Richard Fausset has done a nice profile of Obama's nominee for Surgeon General, Dr. Regina Benjamin, in the LA Times. Through interviews with local folks, he highlights not only Dr. Benjamin's dedicated service to the Alabama community of Bayou La Batre, but some of the health care concerns facing regular folks across America as well.
[Sammy]Duffy, a disabled 52-year-old who runs a fruit stand, knows Benjamin's story well: how she will treat almost anyone in her tiny medical office; how she accepts payments in oysters and shrimp when patients can't pay cash; and how she elected to stay in this backwater after her clinic was ravaged by two hurricanes and a fire.
"I think she's done wonders for this town," he said.
But ask Duffy what he thinks about the Democrats' plan to broaden health coverage with a government insurance plan, and his brow furrows. Sounds like communism, he says. Or, at the very least, an overreach.
Communism? That's an old favorite bugaboo of conservatives, but the kinder, gentler GOP has favored "socialism" the last few years. Neither term is accurate of course.
Not everyone in Bayou La Batre is worried by the prospect of health care reform, no matter how they voted in November.
In May, Susan Baker, 49, an uninsured cashier at the Bayou Bait Shop, racked up a $47,000 hospital bill for treatment for a lung ailment. Benjamin, her physician, visited her every day in the hospital, and charged her almost nothing.
In November, Baker voted for John McCain, who did not offer a government health plan. These days, Baker is pulling for the Democratic reform.
"I need insurance," she said. "With my body, there's things that need to be taken care of."
Fausset also found that small business owners were concerned about the cost, should they have to provide health care for employees. Left out of that equation is that the current system is hardly favorable to small businesses. What about lost employee productivity due to illness or injury? What about the businesses that try to provide insurance for employees only to find premiums are sky high and rising? Or the small business owners who close the doors and take a job with a big company justfor the health coverage?
The current system is already costing small businesses a bundle, and their employees too. Legislation in the House would give many small businesses a 50 percent tax credit on insurance premiums and the Ways and Means Committee bill would not impose the surtax on 96% of small businesses.
[T]he nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation has estimated that only 4.1% of all small business owners would be affected by the health care surcharge. The remaining 95.9% of small business owners would be completely unaffected by the health care surcharge but would benefit from the insurance market reforms in the bill.
There's a lot of fear out there on health care reform. The final votes to enact or defeat health care reform will probably occur long before Dr. Benjamin is confirmed as Surgeon General, so her confirmation shouldn't get bogged down in the politics of health care. We already know conservatives disapprove of empathy, will they also demonstrate their disapproval of a doctor who treats people regardless of ability to pay? Instead of "reverse racism" the new rallying cry might become "let the poor die." I can't wait for the hearings if they decide to go that route.
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