During this week’s required readings, we focused on chapter 5 over health care in the United States. Although the book gave numbers for the trends of health care within the last century, the chapter left me with more questions. After reading the chapter I researched a little more into what really is a HMO. The trusty Wikipedia helped me grasp it a little further when I realized that they were basically our insurance companies. More now than ever with Obama’s recent health care plan and the strain on social security and Medicare, the layers of issues that are involved in health care are almost too overwhelming for me to give my opinion on.
The first thing that caught my attention in the book was the brief information provided in the parentheses at the bottom of pg. 99 that shared that most HMOs are now for-profit organizations. The credit to this trend is found in the government’s exploitation of the United States citizen’s health. In the beginning of the 1970’s, Kaiser Permanente decided they wanted to switch from a non-profit to a for-profit organization. As seen in the documentary “Sicko” by Michael Moore, this is proposed to President Nixon who frowns on the whole idea of “these damn medical programs” until he learns that Kaiser Permanente’s new strategy to health care is providing less medical care to patients. The next day Nixon publically announces his new plan that is going to make sure that every American has the best health care. Two years later the Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973 was passed that basically made it possible for these newly proclaimed businesses to receive grants and loans and changed the certification process from a state job to a federal job. This act also introduced the duel choice provision which gave HMOs access to critical employee-based markets. In short, it gave HMOs the means to make more money and the freedom to spend it how they please because they no longer fell under the regulations of a nonprofit. I found another good video by Michael Moore from his show “The Awful Truth”. In this show entitled “Funeral at an HMO”, he attempts to persuade the HMO Humana into giving one of their members (customers?) a pancreas transplant that has been a result of his diabetes and essential for his survival. The video is amusing, as the two men go to the Humana corporate headquarters and hassle their Communications Representative, but the one simple and interesting point that Moore addresses is the annual salary of $4 million plus stock options that their Chairman received in 1997. That one statistic within the video really put HMOs into perspective for me. At the end of the video Humana changes their policy and allows for the man to have a pancreas transplant after all the negative publicity aired. This too struck me as interesting because is reassured the power of the average citizen to change a multi-billion dollar corporation by exposing its ruthless regulations. Especially for a HMO, a member’s trust in the company is vital.
This shift in health care over the last 50 years is very frightening to me. When it comes down to saving someone’s life or saving money for the HMO company, our system of health care should be immediately addressed. But because there is so much money to be made in medicine from the cost of medication the cost of procedures, it becomes hard to see the bigger picture, which is essentially the lives these companies sacrifice in order to make more profit.
The first thing that caught my attention in the book was the brief information provided in the parentheses at the bottom of pg. 99 that shared that most HMOs are now for-profit organizations. The credit to this trend is found in the government’s exploitation of the United States citizen’s health. In the beginning of the 1970’s, Kaiser Permanente decided they wanted to switch from a non-profit to a for-profit organization. As seen in the documentary “Sicko” by Michael Moore, this is proposed to President Nixon who frowns on the whole idea of “these damn medical programs” until he learns that Kaiser Permanente’s new strategy to health care is providing less medical care to patients. The next day Nixon publically announces his new plan that is going to make sure that every American has the best health care. Two years later the Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973 was passed that basically made it possible for these newly proclaimed businesses to receive grants and loans and changed the certification process from a state job to a federal job. This act also introduced the duel choice provision which gave HMOs access to critical employee-based markets. In short, it gave HMOs the means to make more money and the freedom to spend it how they please because they no longer fell under the regulations of a nonprofit. I found another good video by Michael Moore from his show “The Awful Truth”. In this show entitled “Funeral at an HMO”, he attempts to persuade the HMO Humana into giving one of their members (customers?) a pancreas transplant that has been a result of his diabetes and essential for his survival. The video is amusing, as the two men go to the Humana corporate headquarters and hassle their Communications Representative, but the one simple and interesting point that Moore addresses is the annual salary of $4 million plus stock options that their Chairman received in 1997. That one statistic within the video really put HMOs into perspective for me. At the end of the video Humana changes their policy and allows for the man to have a pancreas transplant after all the negative publicity aired. This too struck me as interesting because is reassured the power of the average citizen to change a multi-billion dollar corporation by exposing its ruthless regulations. Especially for a HMO, a member’s trust in the company is vital.
This shift in health care over the last 50 years is very frightening to me. When it comes down to saving someone’s life or saving money for the HMO company, our system of health care should be immediately addressed. But because there is so much money to be made in medicine from the cost of medication the cost of procedures, it becomes hard to see the bigger picture, which is essentially the lives these companies sacrifice in order to make more profit.
0 Comments to "Post 3 Health Care"