-businesses, manufacturing, global agri-biz, etc., so it grows, based on hard goods - not on debt. In turn, our businesses will prosper, we will have jobs, we will get richer and we can keep paying in to our managed investment funds.

Then when the money is needed, it will be there and it will be YOUR money. It won't be money you have to try and get back from the Feds - if they still have it down the line.

 

[davaroo]

The question is really whether you think it's the governments job to take care of anybody.
You came into this world naked, you go out that way - what happens in between isn't the governments concern, it's yours.

If a government is not intended to intervene in peoples' affairs in any way, not even to (on average) help people out, then I guess I am not seeing what a government *would* be for?
Pat

Simple: it is governments highest purpose to make it possible for the citizen to prosper, stay out of debt and advance his/her own life. This also means the citizen has a duty to do his part, and put in to the system. This was the intent of this nations founding.

Think of a republic (which America is...) like a wagon wheel. The government is the hub, the states the spokes and the people the rim.
The hub supports the spokes and provides a stable place on which to turn. The spokes flex under stress and tie the hub and the rim together. The rim, where all the work of going forward is done, can then do just that .... move everything forward.
They all work together.

Where we have gotten skewed is this: we have bought into the notion that it is the governments job to to make life safe and comfy for us, to guarantee our outcomes. This is why we are always complaining that they never fulfill this notion of ours - because they cannot do it alone.

Their help given to us is one thing, our dependence on them handing it out is another entirely.

 

[DrakeMaiden]

Doesn't the "upward economic spiral" depend upon a growing population of working people . . . ? So how does that work if 1. unemployment numbers are rising and 2. the population is aging (the largest population segment is nearing retirement)?

 

[big brown horse]

Nothing I grew in my backyard, or raised on my land could have afforded the heart surgery my daughter had. What is your take on that?

What do I say? The same thing I always say. I say that the day you turned 18, you should have had one of two things happen:

1. Your medical withdrawals taken by the government from your earnings should be placed into a managed health care fund - not sent to government, mis-managed Medicare doles.
2. You should have placed an equal amount of money, each period you earned money, into the same account, made available to you as a self-employed worker.

Day after day, year after year, that money grows there at the normal 8-13%, which most any good managed investment earns.
You wont have access to it as some common passbook account... it is a growth fund, payable to you for medical costs only.
Knowing that, you will do your best to stay healthy, so as to get that money pile as large as you can.

Then when the need comes, the money will be there. As it stands today, you are banking on a promise from either an insurance company or the government.
The first is trying to pay as little as possible of their profit earnings on your money.
The other is trying to keep from paying out of a Medicare fund that currently cannot pay the many, many billions of dollars it has promised to pay for services already rendered.

The way to fix this problem is to stop doing the same things we have been doing.

- Health insurance companies profiteering with your money should be turned into non-profit fund management entities. That way they can insure, and not be tempted by greed.
- Our government? Well, they have sponsored health care for decades, now. How's that working out? Now you want them to get more of your money?

The thing social reformists always get {{ fuzzy }} on is this:

The 'wealth pie' doesn't have to be just one size, moved here and there and doled out under their control. The pie can grow, if we work it, and we can all get ever larger shares than we have now. This is what is called an upward economic spiral, as opposed to the seemingly more popular downward going one.

So privatize our health care money and get government out of it! Use it to invest it in American energy alternatives, eco-businesses, manufacturing, global agri-biz, etc., so it grows, based on hard goods - not on debt. In turn, our businesses will prosper, we will have jobs, we will get richer and we can keep paying in to our managed investment funds.

Then when the money is needed, it will be there and it will be YOUR money. It won't be money you have to try and get back from the Feds - if they still have it down the line.

This is the last thing I'm going to say.

I am a saver. I was taught by my parents to set aside money since the day I began work. AT Least 10% per paycheck. I had her at the age of 26. My nest egg was gone within the first 3 years of her life when I had absolutely no coverage at all for her.

Do you realize how expensive it is to have a chronically sick child without adequate insurance? Do you know how much it costs to say go to the doctor over and over again...how much it costs out of pocket to deal with 14 bouts of pneumonia...how much it costs out of pocket to get chest x rays, echo cardiograms and sonograms and such? Not to mention the medication, the breathing treatments etc etc. Also not to mention NOT getting paid when I had to miss so much work b/c she was too sick to go to school. Oh, I also forgot, there were a couple of cat scans done on her too.

The point is I am not the only person in America that had to suffer through this. My suffering is over (my daughter's isn't because of the lung damage caused by having to wait so long for her heart surgery) but there are 10s of 1000's of Americans out there who did the right thing but got screwed anyway.

Having money set aside isn't the only answer. I am the proof.

 

[DrakeMaiden]

I heard on BBC that the health care system we have now in the US is actually a larger contributor to bankruptcies here than the recent housing bubble. :/ It is interesting to hear them talk about us with a tone of pity in their voices.

 

[patandchickens]

David,

I don't have any issues with your first proposal (if I understand it correctly), that a universal-type health care fund be separate from the government but not for profit either. (Although, realistically, I am not quite seeing how that is going to really get managed much better than if it were governmental or private-business... but, <shrug>)

However, your second option:

2. You should have placed an equal amount of money, each period you earned money, into the same account, made available to you as a self-employed worker.

Day after day, year after year, that money grows there at the normal 8-13%, which most any good managed investment earns.
You wont have access to it as some common passbook account... it is a growth fund, payable to you for medical costs only.

I do not understand how you can be thinking this would in any way replace what's being discussed here (insurance, or gov't-sponsored basic healthcare benefits). What happens to people who are have major medical problems before they reach working age? What happens to people who are hit by a truck through no fault of their own the day after they get their first-ever job at age 16 and are rendered permanently quadriplegic? What happens to people dependant for *life* on medical services whose cost will far exceed whatever they could possibly ever earn, let alone *have* earned?

Self-insuring (which is essentially what your option 2 amounts to) only works if the bills are not going to be large in proportion to a person's income, and can be passed by if you get unlucky and haven't accumulated enough savings before an event occurs.

None of that would seem to apply to basic healthcare, IMO.

(e.t.a. - the whole *point* of health insurance, whether it's run as insurance per se or a gov't health care scheme funded by taxes, is that the healthier/luckier are subsidizing care for the less-healthy/less-lucky. There is no way it can be anything BUT that. The alternative is to say to people unfortunate enough to have serious problems that surpass their income/savings/earning-power, "oh well, tough luck, not my problem".

Really, in an IDEAL world, everyone would VOLUNTARILY make potentially-significant financial sacrifices to help out people in more straightened circumstances than themselves... but, <laughing hysterically at the thought that anyone could ever imagine it to actually happen on a widespread regular basis>

Pat

 

[davaroo]

Keep in mind folks, I'm suggesting how it might be. Maybe Im just dreaming, perhaps nothing we do will work.

I am very sorry for your daughter and for you. I know you are not the only person that had this happen. And it was very, very disheartening. I appreciate your sharing this emotional tale with us, it really does help to clarify things, at least for me.

I'm also wondering why you had no insurance at all. What was happening that, with all the money you had saved, you couldn't have even basic insurance for a child?

My point is that one of the things that will kill any systems' effectiveness is if we expect it to do all things, for all of us, all of the time.

What we have now, and going into the future, is a system that is already in arrears. It can only depend on all of us to put more and more in. As Pat suggests, we will all become benefactors to one another. Then, we will entrust it to dole out what is available. Since it is limited to what has been put in and not spent elsewhere, some will receive help - while others may not get any. Who will that be? And how will it feel when we put so much into it, to be told that there are curtailing limits?

There is only so much money to go around with any tax based system. I'm not a health care economist, but I only know that unless you make things grow, they cannot provide more than you put in. At some point in time we will have to accept that we MUST shoulder some of the burden for our own care.

Again, I'm very sorry to hear of your plight. I appreciate your being brave and sharing it.