Healthy Avondale News

Archive for the ‘Health Care’ Category

Health Care

A health care provider is an organization that provides facilities and health care personnel to deliver proper health care in a systematic way to any individual in need of health care services. A health care provider could be a government, the health care industry, a health care equipment company, an institution such as a hospital or medical laboratory. Health care professionals may include physicians, dentists, support staff, nurses, therapists, psychologists, pharmacists, chiropractors, and optometrists.

Emergency medicine is a speciality of medicine that focuses on the diagnosis and treatment of acute illnesses and injuries that require immediate medical attention. While not usually providing long-term or continuing care, emergency medicine physicians diagnose a wide array of pathology and undertake acute interventions to stabilize the patient. These professionals practice in hospital emergency departments, in the prehospital setting via emergency medical service and other locations where initial medical treatment of illness takes place. Just as clinicians operate by immediacy rules under large emergency systems, emergency practioniers aim to diagnose emergent conditions and stabilize the patient for definitive care.

The health-care industry incorporates several sectors that are dedicated to providing services and products dedicated to improving the health of individuals. According to market classifications of industry such as the Global Industry Classification Standard and the Industry Classification Benchmark the health-care industry includes health care equipment & services and pharmaceuticals, biotechnology & life sciences. The particular sectors associated with these groups are: biotechnology, diagnostic substances, drug delivery, drug manufacturers, hospitals, medical equipment and instruments, diagnostic laboratories, nursing homes, providers of health care plans and home health care.

House health care reform bill fails on crucial points

After months of deliberation, the House voted yesterday on its version of a health care reform bill. Titled the Affordable Health Care for America Act, H.R. 3962 is an expansive bill that contains significant changes and reforms to our health care system. I voted against the bill.

My vote against H.R. 3962 was not a rejection of health care reform; it was a rejection of a bill I believe fell short on some of the goals agreed upon by members of both parties and the president. In his address to a joint session of Congress, President Obama correctly stated that the number one problem our health care system faces is its unsustainable cost. We cannot expect to fully address our health care crisis unless we deal with the rising cost burdens on the federal government.

The House version of the health care bill would actually increase the federal government’s budgetary commitment to health care after 2019, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. As it stands, our spending on health care is set to expand exponentially, rising to approximately 30 percent of our entire budget within the next 30 years. By all accounts, this is unsustainable.

Extending health care to more kids

OneWorld Community Health Center is looking for 6,000 kids.

The agency that generally provides health care to the underserved has received 6,264 from the federal government to create a program to enroll thousands of children in either of two government insurance programs for low-income children.

Many metro-area children are eligible but aren’t enrolled because their families don’t know the programs exist or don’t know their kids could qualify, said Andrea Skolkin, chief executive officer of OneWorld. That means some of those children are going without health care or are getting far less than they could.

OneWorld’s goal is to enroll at least 6,000 children. The agency’s outreach effort has just begun.OneWorld will place staff members in day care centers, schools, after-school programs, churches, food pantries, organizations and other places.

“We want to be where people are versus making people come to us,” Skolkin said.

They will contact families at those sites and determine whether they have children who qualify but aren’t enrolled in Medicaid or the state’s Children’s Health Insurance Program.

The staff members will have laptops to take down information and scanners to scan in citizenship documents and proof of Nebraska residency. Children must be citizens to receive the health care benefits.

The agency also will take referrals. For information, call 502-8888.

Home health care helps seniors live independently for as long as possible, given the limits of their medical condition. It covers a wide range of services and can often delay the need for long-term nursing home care.

More specifically, home health care may include occupational and physical therapy, speech therapy, and even skilled nursing. It may involve helping the elderly with activities of daily living such as bathing, dressing, and eating. Or it may include assistance with cooking, cleaning, other housekeeping jobs, and monitoring one’s daily regimen of prescription and over-the-counter medications.

Do You Need to Obtain a College Health Care Plan?

Upon graduation from high school, there is no doubt that you will surely start your tertiary education in college or university. At age twenty, children will not be covered by health insurance of their parents and this can be disastrous if they are merely study and do not do part-time job. Some universities or colleges may have insurance plan offered to students. These insurance may not answer all your needs but you need to be meticulously considered it.

Most of the universities and colleges offer student health insurance plans. These plans should absolutely be at reasonable price, and can give you the school’s nearest hospitals. This option is one that you should definitely think of, if your son or daughter is enrolled in a college far away from home.

College health care scheme may vary from college to college due to laws and some other factors. Many students may think medical services are free of charge, but it is not always true. In term of clinic visit or routine checkups they may be free, however students still require to pay for special kinds of lab tests and other specialties such as x-rays, prescriptions, and a wound treatment. Compensation usually covers some types of service stated in the health care offered at college health centre. When you are referred to see an outside doctor, then the coverage will cover only 70% of your total expense and you are at risk to pay high medical cost.

Health Care Cuts Draw Criticism

A proposal by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer to cut 300,000 people from the health care plan for the poor will likely “increase the misery index,” a Prescott doctor said.

Dr. Joseph Goldberger, chief medical officer for the Yavapai Regional Medical Center and a rheumatologist with a private practice, said about 15 to 20 percent of the patients he sees at his rheumatology consulting practice are insured by the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, the Arizona equivalent of Medicaid. Already, AHCCCS fees to doctors have been frozen, he said.

“The untold story is patients with or without insurance continue to get the care,” Goldberger said. “They get the most expensive care of all: ER care. Everybody else ends up paying for that through higher premiums. It has a significant impact.”Many of his arthritis patients need “very expensive” medications and “without insurance, they can’t afford them at all. The bigger problem is the access to medications.”

While that may not be life threatening in all situations, it certainly increases pain levels for arthritis patients.

In some situations, such as with a lupus patient who has kidney disease and can’t get access to chemotherapy, it could be life threatening, he said.

Some Serious Healthcare Issues

There are several healthcare issues that the healthcare system is facing. Much can be contributed to the bias policy of the administration in taxes and the increase in the prices of medications.

Rising costs of healthcare systems

One of the serious health care issues is the rise in healthcare fees and the increase in the expenditure of visiting a good health care institute. In the recent years due to the taxation policy of the government and the increases in the prices of medications, the healthcare have gone under much pressure to increase the cost of medical facilities. This have severely effected the middle class citizen for whom getting adequate health care facilities are getting very difficult due to the high cost associated with those health care facilities. The rising cost therefore serves as a serious threat to the access of middle class people to healthcare services.

Lowered reimbursement tariff

The recompense that was being offered to the patience in most healthcare institutes has also been significantly lowered. This has met with great criticism from the public as getting proper tariff and ensuring an appropriate medical facility is getting very difficult for the average citizen The health care institution are also pressing the idea of reducing tax duties on medication and medical instrument so that the cost can be used for the betterment of the health care institution and to facilitate more patients and offer more healthcare benefits to the patients.

NOTE: Information in numbered items in bold below comes from Republican Party literature handed out at a health care rally in Nashville on August 13, 2009; the information following each numbered item is a response to the false non-documented propaganda contained in the Republican Party-endorsed handout.

1. We need to reform health care.  It costs too much.

Republicans under Bush did nothing to reform the health care industry.  There is no historical track record of Republican health care reform.  Thus, current proposals reek of partisan political charades and complete and total dishonesty.

2. Make health insurance portable so Americans can keep their coverage when they change jobs.

This does nothing to reduce dramatically rising health care costs, eliminate high deductibles and co-payments, help the uninsured or people with pre-existing conditions or, prevent insurers from refusing to cover the sickest among us.  And, this wasn’t proposed by Republicans prior to the 2008 campaign.

3. Provide tax credits to make health care more affordable and accessible.

In addition to solving none of the things noted previously, this was first proposed by John McCain while running for president.  Prior to that, there is no record of Republican tax credit proposals.  On the contrary, Republicans in Congress under Bush pushed to reduce federal funding, including opposing helping uninsured children.

Universal health care seems to be a hotly debated topic whenever health care reform in the United States is discussed.

Those who maintain that health is an individual responsibility do not want a system that requires them to contribute tax dollars to support fellow citizens who do not act responsibly in protecting or promoting their own health.

They argue that they want the freedom to choose their own physicians and treatments, and suggest that government cannot know what is best for them.  These people argue that preserving the current system with improvements to provide better insurance coverage for citizens who remain uninsured or under insured for their medical care needs is the only reform that is needed.

Those who believe health care is an individual right support a universal health care system with the argument that every citizen deserves to have access to the right care at the right time and that a government’s responsibility is to protect its citizens, sometimes even from themselves.

Two opposing arguments arising from two opposing ideologies.  Both are good arguments but neither can be the supporting argument for implementing or denying universal health care.  The matter must be resolved through an ethical framework.