Need a basic guide about what healthcare reform means
Posted By: Richard Durham 
Date Posted: September 20th, 2009 Category: Health Care Reform
What exactlty is healthcare reform? I have no clue. I think a great idea would be making a simple, easy to read guide to healthcare reform for average Joe’s like me who need the cliff notes version.
Comment By: Michelle DuBois
Date & Time: September 21, 2009 at 11:49 am
What a great idea! I'd like to see a poll of how many people out there truly understand the meaning and consequences of healthcare reform in our county.
Comment By: Kimberly Stephens
Date & Time: September 21, 2009 at 4:05 pm
I have tried to read the reform written on healthcare and it is extremely hard to understand! A cliff notes version would be a great idea!!
Comment By: Joseph Prospect
Date & Time: September 21, 2009 at 6:35 pm
This would be good, perhaps we can give it to our members of Congress!
Comment By: Emily Carter
Date & Time: September 21, 2009 at 10:34 pm
I don't think anyone would turn down an opportunity to read the "short and sweet" version of health care reform!
Comment By: June Fowler
Date & Time: September 22, 2009 at 1:52 pm
The challenge with an easy to understand, short and sweet description of health care reform is that everything is still so fluid. What is proposed today, could be very different that what is proposed tomorrow. Very frustrating indeed.
Comment By: John Doe
Date & Time: September 22, 2009 at 2:29 pm
Whatever healthcare reform is, it should not involve government. That is a guide to disaster.
Comment By: Emily Barklage
Date & Time: September 22, 2009 at 2:43 pm
You can listen to Steve Lipstein, BJC president, discuss issues surrounding healthcare reform here: http://www.bjc.org/ … He helped me a lot!
Comment By: Robert C. Vogel
Date & Time: September 22, 2009 at 6:34 pm
It's no wonder there's so much turmoil swirling around healthcare and the potential reforms that may be enacted over the next few years, particularly when you consider our current healthcare delivery system and the incredible confusion that exists in it implementation.
Patients, families, and caregivers are hard-pressed to understand their basic coverage in many instances, compounded by doctors' staffs having to try to understand wholesale and minimal changes in coverage, new and revised coding of basic procedures, and numerous protocols involved in providing quality healthcare.
Now, complicating the current consumer and professional confusion for navigating through our healthcare system we add several constantly-changing proposals of hundreds or thousands of pages of hard-to-understand language that many experts don't even comprehend … and we expect Americans to knowledgeably debate the new initiatives, much less embrace and support them.
It's understandable why some people are upset and outraged. In general, most people fear what they don't understand, and it becomes worse when extremists from all sides create propaganda that isn't completely accurate.
In an industry where you can't have a conversation without using two or three acronyms in a single sentence, or where medical professionals and health plan representatives speak English but what they say doesn't make sense to the patient community, the challenge is greater than ever.
The answer is not easy, but I'm certain it starts with basic education and understanding.