Socialism really steams me!

Baskically we have two options.

One is to create some kind of government managed healthcare. As one of the commenters pointed out, we already have Medicare/Medicaid which are in serious financial trouble. I think I read somewhere that the US already contributes more to citizen healthcare than most/all other contries.

Second is to find some way to reduce the costs of healthcare. This may involve regulation, changing insurance laws so they don’t favor employers, setting caps on malpractice cases, etc…

The most amazing thing to me is that people will pay $500 a month for a car, or $1500 a month for a house, but complain about spending $200 a month for insurance to protect what is potentially their most valuable asset… their health.

One thing is for sure, no matter what path the government takes, there are going to be some unhappy people. Young healthy people with good employer benefits may not want to pay higher taxes to cover universal health care but lower income people with chronic health concerns will likely be in full support of it.

My guess is the politicians will try to meet somewhere in the middle and fail miserably. Is it better to try and accommodate everyone, or should the government build their plan around those in the most dire need?

But personally I don’t want to put that responsibility in the hands of our government. Just look at the job they’ve done with the public education system…I pay thousands of dollars in property taxes + more in income taxes (some of which the fed redistributes to state/local school systems), and yet the public schools remain unexusably TERRIBLE. I’d rather have back that tax money to put towards private school tuition for my kids. And I feel the same about my health care, so long as I have access to good insurance options.

At my job I was paying for the most expensive insurance plan of several available–a PPO that allowed me to go to any doctor I wanted. Having watched my mother die rather horribly in an HMO, whose staff had no incentive to recognize the obvious truth that she was full of cancer and every financial incentive to deny it, I’m determined never to be herded into a plan where I can’t seek competent medical care when I need it, and I’m willing to pay for that “privilege.”

So, when I came down with appendicitis a couple of years ago, my ex-husband drove me down to one of the largest hospitals in the fifth-largest city in the United States, where he dumped me at the ER. It was late at night and it was Christmastime.

The scene was straight out of the Third World. The place was absolutely jammed. I waited for almost five hours with no medical care at all, except for a sneer from an admitting nurse who didn’t like it that I was throwing up. I was in excruciating pain, and there wasn’t even a place to sit down, much less lie down. The floor was so filthy that despite my agony I couldn’t bring myself to lie down on it. I ended up sitting outdoors in the cold, on a cement bench, with a young woman who was having a miscarriage. She had been there for four hours, also with no medical attention whatsoever.

Finally I called some friends to take me home, where at least I could lie down in bed.

The following morning I called my doctor’s office at the Mayo. The doctor on call there told me to come in to the Mayo Clinic’s hospital, about a 20-minute drive from my house. I told her I could not drive at all. She said to call 911 and have them take me there. I said I did not think they would do it. She said they are required to take you where you ask to go.

That, it develops, was not so. The EMTs insisted that the only place they could or would take me is back to the hospital where after five hours I had gotten no medical care. I sent them away and got a friend to drive me to the Mayo, where within minutes I was on the way to emergency surgery.

Thank god I had the expensive insurance. It didn’t get me anywhere at St. Joseph’s ER, but it at least did, eventually, get me into a hospital where I received care. I am an elderly woman. Appendicitis is life-threatening, and it is more life-threatening when you’re skateboarding downhill to start with. By the time I got medical attention, I had been suffering from acute appendicitis for 23 hours. Twenty-five is about as long as you can go without a likely rupture. If my appendix had ruptured, I would have been at real risk of death.

Within a year of that incident, the PPO announced it would stop covering the Mayo. Fortunately, my employer offers an EPO that continues to cover my doctors. In fact, it’s significantly cheaper than the PPO was.

In an environment where multitudes of uninsured folk have to use ERs to get routine medical care (a flu epidemic was under way when I hit St. Joseph’s ER, and most of the people jamming the waiting room were there for flu symptoms), even the best insurance may not make adequate medical care available to you.

IMHO, a national plan that would provide coverage for EVERYONE would be a helluva lot better than one where you have to get a job with an employer who can afford to insure you (an increasingly rare commodity) to be able go to a doctor at all. No one should have to wait until their child is frighteningly sick with a sore throat, a cough, and vomiting to get routine attention for the flu from an ER. No young woman should have to sit on a cold cement bench outside a hospital while she miscarries a baby with no medical help. And no old lady should have to face a life-threatening emergency without hope of getting treatment at one of the major hospitals in the country.

A few thoughts I’ve had since moving: I lived in the States for seven years or so and every.single.year my healthcare was more restricted (number of doctors, rate of copay, drug list), I had to contribute more from my paycheque, and I think I had a total of 5 or 6 different HMOs because my employer was always switching. It wasn’t so much of a headache for me, but colleagues with kids just seemed to be drowning in paperwork. I also sat in on a few board meetings where HMO rates, switching HMOS, etc were the centrepiece of the discussion rather than bus dev or recruitment, which seemed a shame. The third thought is that I met people who wanted to go freelance or take a break from work but were just paralyzed by the fact that their job was their healthcare. Here, the freedom to do your own thing is palpable.

Also, I don’t think money is the only issue here either. One problem with our American system is that people get turned down for health insurance for both serious and minuscule “pre-existing conditions.” I put that in quotes because even the smallest things, such as the use of an asthma inhaler or even lesser health need is enough for an ins. co. to reject them for coverage.

This system makes it virtually impossible for sick people to get coverage unless they are able to get it through work. And we know not all jobs offer insurance. And of those that do, many offer plans that are unaffordable for most of their employees.

With our system, the sick, who need ins. the most, either are unable to get it or have to pay such exorbitant costs for it, that added with their actual medical costs (since the ins. never picks up all the cost) that they end up in bankruptcy, homelessness, and other dire situations.

Even those who’ve worked hard, saved, and done well for themselves their whole life can lose everything with one serious illness. There is almost no one in this country that this issue does not have the potential to affect. Unless you are very very wealthy, one serious illness can devastate you. You might go over your lifetime maximum if you have coverage, and then be stuck with massive bills or have to forgo needed care, or you might lose your coverage altogether if it isn’t a group plan of if you can’t work due to illness.

There are so many horrible possibilities and the truth is that many Americans aren’t just going broke but are losing their lives due to their inability to afford proper care and medications.

Additionally, we don’t have to emulate Canada. There are many models for us to look at, and we have the option of coming up with a system of our own that suits our needs and abilities.