It will come to no surprise of anyone that I think Doyle’s ideas for healthcare reform suck. Talk about building a healthcare system on a weak foundation that is designed to fail. Yet, if one dares to mention ‘Doyle has no healthcare plan’ one is seen as uncompromising, impractical, and expecting too much too soon. The Journal ran an interesting piece this morning that outlined some of the major problems in the ‘Doyle’ system.
Angel Strothers’ struggle to get her 7-year-old son enrolled in BadgerCare began when she scheduled an appointment with a Milwaukee County worker: She was on hold for an hour and 25 minutes. Source: JS Online:
Geez, and the Neo Crybabies complain about the Canadian system. First thing you need to do is move away from a county bureaucracy delivery system. One should not have to deal with hours of phone conversations, multiple meetings, and harassment just to get healthcare. I say move these county workers into clinics and hospitals under a system of automatic coverage. If Angel takes her son to any clinic in the state of Wisconsin she should be able to fill out a 5 minute form, and be automatically covered.
In Wisconsin, as a general rule, a family of four with a household income of $37,000 a year is eligible for health insurance through a state program. Yet many people don’t know that their families are eligible.
This is hardly the case. Its not an information problem, its a bureaucracy and delivery problem. If you have never made your way through a county social service bureaucracy you probably wouldn’t understand. It still goes down as my most dehumanizing, degrading life experience thus far. Just look at what happened when parents were required to have their employers fill out a form for Badger Care.
For example, when Wisconsin required employers to fill out a form verifying that an employee met certain eligibility requirements, enrollment in the state programs dropped 11.3% in four months.
No shit. I am actually surprised it dropped so little. Who wants to go into their employer and have them fill out some form for the government. This reminds me of the Tommy W2 days when I had to go up to a professor in a 500 + auditorium to have him sign a form so Tommy could verify I was in class. I will admit that the employer required form was a big deterrent to applying for Badger Care when I had insurance gaps.
Its not even a happy scenario for those in the system,
Roughly one in four children enrolled in a state health program, for instance, has a four-month or longer gap in coverage each year
Again, Oh Canada here I come, 25% of children in the Badger Care program are uninsured for four months or longer. But, its better now, right, with applying online and all that.
“Each time I applied online, I had to go down there,” said Mary Rome, a Milwaukee resident. “I applied online three times and I had to go down there three times.”
Not really, folks still need to spend hours in county offices. It seems whatever standard you might want to apply, Doyle’s healthcare reform has been a complete failure.
