Health-care reform
Sullivan, Kip
First, it affirms as "a major fact of the history of this century" the murder of millions of Jews for the sole reason that they were Jews. It stands as a forthright rebuttal to what has become...
...Responsibilities include: develop and maintain a specifically pastoral presence to students, faculty, staff and administration, and serve as a resource person for social justice concerns...
...health-care syst e m - t h e gap between the United States and the rest of the industrialized world increased...
...system cannot be attributed to more frequent use of the system by Americans...
...In 1996, only five countries spent more than $2,000 per person on health care: The United States at $3,708...
...But the question of whether HMOs should take the credit for this blip in health-care spending seems quite secondary when we compare U.S...
...A 1996 issue of the American Journal of Public Health reported that between 1968 and 1993 the number of doctors in the United States rose 77 percent, but that the number of administrators rose 288 percent...
...If I can hear this what may I not hear Sight's the electric hunger, though sensual Blake says hearing's the most intimate appetite...
...Americans are getting kicked out of hospitals sooner, seeing doctors less often, and paying much higher fees and prices...
...So too do the clerks and nurses hired by doctors and hospitals to haggle with HMOs...
...Several studies indicate that U.S...
...Salvation...
...Lost is found...
...Germany (10.5...
...drug companies charge Americans roughly twice what they charge the rest of the world for some drugs...
...The University, located twelve miles west of Philadelphia, is an independent university founded by the Augustinian Order of the Roman Catholic Church and has a student population of 10,13OO...
...medical inflation rate that began around 1993...
...administrative costs have soared...
...The appearance of the "HMO backlash" in this country in the last two years suggests that a similar poll taken today would find the United States still in tenth place...
...Despite the recent slowing of the medical-inflation rate in the United States, health-care spending here is rising faster than in the rest of the industrialized world...
...spending on all health care (not including administrative costs) rose 196 percent between 1980 and 1991, administrative costs rose 350 percent...
...But that still leaves the nonelderly nonpoor population--a huge market pool--unprotected by price controls...
...develop lectures and seminars that create a more intensive academic awareness of peace and justice issues...
...France (9.6...
...The United States is the only first-world OECD nation without a national health-insurance system, and is the only one that sports an uninsured rate of 16 percent...
...Bird what do you praise Praise it again among the juniper plumes & silvered-blue juniper berrybeads Your birdpraise rivers the juniper air until I admit the incision of listening, and self rising easily up off the river evaporates altered into its liberty Marie Ponsot by 38 percent in the United States, compared to 32 percent for the other twenty nations that had 1996 expenditures of more than $1,000 per person...
...The HMO bureaucrats who argue with doctors about whether patients can have drug x instead of drug y, or an extra two days in a hospital, cost money...
...The data, which were prepared by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), appeared in the November-December 1997 edition of Health Affairs, a health-policy journal...
...ability and desire to develop and teach conflict resolution skills to students, faculty and staff...
...knowledge of, or expertise in, Catholic Social Teaching...
...inflation, in any sector, depends on the behavior of two numbers--voIume of goods or services sold, and price...
...But when evidence indicates that the HMO strategy has failed to control healfla-care spending, has not stemmed the rising tide of the uninsured, and has placed quality in jeopardy, it should be obvious that it is time to change our national policy...
...Kip Sullivan is executive director qf Minnesota COACT (Citizens Or~anized Acting Together), a citizen ~roup working to enact a universal health insurance system and to save the family farmer...
...Luxembourg at $2,206...
...policy of letting "competition" between HMOs control health-care inflation would be dubious even if it could be shown that the United States is spending less than other countries...
...Judith H. Banki, both an official of and a participant in organized Jewish-Christian dialogue, is program director of the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding...
...But the most galling financial consequence of the U.S...
...To some 800 million Catholic faithful and to the world at large, the church says: "It happened...
...The de facto U.S...
...focus on restricting volume at the expense of price has been the rapid increase in administrative costs...
...A 1990 poll of citizens of ten industrialized nations--conducted jointly by Harvard, Lou Harris, and the Institute for the Future--indicated that Americans were the least satisfied with their health-care system...
...Kip Sullivan HEALTH-CARE REFORM We s t i l l need i t ~ uch is being made by HMO advocates of a reduction in the U.S...
...teach three courses per year in peace and justice related issues...
...promote and plan activities including liturgical celebrations, retreats, service and other projects which raise awareness of peace and justice concems...
...Send cover letter and resume by May 1, 1998 to: VILLANOVA UNIVERSITY Susan F. Kazmierczak, Assistant Director Human Resources 800 Lancaster Avenue...
...We are not being told that this reduction may be due entirely to a fall in the general inflation rate, rising numbers of uninsured, increased rationing of care among the insured, the "HilIary effect" (the tendency of insurers and providers to keep prices in check following an effort by the federal government to enact price or premium controls), and temporary premium reductions by insurance companies scrambling to build market share...
...Germany at $2,222...
...The Vatican's "Reflections" open a rich field for further common study, and its expression of human solidarity should guide the footsteps of those who seek to develop its teaching and preaching implications, to the end--in John Paul II's moving words--of "shaping a future in which the unspeakable iniquity of the Shoah will never again be possible...
...Similarly, only five countries devoted more than 9 percent of their Gross Domestic Product to health-care spending: The United States (14.2 percent...
...and Canada (9.2...
...Jews, who are familiar with this history of persecution rooted in religious antagonism, should realize that it may come as a surprise to most Catholics, and that the church has done an important service to truth and justice by calling attention to these painful realities in very concrete terms...
...Villanova, PA 19085 AA/EOE/M-F latest data indicate the United States continues to outspend the rest of the world by a huge margin...
...spending to that of other nations...
...We are to believe that rising rates of enrollment in health plans that use HMO cost-control techniques account for this reduction...
...In short, the savings our HMOdominated system has achieved by reducing the volume of medical services has been offset by ballooning administrative costs...
...It affirms the religious roots of hostility to Jews in "erroneous and unjust interpretations of the New Testament," and spells out the consequences when Jews refused to abandon their faith and customs: discrimination, expulsions, attempts at forced conversions, scapegoating, occasional violence, looting, and even massacres...
...Among the major industrilized G7 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Britain, and the United States), in 1995 the United States had the fewest hospital beds per 1,000 people, the second-lowest proportion of the population admitted to hospitals, and the fastest discharge rate...
...The rest of the industrialized world long ago adopted policies that impose price controls on providers and, with a few exceptions, on drug companies...
...Despite a slowdown in the growth of physician income, due to pressure by HMOs, American doctors remain far and away the best paid on the planet...
...According to federal government figures, while U.S...
...Conventional wisdom in America has been that volume, not price, is the primary culprit and that HMOs, which are much better at denying services than traditional indemnity insurers, are the answer to the alleged problem of excessive volume...
...Switzerland at $2,412...
...I happened to hear of it...
...Commonweal | aj April 24, 1998...
...and Canada at $2,002...
...In the United States, Medicare (the nation's program for the elderly) and Medicaid (the nation's program for some of the poor) also utilize price controls...
...It is that of a girl 8 to 10 years old, in perfect condition...
...The V I LLANOVA U n i v e r s i t y CAMPUS MINISTRY Villanova University is seeking a Campus Minister in the Offices of Campus Ministry and the Center for Peace and Justice Education...
...It stands as a forthright rebuttal to what has become an entire industry of Holocaust denial and revision...
...Moreover, the numbers indicate that between 1990 and 1996--the period in which HMOs strengthened their grip on the U.S...
...Between 1990 and 1996, for example, per capita spending increased Commonweal | | April 24, 1998 Even In a sift of ash in Wales, at the bottom of a pit sunk in the crucial chamber of a passage grave, its stones cut & laid up dry 5000 years ago, about, diggers found and anatomists identified a small bone of the inner ear...
...The rest of the industrialized world long ago adopted policies based on a very different premise--that health-care inflation is caused primarily by doctors, hospitals, and drug companies that overcharge, and secondarily by excessive volume...
...And U.S...
...It adds the church's moral authority to the need to understand what gave rise to the greatest crime of the twentieth century, and to remember it, "for there is no future without memory...
...Requirements include: Master's degree in Theology, Social Services or related Peace & Justice area...
...Switzerland (9.8...
...Yet the high cost of the U.S...
...Not surprisingly, the diverging policies of the United States and the rest of the industrialized world have led to vastly different consequences...
...Understandably, Americans are not happy about a system that restricts their choice of doctor, impedes their access to care, and still costs an arm and a leg...
...The OECD has been keeping track of economic and demographic data on twenty-four industrialized nations since the end of World War II (five less-prosperous countries were added after the fall of the Berlin Wall...
Vol. 125 • April 1998 • No. 8
