Here I must apologize for falling behind reporting on the meetings we have with folks pushing various points of view. It was one of the reasons I started this blog, but pulling my notes, video and all together to fairly summarize such meetings is very time-consuming. Yesterday, I had two very interesting such meetings — one with Jay Moskowitz, president of Health Sciences South Carolina in Columbia, who is an example of the kind of classy talent our governor would prefer that we NOT attract; another with some guys from the Air Force on a host of issues from the strategic to the logistical (so wide-ranging that I can’t summarize it just in passing). Unfortunately, yesterday was so busy I didn’t get to digesting those, and probably won’t today or tomorrow.
But I will keep the backlog from stacking up any higher by telling you about a meeting we had today:
Thornton Kirby — pictured above — president and CEO of the S.C. Hospital Association, came in to talk to us about two issues:
- The hospitals’ initiative on health care quality and safety, and
- The plan the association is helping to back to cover the uninsured in our state.
For the sake of brevity, I’ll just give you these two video clips below, roughly covering those two subjects, and give you the two links above.
I do have some views on the matters discussed — such as my own personal view (not to be confused with the editorial board’s position, certain people would prefer for me to make absolutely clear, as if the disclaimer at the top of my main page weren’t enough) that the bigger problem in this country isn’t the one-in-seven uninsured, but the vast majority who increasingly have trouble affording the privilege of being insured.
But in Mr. Kirby’s behalf, I will cede his excellent point that my sort of comprehensive solutions can only be implemented nationally, leaving the states to do what little they can. (Which is why I was happy to see what Joel Lourie has been trying to do, just to mention something I meant to say earlier.)
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Did he have anything to say about the 1 in 3 who just don’t pay? That’s what physicians I know say is a problem larger than the uninsured. … In fairness, though, non-payment may be more of a problem here in Myrtle Beach, where tourists go to the hospital while on vacation, then go home and refuse to pay.
If the hospitals think some form of government subsidized insurance will pay them for all the free care they are forced by law to give away now, they will be for it.
What they don’t want is the part of all socialist medical plans that soon follows – pay cuts and wage controls for doctors, nurses and administrators. No more of these $350,000 -a-year jobs for admin types.
—- Choosing to not buy medical insurance ——
* From 1993 to 2002 the number of uninsured people in households with annual incomes above $75,000 increased by 114 percent.
* The number of uninsured in households with annual incomes from $50,000 to $75,000 increased by 57 percent.
* By contrast, the number of uninsured people in households with incomes under $25,000 FELL by 17 percent.
* About three-quarters of the rise in the number of uninsured over the past four years has been among households earning more than $50,000 per year, and almost half of that has occurred among households earning more than $75,000 per year. In fact, almost one-third of the uninsured now live in households with annual incomes above $50,000 and one in five live in households earning more than $75,000 annually.
– Unisured by Choice. National Council for Policy Analysis, Oct 2003
Have any of you been to Charleston to see the ” Taj Mahal” also known as Roper/St. Francis ? What does a spiral staircase straight out of GONE WITH THE WIND and landscaping that rivals the ” hanging gardens of Babyalon ” have to do with health care?