Healthcare
Healthcare for the world….
We as a nation could also be doing so much more to help people get adequate healthcare worldwide, especially in the Third World. For example, I just interviewed an ophthalmologist from Findlay, Ohio, who raised money through the local Rotary to build an Eye Hospital in the country of Zambia (this is just the second such hospital in the country). Dr. Thom Brumley said to me that global blindness is growing at an alarming rate -- a lot of it, however, preventable. Likewise, in Laconia, Minnesota, I interviewed Paul Turek, a representative of Caribou Coffee. His company is starting to build medical clinics for its growers, their families, and other community members in Latin America. And another huge issue leading to global problems with health is lack of proper nutrition for many in the Third World. On this front, it is my contention – and it would be our administration’s goal – that we as Americans, again, could help way more than we currently do. Read my following blog entry…
--Joe
1/20/10 Before the earthquake, Haiti was the second poorest country in the world. To quell persistent, acute hunger pains, a significant number of people there were eating patties made of mud, oil and flour. While this was slowly killing these people, apparently it was better than immediately dying of starvation. Meanwhile in America, significant numbers of people think nothing of spending all kinds of money on non-nutritional junk food and beverage (as opposed to taking the savings to send to Haiti, Uganda, Somalia…). We had the chance to help Haiti before. We have the chance to help Haiti now. It’s important we do that. Not only for them… but for our souls. Note: While in Virginia on a campaign tour several years ago, a woman told me she’d just returned from a missions trip to Haiti. And what had particularly struck her was “…how stick thin almost everyone seemed to be there.”
Part One
Part Two
A few excerpts from Joe’s blog on healthcare (in America)…
4/11/12… The campaign rolls on… We were interviewed by the newspaper at Apalachicola, Florida. I told the editor that in Grand Junction, Colorado, we researched a two-story hospital (Marillac Hospital) staffed by volunteer doctors, volunteer nurses and other volunteer citizenry who do intake, janitorial, landscaping… Everything is on a minimal sliding fee scale here for people without healthcare insurance. What’s more, this would work in every county in the country — and is part of our ‘JoeCare’ platform…
12/17/11… While the other candidates are holding town hall meetings, and the like, in Iowa and New Hampshire, I’ve decided on Northwest Ohio. (Call it a hunch) Last night I found myself in an impromptu round table discussion at McDonald’s with some 20 Methodist Church members from Leipsic, Ohio. One of the women was an ER nurse and said a lot of extraneous healthcare costs come from people on Medicaid, for instance, coming to the emergency room, often unnecessarily, for the slightest of physical ailments. She said she believes this, in part, is because it is free to them. Coupled with this, Atlanta Georgia’s ER doctor Jonathan Davis told us on a stop there that some 33% of ER visits, if not more, are unnecessary as well (Medicaid, or not). This, in part, is because we’ve become a society addicted to feeling good all the time. And we run for help at the least discomfort. And in tandem, we’ve become such a litigious society, doctors are afraid of advising someone not to come in.
Note: Our administration wouldn’t be opposed to Medicaid, but we would mobilize a public awareness program to help people to learn more about healthcare issues that need a doctor, or not.
8/7/09… Our tour up Route 1 continues… In Colonial Heights, Virginia, we talked with Ted Du Varney, 68, who has diabetes. (He actually looks like he’s in his early 50s.) He now charts everything he eats on a computerized graph and, well, everything he eats is quite healthy now. He said he’s turned the whole thing into a “game.” With all this talk about healthcare reform lately, shouldn’t this also include a significant amount of talk about: prevention?
Links:
All Joe’s blog entries on healthcare
Joe’s position paper on healthcare