Health Care Reform | David Chan

What the Obama Health Care Plan Means To You

There’s a lot of information and mis-information swirling around the Obama Health Care Plan. You should really take some time to understand the components of the plan in order to decide whether the plan is of substantive value or not. As a small business owner in the technology business development sector, I believe we all owe it to ourselves to understand some important issues.

It’s true that our health care system has some serious problems. For example, when my elderly father was recently admitted to the hospital for 5 days, the cost was a whopping $64,000. How many uninsured or under-insured people could afford that? Or, my colleague who recently lost his job had to pay $2,000 a month just to cover his family of 4. How is that possible when the single wage earner is making ZERO income?

On the flip side of the coin, employers are struggling under the weight of the economic downturn. Is it possible that they can continue to subsidize the cost of health care insurance when they have increased over 110 percent?

THIS is why the Obama health care plan is so important. NOT necessarily because there is any one RIGHT answer … there never is. But, the reality of doing nothing means we move the burden of health care reform to our children and our children’s children. Why? Because there are so many families going into bankruptcy for example just because they can’t afford health care. And, still more are straining the system by just going to the emergency room and NOT practicing preventative care.

The Obama health care plan / reform is really focused on a few key issues. One of the main tenets of Mr. Obama’s plan is preventative care. For example, ensuring people get the right cancer screening and nutritional education. This is one of my hot buttons, in fact. Instead of treating the problem, let’s get right down to preventing it in the first place. I have yet to visit a doctor who gave me a plan for eating right, exercising more and to get regular screening, for example. It’s usually, “let’s see what’s wrong with you.”

The second important piece of President Obama’s plan is to increase spending in technology WHERE and WHEN it makes sense. For example, I believe that it’s absurd that medical records are not easily transferrable between doctors, let alone medical institutions. We live in the 21st century. Technology, integration, data exchange and collaboration has never been easier. The Obama health care plan is to invest in these solutions so that the one doctor who sees you today will know what your doctor prescribed for you ten years ago or even as recent as last year. What an improvement that would be to ensuring nothing was missed!

Transparency related to quality and costs is of utmost importance. If we learned anything about debacle of the last couple of years on Wall Street, we learned that too many hidden agendas and costs are buried in order to protect the fraudulent and excesses. As I mentioned in the 2nd paragraph, $64,000 for a 5 day stay in the hospital. And, the food is terrible! No steaks here. Where does all this money go? How much does an X-ray really cost?

One of the components of the Obama health care plan that I really like is competition in the insurance area. There is a serious flaw in any system when a few companies make the bulk of the money. Sounds a lot like AT&T in the old days or Comcast today. Without competition, there is no way to ensure that the rates charged are competitive and worse, whether the quality of care is at its highest! Just think about the ramifications of that one statement. When was the last time you saw your premiums and deductibles go down, while waiting lines and quality of care have gone up?

This sure sounds like Enron all over again.

Whether you believe in the Obama health care plan or not, the solution is NOT inaction. The health care system here in America is broken. Until someone comes up with a better plan, we need to move in a direction that gets us some positive step forward.

Read more articles from David Chan.

Senator Ted Kennedy – On Leadership and Heath Care Reform

As a business development professional, I believe leadership is a fundamental quality required to succeed in this career. Senator Ted Kennedy demonstrated all of the qualities of leadership and then some, including vision, openness, and above, all, compassion. His tireless effort over four decades fighting for health care reform is a legacy that will transcend beyond his senate seat. I read with great interest the Newsweek article written by Mr. Kennedy himself The Cause of My Life, wherein he describes what has been his lifelong passion regarding universal health care.

Senator Ted Kennedy has had his share of sorrow and tragedy throughout his family’s legacy. I learned a tremendous amount about why health care reform was so important to him. In 1973 he learned firsthand how families had to make critical decisions about health care for their children because of their ability, or worse, inability to pay for medical care.

At that time, his 12 year old son, Teddy, had to have his right leg amputated because of an aggressive cancerous tumor. During the treatments to fight cancer, Mr. Kennedy met and interacted with other parents who were financially less fortunate than him to pay for aggressive, sometimes experimental cancer treatment.

That was a defining moment for Senator Ted Kennedy’s health care reform stand. He goes on to state that “That experience with Teddy made it clear to me, as never before, that health care must be affordable and available for every mother or father who hears a sick child cry in the night and worries about the deductibles and co pays if they go to the doctor.”

Mr. Kennedy talks about his son Patrick who had asthma serious enough to require hospitalization on numerous occasions. His daughter, Kara, was also diagnosed with lung cancer in 2002. Thankfully, because of quality health care and chemotherapy, she has survived that insidious scourge.

Here is a man who has the wealth of the Kennedy family to afford the best medical treatment for himself and his family. Why should he care about those who cannot? There are certainly other legislative policies that Mr. Kennedy could have taken up that would have been much easier to “win.” But, he chose this piece of legislation because he is a leader of the cause and plight of the common people.

No matter what side of the political fence any of us sit, the cause for health care reform, or more appropriately, universal health care is one that is consuming our country’s attention. Many have asked to rename Barack Obama’s health care reform after Mr. Kennedy. This is certainly a worthy idea as many of the tenets of President Obama’s plan come from Mr. Kennedy’s four decades of work in health care.

I just returned from visiting one of my UC Berkeley school mates. He is also terminally ill with cancer. Over the last couple of months I’ve learned how our broken health care system has tried to initially deny his hospital stay and then his desire to live out the rest of his short life at home. It has been proven time and time again that end of life patient care at home provides a better quality of life than in a hospital setting AND it saves money!

If Senator Ted Kennedy’s health care reform policies and lifelong work succeeds in the hands of the current administration, he will have achieved what countless presidents and politicians before him have failed to do … not just universal health care, but a platform for a more fair and just society. After all, isn’t that why our forefathers immigrated to America in the first place?