Do people dislike HCR, or dislike each other?

One of the weirdest sentences I’ve ever heard was the late Sen. Ted Kennedy saying his biggest regret was not accepting universal health care when then-President Richard Nixon offered it. Wait — what? Richard Nixon — the Republican president — he proposed universal health care? And Kennedy rejected the offer? I just about crashed my car when I heard that on the radio.

It was also refreshing — it illustrated that health care reform isn’t as partisan as we think it is, as a beloved Republican president (aside from that whole Watergate thing) publicly and firmly declared his desire for a comprehensive health care system in the United States. This memory was triggered while reading online about how Obama is a nazi because of health care reform.

Would Republicans of the 1970s be calling Nixon a nazi? Of course not — the president is on your side. The Democrats? Who knows — they were busy killing the bill, which many say was more comprehensive that Obama’s health care bill. I don’t know a lot about the proposal or the Republican response to it, and perhaps there was so much other crap going on with Nixon in February 1974 that his health care proposal was the least of anyone’s worries.

What I liked most about Nixon’s proposal was that he outlined how expensive hospital costs were: $100 for one night at a hospital, $1,000 to deliver a baby, $20,000 for chemotherapy treatment. People know numbers, and they make an impact. I decided to see how they compared to today’s numbers: $2,129 for one night at the hospital, $9,000 — $25,000 to deliver a baby, $20,000 — $100,000 for chemotherapy treatment.

Looking at the consumer price index for 1974 versus 2010 and calculating for inflation, $100 (price of a night in the hospital) in 1974 is the same as $439.64 in 2010. That’s about one-fifth of the actual price of a hospital stay for one night these days. A $1,000 delivery? Worth $4,396.37 today, so almost half of what a complication-free vaginal delivery costs today. You get the picture — health costs have skyrocketed since 1974, and it’s not just because of inflation.

So the things that Nixon pointed out as outrageous prices are not just still outrageous, but remarkably more outrageous. A hospital stay is five times what it was in 1974; hell, the median per day cost in 2004 was $1,800, so it’s still significantly on the rise. If a Republican president could easily see that these costs were out of control before they got incredibly worse, what changed in the 35-year time gap?

Well, the political party in power changed. It just goes to show that health care really isn’t a political party problem, it’s a political party in power problem. Would the tea partiers exist if Bush had proposed health care reform? Something tells me they wouldn’t.

It’s like if you see someone you don’t like from work, and she is wearing aviators, and you think, “Oh, now I am never wearing aviators again.” It’s not the sunglasses that are the problem, it’s the animosity.

A good point from Nixon’s proposal? People need adequate health insurance to be productive members of society.

HCR in 3-D: the $11,837 that could lower abortion rates

Maybe with 3-D movies on the rise, the entire world will start thinking in more than two dimensions — because when it comes to health care reform and abortion, some people seem to forget that there is more than one way to lower the abortion rate. Like by providing affordable health care to low-income women.

Although pro-life Congresspeople — both Republican and Democrat — partly hinged their HCR votes on federal funding for abortions (Democrats like  Bart Stupak caused a raucus when they agreed to vote for the bill on the condition that President Obama sign an executive order banning funding for abortions), giving women access to affordable health care could make it more financially feasible to care for a baby.

According to a 2004 study of abortion patients, 73 percent of women said one of the reasons they chose abortion was because they couldn’t afford a baby. According to costhelper.com, prenatal care costs about $2,000 without insurance — doctors visits, ultrasounds, etc. For someone with insurance, this cost shrinks to about $200.

A complication-free vaginal delivery ranges from $9,000 to $17,000 if you don’t have health insurance. If you need to get a c-section, that price ranges becomes $14,000 to $25,000. That’s a year of college, a new car or a down payment on a house.

Average cost for someone who has private health insurance? A vaginal delivery is about $463 and a c-section is about $523. If a year of college only cost $463 instead of $17,000, do you think more people would go to college after graduating high school? I do. And these costs fluctuate, as patients with insurance could pay between $500 to $3,000 depending on how much coverage the plan offers. But I’d still take a new car for $3,000 instead of paying $17,000.

And this is just the mother’s costs — costhelper explains that the new baby gets a separate hospital bill, which is typically covered by insurance but can run from $1,500 to $4,000 without — assuming the baby is perfectly healthy and delivered to term. If the baby is premature and needs to spend time in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, then the cost skyrockets into the tens of thousands.

Considering that women with financial problems would tend to delay prenatal care or possibly not get any at all (or might even be food insecure and not able to properly nourish the fetus), the pregnancy becomes more high-risk and the changes for complications increase.

So, you have a woman who doesn’t have a lot of money, which inherently makes it difficult for her to not only take prenatal vitamins and visit doctors to get ultrasounds and for check-ups, but these financial obstacles could actually make her delivery cost more — perhaps more than $35,000 if she needs a c-section and her baby needs special attention in the NICU. Considering that c-sections are on the rise, especially because of malpractice concerns, this woman would need to plan for a c-section just in case.   

So, best case scenario, the cheapest the medical expenses will be for having a baby without any health insurance is $12,500. That is assuming that the delivery and baby’s medical bill are on the cheapest end of the spectrum, compared with someone who has insurance and would only pay $663 in the best case scenario. Considering an early abortion can range from $350 to $500, and a 16-week abortion ranges from $650 to $700, the price of having a baby with insurance is comparable to having an abortion; therefore, someone who couldn’t afford the extra $11,837 is probably more likely to consider pregnancy financially feasible.

Of course, finances aren’t the only thing that affect whether a woman gets an abortion — career, education, and relationship status (not to mention just sheer not wanting a baby) all are factors. But health care reform, which is currently only seen by pro-lifers as a vehicle for baby-killing, actually enhances coverage and prevents insurance companies from denying women coverage because, yes, they considered pregnancy a “pre-existing condition” and used loopholes to deny women coverage.  

So, instead of focusing on federal funding for abortions, pro-lifers should realize that federal funding for women to get affordable insurance they otherwise couldn’t get is actually good policy toward lowering the number of abortions. As the blog I cited above, Big Think, notes, abortion rates are lower than the U.S.’s in developed countries that have universal health care. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

Republicans need to jump off the victim-blaming train

Not only am I shocked that people are getting so violent about health care reform, but I’m shocked that some Republicans are trying so little to make their condemnations of the violence actually seem sincere. I mean, you expect to have bricks thrown through your windows and threats of sniper attacks after passing health care reform, right?

On Fox and Friends, the hosts shared e-mails from people who agree violence is bad but it’s secretly OK if the people getting hurt are people you don’t agree with:

KILMEADE: Over in Kentucky, J says, “while I don’t condone the threats in any way, what do they expect when they basically stole from the American people? What do they think 1776 was all about and wasn’t there some violence back then?” But true, but that was a revolution against an occupier.

CARLSON: Uh huh.

KILMEADE: This is a policy.

DOOCY: Meanwhile, in New Jersey, one of the original 13 colonies, Koz writes, “I don’t like violence and it is wrong. Having said that, why should Democrats be surprised? Bill Ayers of the Weather Underground bombed the Pentagon and now he is a respected speaker of the left. Why should Democrats expect anything differently?”

(From thinkprogress.org)

This reminds me of the Bill Mahers of the world after 9/11, who said something along the lines of “Well, this is tragic but we kind of had it coming/I could see why they’d do something like that” — and those people were shunned almost immediately for even trying to condone or qualify such a tragedy, and Republicans were doing a lot of the shunning, not to mention it helped their image to have liberals on video saying the U.S. got what it deserved.

It also reminds me of when someone says, “No offense, but you suck” — just because you preface it with “No offense” doesn’t mean I’m not going to get offended, and just because you preface it with “I don’t like violence and it is wrong” doesn’t mean you can get away with then condoning the violence.

Now, we have people shrugging their shoulders and saying, “Well, what’d you expect?” Um, how about civility? I mean seriously, why the hell are people mad enough to threaten to kill people because of this legislation? They got their abortion provisions, they got the public option removed, and the individual mandate everyone is complaining about actually carries a much cheaper penalty than health insurance actually costs.

Is it tax increases? Is it that people think it will cause a deficit? Is it that people wanted Obama to focus on job creation? I am just so confused about why this level of violence — the I’m-going-to-call-you-on-your-phone-and-threaten-your-life-and-family kind — has erupted out of health care reform. And if someone tells me it’s because of “socialism,” I might hit that person over the head with a dictionary. Pardon the violence.

Victim-blaming isn’t good for anyone’s image. Neither is the argument of,  “Well, why didn’t he get in trouble for the violent things he did? I should be able to do violent things, too!” Let’s just agree violence is bad and then not try to justify death threats to Congresspeople.

I’ll take ‘Potpourri’ for $400, Alex

The GOP, bake sales in schools, Walmart’s packaging scam, and stay-at-home dads: I have a hodge podge of different stories that have caught my interest in the past few days, so I’ll outline them here — and try to be brief — and provide you with a link.

1. An Absence of Class, by NY Times columnist Bob Herbert

I really, really like this column because, as much as I don’t directly identify as being a Democrat, I certainly am not a Republican, and I feel like a lot of the tactics used in protests against health care are disgusting:

In Washington on Saturday, opponents of the health care legislation spit on a black congressman and shouted racial slurs at two others, including John Lewis, one of the great heroes of the civil rights movement. Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat who is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, was taunted because he is gay.

At some point, we have to decide as a country that we just can’t have this: We can’t allow ourselves to remain silent as foaming-at-the-mouth protesters scream the vilest of epithets at members of Congress — epithets that The Times will not allow me to repeat here.

We consider ourselves this influential superpower, but it’s often pretty embarassing how we act toward one another.

2. Parents Fight for the Right to Sell Treats at School, per NPR 

In New York City, schools have limited bake sales to once every month in an effort to promote healthy eating and knowing what goes into your body — which is why they still sell Doritos in school vending machines?

So parents and students can fundraise anytime they want with Cool Ranch Doritos or whole-grain Pop-Tarts or Quaker Oats granola bars. The packaged food just has to have fewer than 200 calories and not more than 35 percent fat.

Knowing what’s in food and understanding what malodextrin is are two different things, and this is sad to me because the bake sale was a staple of my childhood when I was in school. Plus, many different student groups used bake sales to gain money for their organizations.

The emphasis should be on changing children’s eating habits altogether, not teaching them that anything with a nutrition facts label is fair game. If you’re going to promote healthy eating, you better go through the vending machines and clean house, too. And, isn’t it bad if something has fewer than 200 calories and still manages to count for one-third of your total suggested fat intake for the day?

3. Walmart is sneaky: Its products have less stuff for the same price as competitors, per a friend

As if Walmart isn’t gross enough, they apparently package fewer items in a box and then look cool when they can beat a competitor’s price for the same item! For instance, they sell packages of 70 Luvs diapers as compared with Target selling them in packages of 80.

Walmart loves scamming people! The packaging is identical, and the consumer zooms to the price. The author’s original blog can be accessed at the link, but the link is an update of the original and provides readers with a visual comparison of Walmart vs. Target toilet paper, from the same company and type of toilet paper. Seriously, stop shopping at Walmart and get the amount of toilet paper you deserve.

4. Stay-At-Home Dads Grapple With Going Back To Work, per NPR

Lots of men lost their jobs in the recession, and they decided to stay-at-home with their children rather than keeping their children in daycare. This is nice, but then they started mentioning putting child care on their resumes, and I started thinking, “Hmm, I bet if a woman did that, they’d get a blank stare from an employer.” My first impression was that child care would make the man look more well-rounded, but it would somehow pigeon-hole or be expected from a woman.

You have to listen to the audio to hear about the resumes I think, as the text doesn’t have the part about resumes that I heard on the radio this morning. I think it would be great if anyone could use their child-care skills in resumes — multitasking, conflict management, prioritizing, stress management, etc. Most people advise that you don’t include parenting on a resume unless you are entering into a job that involves child care (although Ann Crittenden wrote a book about why parenting translates into the business world)

Either way, it’s nice to read about dads finding that spending more time with their kids is rewarding — it’s unfortunate that some need to be laid off in order to figure it out, but overall it’s good that they are realizing that fathers can be great caregivers, and they can enjoy it, too.