Health Care
Yesterday, it dawned on me that I forgot to mention in my previous entry how unhappy I am with the poor attention the health care crisis has gotten from the current administration. Then, as if by cue, I got notice from my employer today that there must be more increases in our personal expenses (to the tune of at least $350 a year) to allow the company to afford to provide a once-again-reduced level of health insurance coverage. I hope that all of our employees will be able to afford the increase, but I fear we'll start to contribute to the pool of uninsured that has built so dramatically in the last 3 years. I know the company is doing its best to soften this blow, but it's going to hurt.
Do you remember all the work that Bill Clinton (and Hillary Clinton) did during him term as President to try and get legislation through the Republican Congress to nip this problem in the bud? There was a significant effort. I have not heard anything about health care reform form the Bush administration except for this silly Medicare Prescription Drug card that seems more borne out of politicians trying to sell their reelection than about solving the bigger problem with malpractice insurance, drug companies and health insurance.
I'll get back to cute pictures or technical gripes for my next entry. I just couldn't avoid pointing out this additional gripe with Bush given today's bad news.
This reminds me of an article I recently read about a former employer of mine that has moved 200 jobs from Beaverton to British Columbia. Stream International is a technical support outsource provider (or as my girlfriend put it “a modern sweatshop”) with locations throughout the U.S. and indeed internationally. Stream cited the lower cost of doing business in Canada, which might surprise folks conditioned by the right-wing media to think that ‘socialist’ Canada is a poor business environment.
“Canada's nationalized health system also provides a huge cost-saving tool for employers,” states an economics professor quoted in an article about the move. I hope that someday our business leaders realize that nationalized healthcare will actually lift the burden of high insurance costs from business and isn’t part of some communist plot.
Comment by Chris — 09/29/2004 10:47 PM