Blog Archive

Friday, August 3, 2007

Third World Country...Americas Backyard?


Curable illnesses carelessly going untreated, the sobering death of many whom hover around the poverty line, and a government so disorganized and a proud employer of scapegoats. For the typical American family, these are scenes watched from their comfortable living rooms with someone making a plea to donate only cents a day to save a child’s life. On the contrary, these scenes are unfolding in our backyards as more and more young children are being born without proper healthcare. The state of Texas, frontrunner in a long list of states without adequate healthcare for children, is most in need of change with one out of every five children lacking health insurance (ABC News Report).

What makes Texas’s situation unique and in the most need of help? The Texas population is steadily increasing and many of the people adding to the growing population are illegal immigrants. The large diverse industries of the Gulf Coast and large cities and the growing need for cheap labor are the perfect ingredients for disaster as many immigrant families calling Texas home are paid low wages with even lower opportunities of health benefits, if any at all. For the Texas residence who legally work and collect a salary that is able to sustain a household but are still considered around the poverty line, opportunities for adequate healthcare are just as grim. Lowered standards of what it is considered to be in need of assistance when it comes to healthcare and the many hoops families have had to jump though just to receive some form of healthcare have created a system that does not cover nearly enough of the Texans it should. The system is not only affecting the people dependent on the government assistance, but hospitals across the state are experiencing the pressure. Lower insurance reimbursement rates brought on by the masses in need of more assistance have left many of the “non-profitable” units to be closed. You would think the lives saved and not money brought in would be a profit that hospital execs would be more interested in, but in today’s world with a health system that has been established the bottom line means money, and not what is seen on the heart monitor when another child is dead from a curable illness.

With the unwanted publicity of having the worst childcare health system and angry voters the Texas legislature is finally trying to right the wrongs and adjust the system. Why is it that it takes many illnesses and death along with angry taxpayers to get something done? Governor Rick Perry and legislatures have gone through with submitting the plans for an improved Child Health Insurance Program (CHIP) to Congress, but growing tensions surrounding the amount of money Texas feels they need and the amount Congress is willing to allocate has only slowed the process. The legislature should be praised with efforts of improving CHIP, but somewhere throughout all of this they need to take accountability for letting the Child Health Insurance Program becoming what it is today. Whatever amount is decided for the program, we can only hope it will help save more lives by supplying more Texas children with proper healthcare.

In a country that claims to be so advanced and a state so big and vast of resources, there should be no reason for such a large gap in the children’s healthcare system. Though CHIP is in the process of being addressed by Congress and the Texas Legislature, the states uncovered children are far from safe from even the common cold with fears that without proper medical attention it can progress into something worse. Pretty soon the pleas for donations we see on television infomercials will be coming from the thousands dying right around us in Texas because of the states poor healthcare system.

2 comments:

Heather said...

I agree with your ideas on the poor health care system within our government. However, our welfare programs are expanding. Including, medicare, medicaide, food stamps, and WIC; and if eligible for these programs the benefits are high for the families. But becoming eligible for such programs is where the difficult part is. It takes time and those who wait may be in desperate need or are in an immediate attention for any type of health care. This where our health care system in the government lacks. Also, I do agree with and understand that each session that the legislation attend the decisions about money and availability for such health care programs are decreasing. Like you said, all of these issues are at out back door and we don't even realize it because seeing the infomercials made me believe that such poverty and poor health conditions was mainly in that part of the world, but it is obviously right here.

Kris S. Seago said...

Nice solid post. You might copy the text, paste it into a text editor, delete the post, create a new post, and paste the plain text from the text editor to get rid of the white background....