Our Health Policy Matters

I have never been the biggest fan of the Affordable Care Act.  I believe that since the government is already paying over 70% of our nation’s health care bill and we’re paying another 12% out of pocket, this colossal effort to preserve the small share financed by privately-funded private insurance without bankrupting the nation may not have been worth the effort.  Medicare-for-all would have been a much better approach. But now that an emerging group of at-risk Democratic senators have joined the Republican chorus to delay the individual mandate , I want to offer an opposing view to theirs.  Obamacare has been compromised enough. Since it was enacted in 2010, Obamacare has undergone the following significant changes: The minimum medical loss ratio requirements were delayed in several states. The long-term care insurance program has been repealed. The prevention fund has been raided. The reductions in payments to providers have been put off. The mandatory Med

Exactly a half century ago, in October, 1963, President John F. Kennedy signed the Community Mental Health Centers Act into law.  It affected two very different classes of people - people with mental illness and people with developmental disabilities. In many ways, it was a civil rights act, promising to replace large, segregated institutions with integrated, community-based services. It made a huge difference for people with developmental disabilities.  But for people with mental illnesses, its promise is unfulfilled and the dream sometimes feels like it is dying. When President Kennedy signed the Mental Retardation Facilities and Community Mental Health Centers Construction Act on October 31st, he did so with optimism. The law specified that the new community mental health centers would offer four services – prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation or recovery – to people with mental illness.  And the result would be that all people, no matter what th

As Congress lurches today toward what at best will be another short-term “solution” to the debt ceiling and government shutdown debacle, there is a reason to believe that it will never effectively tackle entitlements.  What we need and what we want are two different things.  And this inept Congress – which in the eleventh hour of its most recent manufactured crisis is still posturing over Obamacare – has no idea how to balance the two.  Source: US House Website We need our entitlements – that’s why they exist.  But we also don’t want to pay for them. Take the Affordable Care Act – in the crosshairs of so many politicians – as an example.  Next to no one wants it all repealed.  Coverage for pre-existing conditions, a guarantee that insurance won’t be cancelled even after an illness hits, and tax credits to lower the cost of health insurance are all needed and immensely popular. But these things cost money.  When Congress passed the Affordable Care Act in 2010, it in

This is Mental Illness Awareness Week . But the sad tragedy of Miriam Carey is another reminder of how deeply unaware we are about mental illness in general and its relationship to violent behavior in particular. And how much we rely on myths to fill in the gaps in our knowledge. We all heard the news about Ms. Carey last week.  But we were not exactly informed by it.  Ms. Carey drove her car onto a White House driveway, hit some temporary fencing, backed up, and then pulled away . She was pursued toward the Capitol by law enforcement officers in what became a high-speed chase.  Ms. Carey was eventually cornered near Garfield Circle.  Six officers, with guns pulled, approached her car there.  She apparently panicked, scattering the officers as she drove away.  At least nine shots were fired at her as the chase began again.  She eventually got stuck on a median near a Capitol guard station, where she was shot to death by an officer. As I watched the unfolding news th

As we gaze this week at the wonderland we call Congress, it might amaze us that Congress actually shut down the federal government over the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Rep. John Culberson of Texas grinned like a Cheshire Cat as he explained it this way in an outlandish interview on CNN, “we do not want the federal government socializing health care as they have in England and in France.” This is socialized medicine?  Really? He wasn’t content to leave it there, adding a new “sacred” right to the Constitution to explain further his position. “The right to be left alone as Americans is probably our most important right.” As the Mad Hatter would say, “Why, you might just as well say that ‘I see what I eat is the same as I eat what I see.’”  But Representative Culberson was on a roll.  Literally.  This was two days after he was reported to have shouted “let’s roll!” as House Republicans concluded a caucus in which they re-affirmed their intent to