Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. surprised US companies this week by backing President Obama’s health care plan which, in part, requires all but small employers to provide insurance coverage for workers. ”As a company, we believe the present health-care system is unsustainable and making the country’s businesses less competitive in the global economy,” said Wal-Mart. However, some believe this is simply Wal-Mart’s strategy to circumvent a measure that is being considered by the Senate Finance Committee which will result in more burdensome health insurance requirements for companies that employ lower-wage workers. Whatever the case may be, it is the rising cost of health care in this country that is hurting both businesses and workers – by restricting wages and growth of businesses. Good health is not a commodity, an economic product that can only be purchased by those with wealth. Companies should not be making money off of our health care needs.
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Tags: health, Health Insurance, obama, universal health care, Wal-Mart, Walmart
Dr. Steven Chang, the author of DailyDose, is a staff physician with Kosmix RightHealth. Dr. Chang practices Family Medicine at the University of California Davis Medical Center, where his medical interests include both pediatric and geriatric care, public health, gay and lesbian health, and sleep medicine. Dr. Chang trained at the Stanford University affiliated O'Connor Hospital, and was a research fellow at the National Institute of Health. He holds an M.D. from McGill University and a BA in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University.
July 2nd, 2009 at 5:31 am
I have no health Insuranc to young for medicare and to young for a medical card i’m 62 what am I suppose to do and I’m not employed
July 2nd, 2009 at 7:01 am
I think WalMart should put a weight reduction program in effect to benefit their employees and would improve their over all health care requirements and would do miricals for many people
July 2nd, 2009 at 7:22 am
I will call wal mart and tell them what I think of obama and his health plan and any other bull shit he comes out with.
July 2nd, 2009 at 7:24 am
Either print what I say or delete it .I don’t want it moderated.When I say Bull Shit thats what I mean!!!!!!
July 2nd, 2009 at 9:27 am
Do you realize what Universal Health is?? It means, you might see a doctor, but in what time frame?
Hospitals, Dirty … Any good doctor will not be there..
God help us if we are really ill, need an operation, etc..
Is material things more important than lifes?
July 2nd, 2009 at 9:28 am
ANY COMPANY WHO SUPPORTS THIS COMMUNIST OBAMA, IS TO BE VIEWED AS HIGHLY SUSPECT. THE OWNERS OF WAL-MART ARE ELITISTS, AND HAVE MORE TO GAIN THAN THEY WILL EVER LOSE. ANTONE WHO SUPPORTS OBAMA AND HIS CRIMINAL COHORTS, WILL LIVE TO REPENT IN EXTREME PAIN. DOUBT THAT? LOOK AROUND THE WORLD AT ANY DICTATORSHIP, AND YOU HAVE YOUR ANSWER. THERE IS “NO FREE LUNCH”, AND OBAMA IS A MASSIVE LIAR, AND ANYTHING HE SAYS IS A LIE OUT OF THE PIT OF HELL.
July 2nd, 2009 at 9:46 am
Please let us make sure that mental diseases and the cost for society are considered, when reform of the health care system is discussed!
We need a fair, accessible, preventive, accountable, quality assured, evidence-based and practice-based researched mental health care, integrated and with parity with medical care for people with mental disease, individuals with developmental disabilities and children with emotional disturbance.
Everybody is concerned about the health care reform for which this country has such great need. No other country uses 16% of gross national product for its health care. And still 45 million people are lacking health insurance. Half of all bankruptcies are due to medical bills.
When President Bill Clinton asked Hillary Clinton to develop a plan to reform health care, the country was not prepared. I was invited as a guest to her forum in Detroit, where I was an outreach worker and health educator for HIV/AIDS for women. I told stories about women and children who lacked health care. Stories about individual women and children speak more than statistics. I spoke about a vaccination rate of children in Detroit comparable with rates in developing countries. The child mortality rate here was higher than in most developed countries.
The large profitable insurance companies were lobbying against the reform on Capitol Hill. As a Swedish physician, I found such lobbying appalling and could not call it other than legalized bribing. People with health care insurance coverage were afraid that they would get less coverage and were against any reform.
The coverage for mental health services are not in parity with medical care. The bureaucracy that requires insurance companies to receive reports about every blood sample or physician visit cost a lot. The paper work between the hospital, the insurance companies and the individual patient is enormous. The insurance companies also have the right to deny a patient a certain procedure or treatment. Those decisions are thus not made finally by the patients’ physicians but by medically less knowledgeable administrators.
People did not realize that in the present system the health care costs are influenced by inefficiency and poor effectiveness. Expenses for uninsured patients are paid through Medicare and Medicaid or by the state, county or individual hospitals. By denying people easy access to prophylactic medication, contraceptives, vaccinations, screenings of blood pressure and for diabetes, and mammograms, unwanted children are born, teenage pregnancy numbers are high, and patients arrive at the emergency rooms with more grave diseases and more severe complications. Many young Afro-American men arrive at the hospital today with a high blood pressure undetected for years, and therefore many go right to haemodialysis because of ruined kidneys.
A grain of prophylaxis is worth more than treatment in the later stage of diseases.
Health care workers, insurance companies, politicians and the general people now agree that a radical reform of the health care system is a necessity.
However, I am very concerned that resources for mental health are not mentioned, when health care reform is discussed. The mentally ill usually have enough to struggle with than being politically vocal. Their families are stressed. And of course, we have the stigma that is attached to mental diseases. I could not talk about my first husband’s schizophrenia, when he was alive, since I was afraid that he would have his medical license taken away from him. I, myself did not become vocal about my recurrent depressions until 2005, when I became an active spokes person for people with mental illnesses. I have also professional experiences from a fair and less expensive health care system as a physician in Sweden. I am now an American citizen after I married an American physician and professor in 1991.
I am working on encouraging patients, families, health care workers, and politicians to speak up about the need for affordable and accessible treatment alternatives for patients with mental diseases. When new medications for schizophrenia and other psychoses became available, the large mental hospitals were closed. When president Kennedy signed the Community Mental Health Act in 1963, which gave the states federal money for mental illness except for those in mental hospitals, the incentive to close institutions grew. People, who had not lived in society for many years were thrown out into a reality that they could not handle. What about living quarters, job, medication, and just managing daily life?
Many mentally ill patients now end up in the criminal justice system. Wayne County Chief Probate Judge Milton Mack found that 15% of prisoners have had previous contact with mental health agencies. About half of the inmates have signs of mental illness, often self-medicating themselves with illegal drugs. Judges should be allowed to order involuntary, supervised outpatient treatment, when patients are unable to understand their condition or make meaningful decisions regarding their health instead of sentencing them to prison.
Drug users do not belong in the prisons! They belong in treatment programs. Drug dealers and rich money launderers belong in the prisons. What a waste for a country to have about 25 % of young African-American men locked up, due to unfair sentences and prejudices, and lack of good education and social welfare. A prisoner costs the society per year as much as a year of college tuition. Michigan spends well over two billion dollars a year on our prisons, more that on higher education.
Many homeless people suffer from untreated mental diseases, lack of follow-up, and lack of access to mental services and medication.
The mental health system in the U.S. is already lacking necessary resources. With proper medication a patient with mental disease can usually support him/herself and live by him/herself. The father can support the family and the mother can take care of her children. We would see fewer children in the foster care system.
After a political debate I approached U.S. Representative Sander Levin to advocate for women to have child care, education, transportation, and medication. He told me something I have never forgotten: ”IF A CONSTITUENT WRITES A LETTER TO ME, I ASSUME THAT about 1,000 other people in my district think the same, although they do not contact me”.
Let’s speak up for increased resources for health services and social services for people with mental disease, developmental disability or substance abuse! Let’s be spokespersons for the forgotten older adults and children with emotional disturbance.
Lisbeth Nordstrom-Lerner, M.D. , Southfield, MI
July 2nd, 2009 at 10:35 am
IF CANADA AND ENGLAND CANNOT MAKE IT ON SOCIALIZED MEDICINE.__I SAY THAT BECAUSE PEOPLE FROM THOSE TWO NATIONS COME TO AMERICA TO GET TREATED. —–AMERICA —THAT IS THE POLITICANS IN CONGRESS AND THE SENATE CANNOT RUN A WHORE HOUSE IN LOS VEGAS THEY HAD TO TAKE IT OVER WHEN IT WENT BANKRUPT AND ALL THE POLITICANS HAD TO DO WAS SELL WOMEN AND WHISKEY AND THEY TOO WENT BANKPRUPT. NOW IF THEY CANNOT HANDLE RUNNING A WHORE HOUSE HOW DO YOU THINK THEY WILL RUN SOMETHING AS COMPLICATED AS HEALTH CARE? THE ANSWER IS SIMPLE THEY CANNOT. Look at the WARS these perverts have tried to run. FRANK STURROCK—SEMPER FI—USMC
July 2nd, 2009 at 3:55 pm
shame on you walmart
July 2nd, 2009 at 8:15 pm
You’ve lost it.
July 10th, 2009 at 9:26 am
I have watched health care in US go from 1st in world in quality and affordability to now in forty’s. Yet has is the highest cost in the world. I see hard working people who can’t afford the insurance. This to my recollection is over 20% do not have any insurance. Why has this happened with the abundance of resources that the United States has; this is unacceptable. The greed of the Doctors becoming assembly lines for patients, and the Insurance companies battling to have the doctors sued for malpractice and continually raising their rates. The Hospital, Doctors, and Insurance getting more annually when the workers have been stuck at 4% or many times less year after year, or no raise while the medical professions go rampant over 6%.
I like everyone else hate to see the government get involved. Apparently the AMA does not want to get control of this. The most productive worker in the USA has been kicked to the curb. Industry wanted to move work overseas where wages are cheaper, and people get no benefits. Then we get lead paint on toys, food poisoning from beef & fruits, strangulations from defective hoodies on baby/kids products. There are laws for quality, and inspectors, Why are we getting this low quality? Is it because there are no standards for importers? This has led to no jobs in USA with lots of people losing their jobs every month now. There appears to be no control of this. Ford, Gm and many huge iconic companies complaining about not being able to compete due to having to pay benefits in USA. Our medical premiums have sky rocketed, our deductables increased, our Maxim payouts increased. Only rich think they deserve anything. Shameful greed has led us to this point. People with college degrees are having to work for 7 to 10 dollars per hour, houses depreciating in declining market due to greed of poor business practices in credit markets. Now even big Iconic business are looking for handout from government. I feel like the money should have gone to the people to spend it on the most competitive companies products. Lowest price for the most quality. This would force US business to compete. Or all business would go overseas where they wanted to be in the first place. Now we have failure after failure in housing market. Corruption is in politics, Wallstreet, most every where we look. Big business blames it on lazy US worker…Excuse me the most productive worker in the world.
I do not want to see Government in our lives. However I and many others voted out the government electives for a better choice of government. This must say when the republican slanted congress went democratic, the republican President went democratic. I think the people have “SPOKE” saying we have had enough. The middle class is being slowly and shamefully destroyed. Anything is better than what we had. That is a Congress not business minded, Businesses not caring about their workers, Doctors treating their patients like assembly lines, Insurance companies not having funds after being premiums for years.
Yes change is a must. Only the wealthy want to keep things like they are in order to get more. Soon they will be working on themselves for no one else will have home, food, assets or anything. Like when In Egypt Pharaoh’s Joseph saved up all grain for seven years. Then crop failures for next seven and a worldly famine beset the whole world. People were without anything. Took monies to Pharaoh’s Joseph to trade for food. If they did not have monies they would trade for what ever assets they had to get food to survive. This is how everyone in the world survived. I think we saw this during President Franklin Roosevelt’s Time. Government had to get control while the rich and the courts were up set with his decisions. He certainly got us out of the mess. I pray for us to repent, and to turn to the Lord to honor our Nation to be Great again. Perhaps rewarding us for honoring Him as a Christian nation founded on the principles of our Godly forefathers who founded this GREAT HONORABLE NATION. Reference the Mayflower Compact, Pledge Allegiance to flag, Preamble to our Constitution, Words on top of Washing Monument “Laus Deo” on our currency “In God WE Trust” , words in our and on our supreme court building, and other court houses, amen.
July 18th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
it would figure Walmart would be in support of it. They already have insurance for their employees who qualify plus their sotres have caused so many smaller stores to go under and if this plan goes through there will be many, many more small businesses go under as they are barely keeping their heads above water right now. I am 56 yrs old, self employed, no insurance and in a physical mess right now with no assistance at all. Am not able, physically, to go out and work at a regular job so I have 2 businesses here at home and still can not keep things going well enough to buy insurance for myself. what a mess this country is in and what a shame. SHAME ON YOU WALMART!!!!!!