As a local family doctor and medical director of the Community Connections Free Clinic in Dodgeville, I have met too many in my community who have been shut out by our health care system. There's a 57-year-old farmer with an arthritic hip and high blood pressure who lost his medical assistance. There's a 25-year-old obese diabetic who needs insulin to survive, but he's no longer under his parents' plan and now can't find affordable insurance. A woman, age 46, with emphysema who can't afford health care despite working three part-time jobs.
Our health care system doesn't want to help these people. It costs too much money. Wisconsin is the only state in the country that has no limits on preexisting conditions, allowing insurance companies to deny health care to anyone they deem "too sick" to insure, regardless of when they were sick. There are people who have been denied care because of an illness they haven't had for decades. If the insurance company doesn't flat out deny care, it makes the policy prohibitively expensive. Our system is set up so that profit comes before care. Insurers want to insure the healthy for a profit, rather than insure the sick for a loss. To me, that sounds unfair, even immoral. Is the goal of our health care system to make millions of dollars, or is it to provide health care?
In my opinion, we should do a lot more than create transparency, implement electronic medical records, and enact tort reform, all of which will help some. We need to change the way we treat our sickest brothers and sisters. We need to reach out to those with diabetes, heart disease, arthritis and even obesity, tobacco abuse and alcoholism to establish treatment plans before their illness becomes catastrophic. Shutting the sick out of our system only increases the cost burden on everyone else, not to mention the fact that it neglects some of our neediest neighbors. Twenty percent of all Americans are responsible for 80 percent of all health care costs due to the burden created by chronic disease. It's these people we need to include, not exclude from our system.
So, when you vote this fall, make health care reform a major priority. Make sure your candidate's plan eliminates discrimination due to preexisting conditions, and is committed to bringing affordable health care to the sickest among us. We all deserve, and should demand, better.
Our health care system doesn't want to help these people. It costs too much money. Wisconsin is the only state in the country that has no limits on preexisting conditions, allowing insurance companies to deny health care to anyone they deem "too sick" to insure, regardless of when they were sick. There are people who have been denied care because of an illness they haven't had for decades. If the insurance company doesn't flat out deny care, it makes the policy prohibitively expensive. Our system is set up so that profit comes before care. Insurers want to insure the healthy for a profit, rather than insure the sick for a loss. To me, that sounds unfair, even immoral. Is the goal of our health care system to make millions of dollars, or is it to provide health care?
In my opinion, we should do a lot more than create transparency, implement electronic medical records, and enact tort reform, all of which will help some. We need to change the way we treat our sickest brothers and sisters. We need to reach out to those with diabetes, heart disease, arthritis and even obesity, tobacco abuse and alcoholism to establish treatment plans before their illness becomes catastrophic. Shutting the sick out of our system only increases the cost burden on everyone else, not to mention the fact that it neglects some of our neediest neighbors. Twenty percent of all Americans are responsible for 80 percent of all health care costs due to the burden created by chronic disease. It's these people we need to include, not exclude from our system.
So, when you vote this fall, make health care reform a major priority. Make sure your candidate's plan eliminates discrimination due to preexisting conditions, and is committed to bringing affordable health care to the sickest among us. We all deserve, and should demand, better.
