Health Care Program in the United States - How it affects us ?!?!?

"I suffer no illusions that this will be an easy process. It will be hard. But I also know that nearly a century after Teddy Roosevelt first called for reform, the cost of our health care has weighed down our economy and the conscience of our nation long enough. So let there be no doubt: health care reform cannot wait, it must not wait, and it will not wait another year."

– President Barack Obama, February 24, 2009

Progress

• The President signed the Children’s Health Insurance Reauthorization Act on February 4, 2009, which provides quality health care to 11 million kids – 4 million who were previously uninsured.
• The President’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act protects health coverage for 7 million Americans who lose their jobs through a 65 percent COBRA subsidy to make coverage affordable.
• The Recovery Act also invests $19 billion in computerized medical records that will help to reduce costs and improve quality while ensuring patients’ privacy.
• The Recovery Act also provides:
  • $1 billion for prevention and wellness to improve America’s health and help to reduce health care costs;
  • $1.1 billion for research to give doctors tools to make the best treatment decisions for their patients by providing objective information on the relative benefits of treatments; and
  • $500 million for health workforce to help train the next generation of doctors and nurses.

Guiding Principles

President Obama is committed to working with Congress to pass comprehensive health reform in his first year in order to control rising health care costs, guarantee choice of doctor, and assure high-quality, affordable health care for all Americans.
Comprehensive health care reform can no longer wait. Rapidly escalating health care costs are crushing family, business, and government budgets. Employer-sponsored health insurance premiums have doubled in the last 9 years, a rate 3 times faster than cumulative wage increases. This forces families to sit around the kitchen table to make impossible choices between paying rent or paying health premiums. Given all that we spend on health care, American families should not be presented with that choice. The United States spent approximately $2.2 trillion on health care in 2007, or $7,421 per person – nearly twice the average of other developed nations. Americans spend more on health care than on housing or food. If rapid health cost growth persists, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that by 2025, one out of every four dollars in our national economy will be tied up in the health system. This growing burden will limit other investments and priorities that are needed to grow our economy. Rising health care costs also affect our economic competitiveness in the global economy, as American companies compete against companies in other countries that have dramatically lower health care costs.
The President has vowed that the health reform process will be different in his Administration – an open, inclusive, and transparent process where all ideas are encouraged and all parties work together to find a solution to the health care crisis. Working together with members of Congress, doctors and hospitals, businesses and unions, and other key health care stakeholders, the President is committed to making sure we finally enact comprehensive health care reform.
The Administration believes that comprehensive health reform should:

• Reduce long-term growth of health care costs for businesses and government
• Protect families from bankruptcy or debt because of health care costs
• Guarantee choice of doctors and health plans
• Invest in prevention and wellness
• Improve patient safety and quality of care
• Assure affordable, quality health coverage for all Americans
• Maintain coverage when you change or lose your job
• End barriers to coverage for people with pre-existing medical conditions

The above information just shows how this administration is not just sitting back, as so many people need to have affordable health care. But at the present time, there are situations that may not benefit from such health care, such as dental benefits. In a personal situation, what happens if all you have is Social Security and Medicare, as is the case of my mother, an elderly senior at the age of 79. Recently, she had to go to a dental surgeon to make plans to have 4 teeth pulled. the initial office visit was $200. The cost for getting 4 teeth pulled without insurance is outlined below in a treatment plan...

List of Procedures:

D7140     Extraction, erupted tooth #2     $240.00
D7140     Extraction, erupted tooth #3     $240.00
D7140     Extraction, erupted tooth #12   $240.00
D7140     Extraction, erupted tooth #19   $240.00
D9999     Infection control                       $  99.00
D9220     General anesthesia                   $295.00
D9221     Gen Anesthesia +15 min          $105.00

D9221     Gen Anesthesia +15 min          $105.00

                                                    ____________
                                 Cost                  $1,540.00
                 Initial Office Visit               $    200.00
                         Total Cost               $ 1,740.00

The above is the cost of my mothers dental work that will take place in 2 days. Mom only receives $983.00 a month in Social Security Benefits after prescription costs are taken off the top. So this equates to 2 months of my mom's income just to get teeth pulled. Medicare won't pay a penny. Now the question persists, DO WE ACTUALLY LIVE IN A FREE COUNTRY?


 

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Dr. Regina Benjamin is surgeon general choice

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Obama announced Monday his choice for surgeon general -- Dr. Regina Benjamin, a 52-year-old family practice doctor who has spent most of her career tending to the needs of poor patients in a Gulf Coast clinic in Alabama.

Dr. Regina Benjamin holds advanced degrees in medicine and business administration.

"When people couldn't pay, she didn't charge them," Obama said. "When the clinic wasn't making money, she didn't take a salary for herself."
He called Benjamin "a relentless promoter" of programs to fight preventable illness.
Benjamin cited the toll of preventable illness as the reason her family was not with her at the announcement: Her father died with diabetes and high blood pressure; her older brother and only sibling died at age 44 of an HIV-related illness; her mother died of lung cancer after taking up smoking as a girl; her mother's twin brother could not attend because he is at home "struggling for each breath" after a lifetime of smoking.
"I cannot change my family's past, but I can be a voice to improve our nation's health for the future," she said.
Watch for more on Benjamin »
Benjamin received a bachelor's degree in 1979 from Xavier University of Louisiana, attended Morehouse School of Medicine from 1980 to 1982, and received a doctor of medicine degree from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 1984.
She completed her residency in family practice at the Medical Center of Central Georgia in 1987.

Health Library

• MayoClinic.com: Health Library

Her medical training was paid for by a federal program, the National Health Service Corps, under which medical students promise to work in areas with few doctors in exchange for free tuition, one year of service for every year of paid tuition.
Benjamin founded the Bayou La Batre Rural Health Clinic in 1990 in the fishing village of Bayou La Batre, Alabama, and has served as its CEO since.
Like many of her patients, the clinic has suffered its own life-threatening challenges. It was heavily damaged by Hurricane Georges in 1998 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005. It also burned to the ground several years ago. But Benjamin rebuilt it after each setback and has continued to offer medical care to the village's 2,500 residents.
Her commitment to them has meant making house calls during the rebuilding, mortgaging her house and maxing out her credit cards, Obama said.
"Regina Benjamin has refused to give up; her patients have refused to give up," he said.
Many of her family practice patients are immigrants from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos who make up a third of Bayou La Batre's population, and many of them are uninsured.
Benjamin's expertise goes beyond medicine; she earned a master's in business administration in 1991 from Tulane University. But her focus has not been on making money for herself, she said.
"My priority has always been the needs of my patients," she said. "I decided to treat patients regardless of their ability to pay."
Benjamin said she has worked for years to scrape together the resources needed to keep the clinic doors open and found "it has not been an easy road. ... It should not be this hard for doctors and other health care providers to care for their patients."
She praised Obama "for putting health care reform at the top of your domestic agenda," and said she hopes, if confirmed by the Senate, "to be America's doctor, America's family physician."
"As we work toward a solution to this health care crisis, I promise to communicate directly to the American people, to help guide them through whatever changes come with health care reform. I want to make sure that no one falls through the cracks," she said.
A call to the clinic, where Benjamin was working last week, found it in full swing. "We are just packed in with patients right now, and I'm the only one at the front office," said a breathless woman who then hung up.
Benjamin has served as the associate dean for rural health at the University of South Alabama's College of Medicine and as president of the State of Alabama Medical Association, from 2002-2003.
She was the first African-American woman board member of the American Medical Association, and she just served a term as chairwoman of the group's Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs.
The position of surgeon general, whose effectiveness is largely in its use as a bully pulpit, requires Senate confirmation.

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Confirmation Hearings begin of Supreme Court Judge nominee Sonia Sotomayer

Today began the confirmation hearings of the U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayer. Actually, she may have a 90% for - 10% against -  chance of winning her nomination, but Sonia Sotomayer is determined to keep what she calls her judicial philosophy.

She says, " It is simple: fidelity to the law. The task of a judge is not to make law, it is to apply the law. And it is clear, I believe, that my record...reflects my rigorous commitment to interpreting statutes according to their terms and Congress's intent and hewing faithfully to precedents established by the Supreme Court and by my Circuit Court. In each case I have heard, I have applied the law to the facts at hand."
It is also interesting to note that the people that mostly criticized her in their opening statements were Republicans, and the ones to praise her for her actions as a circuit court judge were Democrats.

This will obviously be a big win for Barack Obama as he nominated her to become a Supreme court justice. She will be one of eight justices to serve with the Chief Justice of the United States, John G. Roberts Jr. who was elected to that office since September 29, 2005 by George W. Bush. The position as a judge in the Supreme court would mean a lifetime commitment to that position as the term length of a Supreme Court judge is life tenure. She will be one of eight members of the Court and they are officially Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, not "Associate Justices of the United States." In fact, the Chief Justice is the only member of the Court to whom the Constitution refers as a "Justice," and only in Article I. Article III of the Constitution refers to all members of the Supreme Court (and of other federal courts) simply as "Judges."It is interesting to note that the salary of a supreme court justice John G Roberts, Jr.is $217,400 per year.

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