Clinton: Woman of Unity

By: Hamilton Ryan

As the crowd cheered and the tears ran down the faces of the American people, a woman stepped forth out of great humility and strength to unify a party that has been broken since the primary season ended. That woman is Senator Hillary Clinton. On Wednesday, August 27, 2008 Senator Clinton stepped forth after months of agonizing pain and arguments to declare that she supports Senator Barack Obama as the next President of the United States. She asked for a vote by acclamation for Sen. Obama to be the nominee for President for the Democratic Party. Humility is not a simple quality to obtain, and today Senator Clinton showed the importance of that quality.

Notice that above I said “obtain” and not “have.” That is because I believe that humility is developed through the exercise of it. Just like a great swimmer, like Michael Phelps, we as human beings have to work at perfecting our abilities. Today, as I said above, Senator Clinton showed the importance of those abilities. I watched as an entire party united behind an effort to change the status quo of Washington D.C. We are working to end the disastrous policies of the Bush Administration. We are working to make this country what it has always been referred to, and that is “the last best hope.” Divided we cannot win, and the McCain campaign knows that. They will be attacking Senator Obama on a number of issues.

They will be going after the angered Clinton supporters, but as Hillary said last night in her speech, “I want you to ask yourselves: Were you in this campaign just for me? Or were you in it for that young Marine and others like him? Were you in it for that mom struggling with cancer while raising her kids? Were you in it for that boy and his mom surviving on the minimum wage? Were you in it for all the people in this country who feel invisible?” Hillary made history today. She, in her own light, became just as much a hero as any other candidate. She united the Democratic Party again! Now, even as an Obama supporter, I must say that Hillary touched my heart today, and last night.

I ask the Clinton supporters to unite with us, the Obama supporters, to make this country what it should be! We are the change! We gathered during the primary season behind the candidates that we liked, but we MUST NOT FORGET that we are AMERICANS first. “We the People” is our creed, the message that flows through the blood of every American citizen and unites us as One Nation. It is not We the Hillary Supporters, and not We the Obama Supporters. We need change, but change needs unity. Unity was found today, and we must stay united in our effort to not only make America a better place, but to make this world a better place. We cannot stand four more years of these disastrous policies, and McCain will continue them. He has voted identical to Bush 95 percent of the time. He will continue to use negative advertisements, and negative politics, which he promised not to use, to get across his point. We MUST stop this!

Website Used:

Transcript of Hillary Clinton’s Speech: http://www.newsday.com/news/local/politics/ny-usclin0827-speech,0,5104092.story?page=2

Answering an Anonymous Viewer's Concerns About Health Care

By: Hamilton Ryan

I recently received a comment on my latest blog filled with a lot of concerns about health care from an anonymous viewer. So let us jump straight into each concern and address each one. The first concern that the viewer had was long waits in the waiting rooms of hospitals. First of all let me start off by saying that, for the uninsured, there already is a long waiting list that could inevitably lead to death for that person. Also to state that there are not already long waiting lists is being completely unrealistic. For some Americans it takes months just to be able to see a specialist, or primary care physician. Waiting lists in other industrialized countries are virtually non-existent except for elective surgeries and procedures. “No country has a waiting list for emergency procedures, and virtually no country has waiting lists for primary care visits.”

The next concern that was stated in the response deals with the decreased amount of physicians due to a decrease quality of care. It is important for Americans to realize that quality of care depends on a number of different issues. These issues include systems design, provider competency and supply, funding, etc. Quality of care is in terrible condition with the current system that America has because of a lack of heath care access. “If patients can’t afford their medications, if patients wait until they are very sick until they go to the ER-quality decreases.” When one looks at it from this perspective the quality of care will actually increase under a universal health care system instead of decrease. “Any rational designer of a UHC (Universal Health Care) system would insure appropriate funding of the system and would also strive to strike the right balance between overutilization and underutilization of health care services so that waiting lists would be minimized.”

Thirdly, the anonymous viewer was worried about people not wanting to go to college long enough due to apathy toward the system. Actually, the truth is that countries that possess universal health care have had most of the major medical breakthroughs in research. It is also important to realize that many doctors may actually see their “autonomy” increased under a particular form of universal health care. Physician’s salaries would also stay the same. There is nothing in the universal health care agreement that says that a doctor’s salary will decrease. Doctor’s also do not benefit from the current system. Many Americans cannot afford current prescriptions as it is, and of course we all know that 47 million American citizens are uninsured. People are dying daily because we, the taxpayers, are supporting a war that should have never been authorized rather than universal health care.

As my “Understanding Politics” college textbook states, “Third, during the course of this war, the Bush administration switched enemies and changed the rationale for fighting. The real enemy was a secretive organization known as al Qaeda, rather than another state. To the extent that this enemy had a face, it was the face of Osama bin Laden. For all its military might, the United States was unable to defeat al Qaeda by invading Afghanistan and even failed to apprehend bin Laden himself, who remains at large some 4 years later as these words are written. Instead, the Bush administration shifted the focus of attention from Afghanistan and bin Laden to Iraq and Saddam-in other words, from an elusive enemy that could not be defeated militarily to one that could, or so the architects of the Iraq war believed. That belief has proven false, as was the evidence that Saddam harbored WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction), which had been the reason given for launching the war in the first place. As the fighting dragged on and the death toll mounted, the Bush administration changed the rationale for the war once again. Clearly the original rationale- to locate and destroy Saddam’s WMD labs and stockpiles-disappeared when no such weapons were discovered. The reason for ousting Saddam then became nation-building, to promote freedom and democracy in the world. Later, as the civil war raged, the reason was simply to stabilize the region because a hasty withdrawal would, it was argued, leave a dangerous power vacuum. What no one in Washington was saying, however, was what nearly everyone outside Washington was thinking all along: that the real reason for invading and occupying Iraq was oil, which is still the world’s most important strategic resource.”

These are the issues that one of my viewers brought up. I would like to thank the viewer for their concerns, and I feel that I have answered those quite adequately. I will give the site and book references that I used, as always, just below the article. I used the American Medical Student Association’s website for my pro-universal health care arguments. They are very pro-universal health care. I would encourage you to go to both sites that I list below to learn more, and answer any questions that you may have. I also, as stated in the paragraph above, used my Government and World Affairs college course textbook “Understanding Politics” for my “War on Terror” information.

Websites:

The Arguments for Universal Health Care by the American Medical Student Association (AMSA):

http://amsa.org/uhc/uhc_counterarguments.pdf

American Medical Student Association for Universal Health Care Site:

http://amsa.org/uhc/uhcres.cfm

Books:

“Understanding Politics: Ideas, Institutions, and Issues” Eighth Edition

By: Thomas M. Magstadt

(I used pg. 567 paragraphs 2 and 3)

Health Care: The Issue That Needs A Cure

By: Hamilton Ryan August 3, 2008


Stop! Take a minute to think about what it would be like to not have health insurance. Are you thinking? Imagine that you have a loved one who has recently become very ill. The symptoms are as follows: shaking chills, shortness of breath, chest pain, headaches/muscle aches, oh and a fever that ranges up to 102. Obviously there is some urgency in getting this loved one to a doctor. Now imagine not having insurance in this situation, and imagine that you are a struggling family living in a nation that has a struggling economy (shouldn’t be too hard to imagine that). You now have two options: take the loved one any way and risk sinking into debt if you can even pay the bill at all, or don’t take the loved one and see what time does for the situation. By the way, the symptoms are those that represent Pneumonia, which means that if you let it just sit unattended there is a high chance of death.

Scared yet? How about sick? Now that you have thought through this scenario and realize the serious dangers of not having health insurance I feel that it is my duty to tell you, the reader, that you live in a nation where 47 million American people, which includes 9 million children, live without health insurance. Eighty percent of these people live in working families. The number of uninsured is very likely to increase over the next few years due to the struggling economy, and high gas prices. There needs to be serious action taken to get these citizens insurance. The action that I am speaking of is universal health care.

There are a lot of arguments that are out there about this process. Let me go through just a few and give you my opinion. The number one argument that I hear is that the money that it takes to fund universal health care comes directly out of the American taxpayer’s pocket. My question for the taxpayer is this, “Would you rather your tax dollars that come out of your pocket go to a war that we are constantly taking lives in, or would you rather your money go toward fighting the war against death, disease, and illness here at home?” You can either have your money go toward death and destruction, or you could let it go toward life, and the preservation there of. According to homepagedaily.com, “The Iraq War has so far cost U.S. taxpayers $526 billion in direct costs and about $1.3 trillion to the economy.” Imagine what that amount of money could do for health care in the United States. Being an Obama supporter I decided to take a look at his plan.

Obama has a three part plan for health care in America. “(1) Providing affordable, comprehensive and portable health coverage for every American; (2) Modernizing the U.S. health care system to contain spiraling health care costs and improve the quality of patient care; and (3) Promoting prevention and strengthening public health, to prevent disease and protect against natural and man-made disasters.” In fact, under the Obama plan the typical family will save up to $2,500 a year. They will do this through:


• Health IT investment, which will reduce unnecessary spending in the system that results from preventable errors and inefficient paper billing systems;


• Improving prevention and management of chronic conditions;


• Increasing insurance industry competition and reducing underwriting costs and profits, which will reduce insurance overhead;


• Providing reinsurance for catastrophic coverage, which will reduce insurance premiums; and


• Making health insurance universal, which will reduce spending on uncompensated care.


The plan will also insure every American citizen. How? Well first of all it is important to realize that this plan will build upon and improve our current health insurance system. It will also leave Medicare intact for older and disabled American citizens. Americans can keep their current coverage if they choose to do so, and they will see their health care improve, and their costs go down. “Specifically, the Obama plan will: (1) establish a new public insurance program, available to Americans who neither qualify for Medicaid or SCHIP nor have access to insurance through their employers, as well as to small businesses that want to offer insurance to their employees; (2) create a National Health Insurance Exchange to help Americans and businesses that want to purchase private health insurance directly; (3) require all employers to contribute towards health coverage for their employees or towards the cost of the public plan ; (4) mandate all children have health care coverage; (5) expand eligibility for the Medicaid and SCHIP programs; and (6) allow flexibility for state health reform plans.”

This leads me to my next argument against universal health care. Many people feel that the quality of care will decrease, and that doctors will be less motivated to work. For my answer I turn to the countries that have universal health care already. First, let us look at the current ranking of the United States health care with other countries.


• The United States rank 23rd in the world in infant mortality, which is down from 12th in 1960, and 21st in 1990.


• The United States rank 20th in life expectancy for women, which is down from 1st in 1945 and 13th in 1960.


• The United States rank 21st in life expectancy for men, which is down from 1st in 1945 and 17th in 1960.


• The United States rank between 50th and 100th in immunizations depending on the immunization. Overall, however, the USA is 67th, which is directly behind Botswana.


The truth is, that for some nations there are problems with the universal health care system, but there are always problems with every system. The United Kingdom currently looks as though it has a health care crisis on its hands. Britain “ranks 17th out of 29 European countries on a range of healthcare benchmarks, including quality of service, length of wait times, and patient information.” The fact is, however, that the United States has lengthy waits and sometimes low quality of service itself. It wasn’t but a few weeks ago that Brooklyn, New York had a woman die in a psychiatric emergency room, and no one noticed until it was too late. “For 20 minutes, she writhed and twisted between two chairs under the watchful eye of a security camera whose footage would later be broadcast across the country, spurring a public outcry. Two security guards and two other staff members passed through the room and glanced at the 49-year-old woman, without bothering to check her vital signs or help her up. The sight of patients like Green, wearing a urine-stained hospital gown and lying face down on the floor, was hardly uncommon in the psychiatric emergency room of Kings County Hospital Center. Neither was the fact that by the time she collapsed, she had been waiting almost 24 hours for a bed. At that moment Green was in line with 32 other patients, some of whom had been waiting just as long, if not longer.”

Another story is told like this, “A woman who lay bleeding on the emergency room floor of a troubled inner-city hospital died after 911 dispatchers refused to contact paramedics or an ambulance to take her to another facility, newly released tapes of the emergency calls reveal. Edith Isabel Rodriguez, 43, died of a perforated bowel on May 9 at Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital. Her death was ruled accidental by the Los Angeles County coroner’s office. Relatives said Rodriguez was bleeding from the mouth and writhing in pain for 45 minutes while she was at a hospital waiting area. Experts have said she could have survived had she been treated early enough.” Does that sound like a good health care system?

That being asked, the United States of America faces a serious threat today if we cannot solve our health care crisis. Senator Obama has made the statement that we live in a time when it is more risky for us not to change, and he is right.


The rest of Obama’s plan includes:


Guaranteed eligibility. No American will be turned away FROM ANY INSURANCE PLAN because of illness or pre-existing conditions.

Comprehensive benefits. The benefit package will be similar to that offered through the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP), the program through which Members of Congress get their own health care. The new public plan will include coverage of all essential medical services, including preventive, maternity and mental health care. Coverage will include disease management programs, self management training and care coordination for appropriate individuals.


Affordable premiums, co-pays and deductibles. Participants will be charged fair premiums and minimal co-pays for deductibles for preventive services.


Subsidies. Individuals and families who do not qualify for Medicaid or SCHIP but still need assistance will receive income-related federal subsidies to keep health insurance premiums affordable. They can use the subsidy to buy into the new public plan or purchase a private health care plan.


Simplifying paperwork and reining in health costs. The plan will simplify paperwork for providers and will increase savings to the system overall.


Easy enrollment. The new public plan will be simple to enroll in and provide ready access to coverage.


Portability and choice. Participants in the new public plan and the National Health Insurance Exchange (see below) will be able to move from job to job without changing or jeopardizing their health care coverage.


Quality and efficiency. Participating hospitals and providers that participate in the new public plan will be required to collect and report data to ensure that standards for health care quality, health information technology and administration are being met.


In short, my fellow American citizens, we are living in a time that needs change. I realize that change is difficult, and that at times it can be scary, but, to me, it is scarier to think about a future where we, as a nation, continued using the same failed policies, and our children suffered for it. That is scary! The statistics that I gave earlier about universal health care show that the United States, using the same policies, dropped tremendously in quality care among other nations around the world. We cannot allow this to occur. We need a change. All of the information on Senator Obama’s Health Care Plan was provided by his site that lists his actual plan. I will provide the address below as always, and I will also provide the addresses for the rest of the information that I used. I would like to thank the individual who posted a question about health care on my site. I love to answer all of my readers’ questions to the best of my ability. It also helps to keep me on my toes. So thank you, whoever you are. I encourage everyone to read Senator Barack Obama’s health care plan. It is only about 15 pages, it is very in depth, and it is surely worth the time that it takes to read it.



Websites Used:

Obama’s Site:
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/healthcare/

Obama’s Health Care Plan (.pdf file):
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/pdf/HealthCareFullPlan.pdf

Pneumonia Symptoms:
http://www.medicinenet.com/pneumonia/article.htm#3whatare

More Improved Healthcare Facilites, UK:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/116993.php

Cost of Iraq War for U.S. Taxpayers:
http://www.homepagedaily.com/Pages/article4661-us-taxpayers-count-cost-of-iraq-war.aspx

Universal Health Care Info:
http://cthealth.server101.com/the_case_for_universal_health_care_in_the_united_states.htm

Los Angeles Woman Dies In Emergency Room:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19207050/

New York Woman Dies In Emergency Room:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/145870