Sooners should be backing health reform : Jeff Kaley
By: Health Insurance
Submitted: 2009-09-21 09:44:49 | Word Count: 882
We’ve entered fall cleanup season, so I’m thinning out the pile of sticky notes that serve as my memory, while wishing there was a local paper recycle station:
Let’s take a break from arguing over who has the best plan, relax the acrimony a little bit and consider this postulation: For all the good things the Sooner State has going for it, including some of the finest people on the planet, shouldn’t Oklahomans be at the forefront of supporting health care and health insurance reform?
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According to some figures compiled by Health Care for America Now and the Center for American Progress, in Oklahoma:
1. 646,363 residents were uninsured in 2007, including more than 113,700 children;
2. health insurance premiums for working families increased 62 percent from 2000 to 2007;
3. 50 people per day are losing their health care because of job layoffs, job cutbacks and business closings during this economic crisis;
4. the state economy loses between $1.72 billion and $3.34 billion annually due to lost productivity stemming from the uninsured; and,
5. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Oklahoma holds 45 percent of the health insurance market. When you add in CommunityCare, two entities control 71 percent of the state health insurance market.
Other surveys and demographic breakdowns put Oklahoma among the national leaders in percentage of population that: live below the poverty line; is over the age of 60; lack a college degree; have high-risk or physical labor jobs; sustain job-related injuries; use tobacco products; suffer from allergies and other respiratory problems; and have part-time jobs that offer no employer-paid health insurance coverage.
Although Oklahoma has some of the nation’s finest medical centers and several rural towns and cities have above-average health care facilities, some rural areas of our state have little or no immediate access to health care, due to a shortage of doctors.
Think what you will of the Obama plan or the other Democratic and Republican alternatives, if you’re a Sooner, you should at least be pushing for some kind of health care and health insurance reform.
• Do you think that outburst of angst from South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson generates from concern about illegal immigrants being covered by health care? Or could it have more to do with $460,000-plus Wilson’s received from health care industry PACs during his congressional career?
• “Anger is a killing thing: it kills the man who angers, for each rage leaves him less than he had been before — it takes something from him.” Louis L’Amour said it.
• To what can you attribute the fatigue you feel in the middle of the day? Some doctors say it’s not that you’re weary, you’re just reacting to a lack of water.
• Ratings for televised NASCAR races continue to drop, which isn’t a surprise. Regardless how much eye candy and analysis you give the sport, it’s still just cars going ’round in a circle, and it’s more fun to be at a race than watch it on TV.
• Surely I wasn’t the only young’un in the 1950s and ’60s whose interest in history was kindled by You Are There. That program hosted by the late Walter Cronkite was a great teaching tool, bringing history to life in a way no textbook could.
• “Anger begins with folly, and ends with repentance.” Pythagoras said it back in the 6th century B.C.
• Although the media brings down its moral hammer on athletes using steroids and other performance enhancers, several polls of the past two years show the average fan cares little or not at all. The Roman Caesars understood this characteristic of average fans.
• Didja know the word “democracy” never appears in the U.S. Constitution? That’s because the Founders feared democracy, which is unrestricted rule by the majority, and wanted to establish a republic. See, a republic can both protect the minority and limit government.
• “Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.” Another gem from Mr. Twain.
• Yeah, anger has been on my mind a lot in this sticky notes column. We gotta get beyond some of our national outrage and angst before we pop.
• Plastic surgeons have now come up with a way of taking fat from the buttocks and adding it to the breasts — i.e., women can now have some rear end removed and end up with a bigger front end. There are times I wish I didn’t work for a family newspaper, like when I have to pass up a great column topic like this.
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