American Health Care Isn't Working!

Senator Sanders of Vermont has been compiling letters from constituents within the state and others from around country.

You've got to ask: what is it going to take to get a new health-care system?. Do we have to bankrupt the entire country?

How about we take a look at a couple of these stories for the next couple days.

I am originally from Canada and see the effects of the American system's failures every day. I've had great care from my employer, but at a direct cost to me and my employer that, combined, is close to ten times what my employer paid on my behalf back in Alberta. I can't stress enough how the worries about healthcare in the US shape the everyday lives of Americans and American business in ways that Canadians can't even truly comprehend. Not having to worry about the financial costs of getting sick or going to your doctor or whether or not you can "afford" to change jobs or start your own business is something Canadians experience without even knowing it. Imagine how much capital would be freed up if companies and individuals didn't spend so much of their money covering the basic costs of healthcare. This myth about the US having the best or even one of the better healthcare systems in the world doesn't stand up to scrutiny for even a moment if you've experienced the systems of another country. The US could do much, much better and be an example for the world of how to do things right rather than the prime example of how best to do things horribly ineffectively. I am quite happy living in Vermont, but I know that if anyone in my family got seriously ill we'd quickly be headed back across the border for good.
Paul,
South Burlington, Vt.

Update: They have placed all of the stories in a downloadable brochure.

Single Payer Health Care - Sen. Bernie Sanders

In our morning paper there was an article about Bernie Sanders who has introduced legislation in the senate to establish a real single payer health care plan. This is not the watered down version promulgated by Obama and Senator Bauckus who are discouraging participation of single-payer advocates in the debate about revamping health care. I sent him a note.

Dear Senator Sanders:

Hi.... I was delighted to see coverage of your single-payer health care initiative this morning in the Free Press. I only hope that you'll be able to convince your colleagues that have been corrupted by the insurance companies campaign contributions.

I don't think this issue takes on the urgency that it might since all members of Congress are covered by a single payer government provided health care plan. Hey....all we want is what you guys have!

I've lived both in Canada (single payer), and German (hybrid single payer+employer system) and both systems were far superior to what ordinary Americans are able to get even in Burlington with Fletcher Allen and a high-deductible CIGNA policy obtained through the Chamber of Commerce.

The amount of energy and frustration to say nothing of the dollar cost that we personally invest in attempting to manage our personal health care is just crazy. And we are the "lucky" ones with health insurance, and good hospitals and doctors.

Thanks for your advocacy on this issue. It should be at the top of the everyone's list.

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I still like reading our printed paper. For one thing, it doesn't provide ad-links to colon cleansing products. In fact the Gannett web site which hosts the paper (it is a Gannett paper) is a disaster.

Top 50 Healthcare 2.0 Blogs

RNCentral�has posted a list of the 50 (fifty!) Healthcare 2.0 blogs, where Healthcare 2.0 is loosely defined as the transformation of health care delivery from a top-down process ordained by physicians, hospitals, and insurance companies, to a shared process involving patients, with �large dose of IT (electronic medical records, telemedicine, patient social networking) added in. �

Introduction: April 2009

Welcome to Tech for Non-Profits, and the nascent Tech for Home Health Care. This site is the unplugged version of Microdesign Consulting. Part lab-notebook, part brain-extension, it is a repository for new and evolving ideas and projects that we stumble across as we pursue our start-up dream of a provider of home healthcare technology and continue supporting nonprofits, NGO's, government, public and private entities with services related to fundraising and technology.

Upcoming: I will be giving presentations at the Freedom to Connect conference March 30 and 31 in Washington D.C. (update: 4/2, copious notes below...) and at the American Telemedicine Association annual meeting in Las Vegas at the end of April. Both presentations will focus around the technical (boxes and wires), aspects, rather than medical aspects of one variation of home tele-health; two-way interactive, multipoint videoconferencing, with examples from our ongoing pilot studies delivering supervised exercise classes with senior patients who have fallen or have a fear of falling.

We are located in the Vermont Center for Emerging Technologies, a technology incubator affiliated with the University of Vermont. Our major extracurricular activity is the Vermont Software Developer's Alliance, a non-profit trade group which promotes economic development in our area, primarily for software development companies. Both organizations, by the way, are looking to encourage high-tech businesses to start up and/or relocate in our state.