News, Health Disparities, Americans, Politics: The Health Care Safety Net

Image Source: http://www.thesaurus.com/nope –  All rights reserved – copyright 2011

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If you are an American who reads news articles or listens daily to TV, then the budgetary skirmishes being played out between the two governing parties in Washington this month is enough to keep you up at night.

Do our elected government representatives deserve congratulations for haggling for days about and then (at the last minute) passing yet another temporary budget in order to keep the Federal government functioning on a daily basis? No. I say: Skip the drama and get back to governing the country in a cooperative, fair manner that represents the wishes of the people from your home state who voted for you. Sadly, long-term strategical thinking as well as respectful debate seem in short supply in our capital nowadays.

Am I a tea-partier? Nope. Is this blog about politics? Nope. What this blog is about is clinical education, health science research, instruction, trends in searching, public health, epidemiology, health care environments… and the infrastructure supporting these ideas and practices.

This month – from a public health viewpoint – it is troubling to read and hear about challenges to the health care safety net that the 2012 budget proposals being set forth by House Republicans have raised.  If their version of health care reform is enacted, the health care delivery system for children, disabled individuals or senior citizens will be very different by year 2021.

Families USA, a nonprofit policy group, published a report last week that examines the Republicans’ health care reform proposals; it is available online at no cost by clicking here.  It is highly critical of the proposals. Below are two screenshots from this report:

Image Sources: http://tinyurl.com/3bhsjf5 – All rights reserved – copyright 2011

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At this link, the proposed 2012 budget set forth by the current administration can be read online via the Congressional Budget Office (216-page PDF).  Also see a link to the Health Care section for specific numbers and rebuttals to the Republican proposals.

Thanks to Matthew Sturdevant, insurance reporter for The Courant (Hartford, CT newspaper website) for the link to the Families USA report.