My Personal Finance Blog

There’s much debate around the healthcare system reform proposed by President Barack Obama. And while there are many people who protest against it, and those who support it, it is important to know what it is all about in the first place. Here is a short overview of the reform, which is comprised of three essential parts:

1. Assure all American citizens with access to comprehensive and affordable health coverage

The main features of this part are:

• New Public National Health Plan, which will be very close to the current health coverage provided to federal employees. The main difference is that the new plans will be available to all US citizens for a reasonable price no matter of their financial situation. Deductibles and co-payments will be reduced to minimum, while low-income persons will have the possibility to use additional subsidies.
• National Health Insurance Exchange, which will allow US citizens to look for private health plans. It will set regulations on private insurance providers in order to make sure that private plans are not too different form public ones.
• New business mandate requiring national enterprises to pay for the Public National Health Plan.
• Individual mandate aimed specifically at children.
• More support provided to existing programs like Medicaid and SCHIP.

2. Improve the quality of healthcare services and lower their costs

This initiative presumes federal financial assistance for improving the quality of the services and lowering the costs, with additional assistance to enterprises that cover high-risk employees.

To President’s belief the following actions may also contribute to lowering cost and improving services:

• Special disease management programs for improving chronic care.
• Improving transparency in what concerns quality and costs of healthcare offered by providers.
• Lowering the rates of medical errors.
• Introducing financial incentives to stimulate substantial improvements.
• Providing support for researching new and alternative healthcare technologies.
• Eliminating ethnic disparities in access and quality of healthcare services.
• Popularizing health IT.
• Stronger regulation of insurance and drug markets in order to lower medication costs and allow cheap health insurance.
• Preventing Medicare private plan participants from overpaying.

3. Wellness and healthy lifestyle promotion

This initiative is to be supported through the following actions:

• Special wellness programs at working places.
• Eliminating child obesity with school activities.
• Better education for present and future healthcare workers.
• Promotion of healthy lifestyle in communities.

Saving possibilities with the new initiatives

President Obama estimates that in average a typical American family will be able to save about $2,500 on an early basis after the plan will be implemented. These are the possible sources for such savings:

• Health IT introduction and implementation.
• Improved quality of services.
• Limitations on health insurance provider profits.
• Federal funding of catastrophic coverage that will lead to cheap health insurance.
• Universal coverage availability.

As you can see the Plan requires significant federal funding and that is one of the major points of those who are against it. Other arguments include direct implication to health insurance market, which of course is not quite welcome by the insurance companies. But is the idea of cheap health insurance for everyone that bad?

Families of individuals who decide to donate their organs often find that it helps them through their grieving process. They receive great comfort from the knowledge that something positive came from the death of their loved one.

 

For recipients of donated organs, organ transplants offer a second chance at life, enabling both them and their families to maintain a higher quality of life. Even the hope that there is a possible matching organ donor available can make a huge difference in the life of someone that is suffering from a serious illness.

 

In the United States, the waiting list is quoted to be about 96,522 people long for kidney donations, but only about one third of those patients are hopeful of ever receiving a donated organ.

 

Different organs have different waiting times and success rates because demand is significantly different for various organs. Alarmingly, three quarters of patients in need of an organ transplant are waiting for a kidney, and as such kidneys have much longer waiting times.

 

As an example, I’ll point out that at the Oregon Health and Science

University, the average patient who ultimately received an organ waited only three weeks for a heart and three months for a pancreas or liver — but 476 days for a kidney, because demand for kidneys substantially outstrips supply.

 

All statistics indicate that there is a huge shortage of available organs of all types (including tissues) that could potentially save or drastically improve an ailing person’s life.

 

Approaches to addressing this shortage include:

 

Donor registries and “primary consent” laws, to remove the burden of the donation decision from the legal next-of-kin.

 

Financial incentives for signing up to be a donor.

 

A “dissent solution” (or way of “opting-out”) in which a potential donor or his/her relatives must take specific action to be excluded from organ donation, rather than specific action to be included.

 

Social incentive programs, wherein members sign a legal agreement to direct their organs first to other members who are on the transplant waiting list.

 

With increasing regularity, many hospitals employ organ network representatives who routinely screen patient records to identify potential donors in advance of their deaths. In some cases, organ-procurement representatives will request screening tests or organ-preserving drugs (such as anti-hypertension drugs) to keep potential donors’ organs viable until their suitability for transplants can be determined and family consent (if needed) can be obtained.

 

This practice increases transplant efficiency, as potential donors who are unsuitable due to infection or other causes are removed from consideration before their deaths, and decreases the avoidable loss of organs. It may also benefit families indirectly, as the families of unsuitable donors are not approached to discuss organ donation.

 

It can be hard to think about what’s going to happen to your body after you die, let alone donating your organs and tissue. But being an organ donor is a charitable and worthwhile decision that can be a lifesaver.

 

Understanding organ donation can make you feel better about your choice.