I know - we supposedly have had health care reform enacted. Yet many Americans STILL do not have adequate health care coverage and even those who do have allegedly good coverage often do not pursue treatment and prescriptions because we cannot afford the deductible under our policies. Yes, it's a national embarrassment because all other industrialized nations have universal coverage of some sort that encourages individuals to seek preventive care. Not so in the good old USA. Worse yet, as the New York Times reports, even impoverished African nation of Rwanda has a national health insurance plan that in concept is far more progressive that what the USA offers to its citizens - citizens who remain viewed as disposable to a large extent. I continue to believe that unless and until there is a strong public option, we will never see countless lives saved through routine preventive diagnosis and treatment here in the USA. Our "health care reform" remains a joke and a failure of Obama and the Democrats to keep campaign promises. Here are highlights from the Times story:*
Rwanda has had national health insurance for 11 years now; 92 percent of the nation is covered, and the premiums are $2 a year. Sunny Ntayomba, an editorial writer for The New Times, a newspaper based in the capital, Kigali, is aware of the paradox: his nation, one of the world’s poorest, insures more of its citizens than the world’s richest does.
*
He met an American college student passing through last year, and found it “absurd, ridiculous, that I have health insurance and she didn’t,” he said, adding: “And if she got sick, her parents might go bankrupt. The saddest thing was the way she shrugged her shoulders and just hoped not to fall sick.”
*
For $2 a year, of course, Rwanda’s coverage is no fancier than the Mayange maternity ward. But it covers the basics. The most common causes of death — diarrhea, pneumonia, malaria, malnutrition, infected cuts — are treated.
*
[E]ven with rationing this strict, how can any nation offer so much for $2 a year?
The answer is: It can’t. Not without outside help. . . . According to a study recently published in Tropical Medicine & International Health, total health expenditures in Rwanda come to about $307 million a year, and about 53 percent of that comes from foreign donors, the largest of which is the United States. One big donor is the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which is experimenting with ways to support whole health systems instead of just treating the three diseases in its name. It pays the premiums for 800,000 Rwandans officially rated as “poorest of the poor.”
*
Rwanda can offer the United States one lesson about health insurance: “Solidarity — you cannot feel happy as a society if you don’t organize yourself so that people won’t die of poverty.
*
Admittedly, the Rwanda system has many problems. And I am glad to hear that the USA helps underwrite a goodly chunk of Rwanda's health insurance costs. Nonetheless, it is sad that foreigners seem to receive more attention than this nation's own citizens who continue to go without treatment that might save their lives.
Rwanda has had national health insurance for 11 years now; 92 percent of the nation is covered, and the premiums are $2 a year. Sunny Ntayomba, an editorial writer for The New Times, a newspaper based in the capital, Kigali, is aware of the paradox: his nation, one of the world’s poorest, insures more of its citizens than the world’s richest does.
*
He met an American college student passing through last year, and found it “absurd, ridiculous, that I have health insurance and she didn’t,” he said, adding: “And if she got sick, her parents might go bankrupt. The saddest thing was the way she shrugged her shoulders and just hoped not to fall sick.”
*
For $2 a year, of course, Rwanda’s coverage is no fancier than the Mayange maternity ward. But it covers the basics. The most common causes of death — diarrhea, pneumonia, malaria, malnutrition, infected cuts — are treated.
*
[E]ven with rationing this strict, how can any nation offer so much for $2 a year?
The answer is: It can’t. Not without outside help. . . . According to a study recently published in Tropical Medicine & International Health, total health expenditures in Rwanda come to about $307 million a year, and about 53 percent of that comes from foreign donors, the largest of which is the United States. One big donor is the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which is experimenting with ways to support whole health systems instead of just treating the three diseases in its name. It pays the premiums for 800,000 Rwandans officially rated as “poorest of the poor.”
*
Rwanda can offer the United States one lesson about health insurance: “Solidarity — you cannot feel happy as a society if you don’t organize yourself so that people won’t die of poverty.
*
Admittedly, the Rwanda system has many problems. And I am glad to hear that the USA helps underwrite a goodly chunk of Rwanda's health insurance costs. Nonetheless, it is sad that foreigners seem to receive more attention than this nation's own citizens who continue to go without treatment that might save their lives.
1 comment:
Completely agree. Sweden's systems stay afloat by selling overpriced drugs to the USA system. The entire world seems to be benefitting except USA citizens, who are still too expensive to insure.
We have health insurance, not healthcare coverage.
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