PSoTD

The Democrats want to expand the successful State Childrens Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP). Bush counters with his pat answer to everything - tax breaks.

The Democratic lawmakers have focused their efforts this year on expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program. The program was established in 1997 to help families with incomes too high to qualify for Medicaid but not high enough for private insurance.

Democrats have proposed adding $50 billion in new spending to SCHIP over five years. The president made it clear that he opposes such an expansion. His budget recommended adding $4.9 billion. He and his advisers called the coming fight over how much to expand the program a decisive moment in health care - a moment that could lead to more government-sponsored coverage or more coverage through the private sector.

My name was once pulled out of a hat to attend a dinner party with the very rich President and founder of a company I worked for. During the course of the evening, the subject of Reagan's tax cuts came up. The head honcho's mildly disdainful comment was "you have to make it first".

That's the bottom line. Tax breaks are great for people who can already afford health insurance. But those who can't are going to be tempted to use any tax benefits they get on more pressing day-to-day expenses and keep their fingers crossed that they and their kids don't get sick.

S-CHIP works. Expanding this program is a winner for the Democrats and most importantly a winner for children.

A few months ago I had a knee injury during basketball, self-diagnosed it as a MCL strain, it went away but then I reinjured it while doing something as mundane as getting off my stomach on the floor while working on computer cables. My wife made me go to the Dr., and the short version is that I was wrong, and I have a torn meniscus and an ACL tear. I was scheduled for arthroscopic surgery yesterday to remove the loose and frayed menisci, but there was an equipment breakdown at the facility I was to get my work done, and I've been rescheduled for surgery in August.

Right now that isn't a problem. My knee is acting fine at this point, but the problem is, I really don't know when I'll re-injure it again. It just happens.

Doing research to try to avoid it happening again bring up interesting items. This is a good article about the basics of meniscus injuries. I didn't know there were four general types of tears. This was also news to me:

Although there are two menisci in each knee, one medial and one lateral, they do not have the same injury history. The medial meniscus, or the one toward the middle of the knee, is injured 90 percent of the time. The lateral, or the one toward the outer part of the knee, is injured about 10 percent of the time, often along with a ligament injury.

Anyway, I'm hoping to make it through this summer without much aggravation of this injury. I tried playing tennis last week, and I got through a set and a half before I injured myself. I refuse to not play sports while I'm waiting for the surgery, but am willing to wear a knee brace, and to try to play in a slower, more deliberate style of sports in an effort to avoid injury. It was when I forgot to approach a tennis shot in this manner that I hurt myself, by depending on reaction rather than accepting the limitations of longer-term intention. This approach doesn't make my wife particularly happy, but active playing is too important to me to sacrifice unless the risk of injury appears greater than it does today.

We haven't heard much from the medical community about outsourcing, but that may change:

William Nilsson had not paid much attention to the knee injuries he sustained during football games in high-school some 50 years ago. But when he tore his knee ligaments last year while playing golf, he, like 45 million uninsured Americans, didn’t know how he could pay for a knee replacement surgery. He saw the light of hope with Healthbase that helped him find low cost but high quality treatment in India, ensuring that he could play golf again.

...

William Nilsson is one of the many uninsured and underinsured American patients who seek help at Healthbase each year. Healthbase, a Massachusetts based medical tourism facilitator, connects patients to leading medical facilities overseas, arranging first-class treatment for them at major internationally-accredited hospitals in India, Thailand, Singapore, and Mexico. In order to provide a wider variety of hospitals and greater convenience to its patients, Healthbase is expanding its network of provider affiliates to Costa Rica, Panama, Argentina, Brazil, Belgium and Turkey.

The cost of surgical care at Healthbase’s continually growing network of affiliated institutions is typically a fraction of that found in the U.S., with equal or superior outcomes. A knee replacement surgery, for example, which costs over $30,000 in the US, costs only $6,500 in India. Even with travel expenses taken into account, the comprehensive treatment packages offered by Healthbase provide a savings measured in thousands of dollars.