For any interested I was referred by another dialysis nurse to this story in the Houston Chronicle. It appears it is an ongoing story started last week? But it seems to be something nurses and students alike should look over.

www.chron.com/deadbymistake/

There is a map there you can roll your mouse over that tells you about all reporting requirements by state. My above numbers may be off but I had to collect them without benefit of this tool.

Hard to believe that all the people with opinions, and all the opinionated people, have no interest in this subject. Perhaps it was titled incorrectly. All of you in the healthcare industry should have an opinion.

At least it's a start discussing the matter addressed this way. First off, GWB cut taxes while starting 2 wars. Never done before and for a good reason. Expect tax increases to at least cover our security. Expect more to address the horrendous economic situation that even pessimists are now saying has been basically handled as well as could be expected. And at least GWB and his cronies foresaw that and apparently began handling it right.

My point in this mess is the states have had 10 years since the report was issued to address the problem of deaths by mistake and all we can show for it is a hodgepodge that is still a mess and even bigger!

Secondly unless you are a very well paid nurse (over $250K a year single or over $325K for married couples) why are you worried about the taxes that are being levied to help pay for health? The rich do NOT pay enough in this country! That is evident in public tax scales. Proposed tax increases have been described by honest rich people as "chump change"!

I am a native border Texan, born and raised in El Paso, Texas and can lead a class on the inherent problems of border issues.

Don't confuse the health care problems with the multitude of border issues. Again GWB and Ronald Reagan can be blamed for much of this problem of illegal immigration. Remember, Clinton is the President who had the guts to address the welfare problem. He also began having what was them Immigration start enforcing illegal alien problems. Reagan gave them citizenship outright! Of course! Because the rich want to have a subservient class of the poor to do the scut work that makes them even richer. GWB hinted at the same solution to illegals as Reagan in his election run - make them citizens and hence no longer illegal. So the US was again flooded with "Sooners" so they could be inside for the party.

Bottom line in this forum discussion is how the states have not, and apparently cannot, forge any kind of cohesive oversight of problems that are killing Americans and then being obscured by a tangled web of reporting or non-reporting.

As a career State attorney (Dept of Health & Senior Services), my opinion is:

Probably the State would do better than the Feds (I was a Fed for ten years, too), but still probably wouldn't do a very efficient job of it, at least not New Jersey.

The program would become too expensive, top-heavy with political appointees, and probably tainted by corruption....

And I don't need to ascribe blame to any particular  party or politician - both parties are corrupt, elected officials owe their souls to their parties, and it is the system that is messed up. Do I have a solution? Nope, sorry... Maybe term limits would help a bit.

well that's what you get when you elect an actor to be your Govenator!! but lets face it ALL border cities are in a world of poop here.  I don't have any solutions either except it would be nice to at least charge anyone going over the border a damn buck or something hey even 50cents would be better than nothing!!!

mrbrownrn49 says ...

Hard to believe that all the people with opinions, and all the opinionated people, have no interest in this subject. Perhaps it was titled incorrectly. All of you in the healthcare industry should have an opinion.

Gotta give me time to read the post, mrbrown.  I do have a life outside of blogging :D

No, the states will not do a better job of administering universal health care than the Federal government.  Look at Medicaid.  It is administered state by state with wide variations in benefits and costs.  Some states will actually steer patients to move to states with better benefits just so they don't have to cover the costs of the poor's care.  I saw a lot of this when I lived in California, which has generous benefits in Medi-cal.

The current proposal in the House has a lot of good features.  I've spent a lot of time in other forums blogging on this.

The public option offered in the House version will set standards for healthcare insurance that all private plans must follow.  No more exclusions for pre-existing conditions, no dropping the chronically ill.

A commission will be created that will probably replace MedPAC, a commission of experts that advises Congress on healthcare reimbursement for Medicare.  This commission will consist of experts to recommend reimbursement rates for physicians.  The goal is to reimburse based on doctor's use of evidence based medicine rather than procedure/test driven care that pays more the more you do.  This will eliminate a tremendous amount of waste-- $210 billion a year according to Pricewaterhouse Cooper's Health Research Insititute.

Health care reform cannot succeed without an emphasis on primary care providers:  increasing what they get, and taking away incentives from overpaid specialists for what they do, focus on best practices, preventative care, and refusing to pay for things like hospital acquired infections and bounceback readmissions.

The public option is not meant to replace private insurance.  A single payer system will not pass and is not on the table for health care reformers.  The public option is meant to cover those who either don't like their employer plans, change jobs frequently, are self employed, or can't afford a private plan.  It is meant to compete with private plans, to force them to be comptetive and responsive to consumers needs.  However, no one will be forced into the public option if they like their current plan.  Doctors will not be forced to take patients on the public plan, anymore than they have to take Medicare or Medicaid patients.

The House bill is not perfect, and some things will change.  The Senate version is not perfect either, though I like the House version better.  Either way, health care professionals should educate themselves on what the plans really say so they can correct the vast amount of misinformation spreading out there.

Chain mail letters listing blatant lies about what health care reformers actually want are fueling reactions from uninformed citizens who take these lies at face value (Hitler once said if you're gonna tell a lie, make it a big one.  He was right).  Mega corporations are funding fake "grassroots" organizations to try and defeat health care reform.  One such organization is Americans for Prosperity, which bills itself as grass roots, but in fact is funded by Koch Industries, a mega oil conglomerate.

The bills are available online.  You can see the House version here:  http://docs.house.gov/edlabor/AAHCA-BillText-071409.pdf

mrbrownrn49 says ...

Theala  your response is the first educated response I have seen in these forum discussions besides mine. I am NOT saying these are the only educated ones period - simply the only ones I have seen. The majority of the rest seem to hinge on what I call bumper sticker wisdom or, as I put it earlier, "sound bite education".

I believe that the majority of the public is ignorant by choice. Nobody actually reads anything. they just get their opinions from those who got THEIR opinions from so-called experts. Fox News is well known for hiring educated but highly opinionated "consultants" who bad mouth anything Rupert Murdoch does not like. Yes HB3200 is a task of a read but before people kill it they really should try to understand it!

In that vein, and considering the life-or-death consequetces of lacking healthcare, I believe the situation has come to the point it will require federal intervention to straighten the mess out to some degree of workability. Am I glad it has come to this? Heck no! Do I recognize the need for it to be handled universally, meaning a single authority to get the ball rolling? Heck yes.

BTW - I worked 5 years as a ER nurse on a huge Indian reservation in Montana. IHS all the way. Free to the clients if ever anything was. I can assure you that the Native Americans used the facility but did NOT overuse it in general. They carped about it but would still say they appreciated it. With no money or benefits tied to referrals very few were made outside the IHS system. Outside referrals required pre-authorization and were not simply handed out. Even our ER visits usually had merit as most patients knew that they could be seen in the clinic the next day. So why go hang in the ER as patients were triaged and seen accordingly.

Our uninsured population know no such thing so basically are forced to keep getting sicker until they present to ER.

Thanks for posting.

Thank you.  My posts in many other forums usually result in a flame fest from conservatives determined to shout me down.  They fail, and devolve to insults and personal attacks.  They almost never try to actually refute what I say with facts.

Interesting comment about Montana.  I lived in Minot ND for 2 years.  Almost all the ER patients I saw had real emergencies.  The non-emergent patients waited until the clinics opened.  Folks up there didn't have the instant gratification mentality I have noticed in other parts of the country.

My sister is a disabled vet, and gets her care from the VA.  She's told me similar things about VA service, although she has more access to specialists than the IHS does.

Still wondering where all the proponents for having individual states run any health program are?