This Shouldn't Happen in America

Great post Karen!

National health service would stop all this stupidity and Americans are being fob off that it does not work, bloody down right stupidity.  

Good post to share these untold stories as many Americans across this nation will no doubt, have their own challenging health care experiences, regardless of party, racial, educational, and economic background.

It's always telling that people with the best health care insurance are the ones who are the most virulent opponents of health care reform for the rest of working Americans. For example: None of the congressional members would ever suffer from poor quality and lack of health care coverage for whatever ailment they and their families might encounter.  

For some among the US public who are fearing "socialism" due to the health care reform, they might look to Canada, the UK, Sweden, France, to name a few, as none of these countries is even remotely in danger of becoming "socialist" anytime soon or ever.  It might help to read and research independent studies that are not political driven by either party.

So, where should this happen?

I agree Karen, "This Shouldn't Happen in America." Thanks for sharing!

I'm inclined to agree with Babel-Fish re. the profit motive. I and my family are on a private health insurance plan in the U.S.. I didn't know how dysfunctional the U.S. private health care system was until it was discovered that my daughter is autistic. In many cases, I have  to drive 50 miles in order for my daughter to see a "specialist" that accepts my private health insurance plan. And in one case, I had to drive 250 miles to Miami. Obviously, in order to do this, I have to take time off from work.

Often times when my wife visits her doctor, she doesn't see her doctor. Instead, she's passed off to a "nurse-practitioner". No offense to "nurse practitioners",  but come on . . . in the America that I grew up in, we expected to see the doctor when we were ailing. There were at least eight doctors, within walking distance, in my hometown back in the '60s and '70s and they all worked out of their home. 

Last year, my wife had a bad bout with diverticulitus. The hospital put her in the cancer ward and she stayed there for a week. No surgical procedures were performed and the bill came out to about $40 thousand. The hospital didn't even have Italian marble floors and escalators!

My grandfather was a small-town dentist in Southern Illinois. The townsfolk called him "doc".  Two of his brothers were MDs.  Their patients would often pay them with whatever change they had in their pockets, and if they didn't have any change  they'd pay with a peach cobbler, or perhaps a chicken or two or a bushel of corn and a basket of tomatoes. Picture the doctor on Gunsmoke or on the Andy Griffith Show and you'll get the picture.  Profit certainly wasn't the motive for my grandfather's and his brother's  attending medical school. Indeed, they probably could have made more money working in the coal mines. 

The U.S. medical insurance industry (as well as every other insurance industry in the U.S.) is run by PIGS solely for the benefit of PIGS. And like all PIGS, they slop and slurp at the trough of humanity until their angry master, armed with a pitchfork, disperses them. Americans need to come to the realization that the PIGS, on the insurance animal farm, have taken over and that they've gotten away with slopping and slurping for way too long. Americans need to become angry masters.

For profit health care insurance companies worship the dollar, and their theme song should be "if loving you [profits] is wrong, I don't want to be right."  When my health insurance went up through PERS, California retirement fund, I had to drop it.  Two years ago being the optomistic person I am, I thought I will just go somewhere else.  I was denied due to pre-existing conditions.  The elimination of this disqualifier is a huge step for insurance companies, but they are still guarding their bottom line with scare tactics about the inclusion of a public option, which I believe has to happen in order for real competition to effectively impact the industry as a whole.  The public option is a regulatory mechanism that influences how private insurers market themselves and fix prices.  Without it, we are still beggers at the doors of the insurance companies.    

I dropped PERS because of cost.  It went up $100, and it was just too much.  Gosh Roy, my solution was based on income and expenses.  Many like me have to make the choice between house payments and health coverage.  I chose my house. 

After dropping PERS, I was denied by Blue Cross because I have left hip osteoarthritis, and I had carpal tunnel surgury.  You cant get to be my age and not have something wrong with you!  LOL   However, I do not take any prescription medication and the carpal tunnel is corrected, so I guess they dont like chronic conditions like arthritis.

So well done, you put faces on the issues. These are real people facing real problems. The problems with the health care system are not theoretical.

OK,let's get down to some brass tacks.

Where are the conservative calls to do away with windstorm insurance?

How about flood insurance?

Come on, this is just petty, jealous, I got mine - screw you selfisness...thank you very much Ronald Reagan (jughead).

What upsets me is not the selfishness.  What upsets me is the lying and the stalling to stop any changes. 

Tort reform?....Hog bellies!  How is tort reform going to help the uninsured?  All the opposition wants to do is just keep giving to big business in the belief that something besides body fluids will trickle down on them.  It hasn't happened.  You give.  They take.  They demand more.  You kowtow to them.

So, give them Tort Reform - take away whatever protection remains for negligence (as we know the AMA polices itself so well).  Will the insurance companies start covering existing conditions in anything besides a CAT pool?  No.  Will they pass the savings onto you?  No.  Will the executives get nice stock options and bonuses?  Yes.

Good God!  These selfish twits who worship at the alter of the false god Reagan are an affliction to this nation.

So, then, if you can't take the heat, don't waste your time addressing me on issues of etiquette. You have a credibility problem there akin to the one about nuts and bolts.

I believe we have a problem here.  I certainly have a problem with those words and that tone.

Good Posting Karen.

omg, bring it on home, i needed that post

An article in the National Post this morning which may be of interest to some on the US Health Care Debate as seen by one Canadian Journalist.  The article contains comments. 

The Debate in the US is more than just about Health Care

I was watching the news this morning, and caught a glimpse of Obama's comedic side, when he stated opponents of his health care initiative (Most likely big Pharma and HMOs) is the devil of death (or something to that effect).

To which Obama replied ..... "Detractors think I am going to pull the plug on Grandma"?

This is an excellent article and so much that is important has been said above in response to it.  I share Tina's bafflement that Americans drive national interstate highways but distrust national health care.  So, if you have a car accident on a national highway, you want to be treated by one doctor who keeps his paper and pen patient records in cardboard box?  Instead of going to the moon, we should have instituted national health care, which turns out to be a lot harder.

Roy says,

What angers me is to hear others tell me that I am, in effect, bad because I don't want Washington, D.C, in charge of a 300 million people system that will guarantee care to illegals, for example.

What I find baffling about this attitude is that I have received excellent and free Government health care in France and Brazil, and yet there are Americans who would deny the care to others that these Americans would receive if they went overseas.  

Self-interest alone dictates that everyone present in America must have access to health care, lest they make your food at McDonald's while coughing tuberculosis bacteria into your french fries and hamburger.  Would you like to have someone working next to you in your office with highly contagious swine flu that has not been diagnosed, because you have insurance and they don't?  Would you like your child to contract AIDS, herpes, or another sexually transmitted disease because they have sex with someone who is not eligible for an AIDS test, not eligible for herpes treatment and counseling, and can't afford to buy the medicine to kill the bacteria in their sexual organs?  Your child is not safe unless everyone of his/her sexual partners has access to modern medical diagnosis and treatment.

Let's agree on this:  Anyone who has ever provided a service or product to you in the United States - directly or indirectly - should receive health care when they need it.  If everyone without a legal immigration status left the United States tomorrow, our health care would be in even greater a mess because the people who clean our hospitals and doctors offices are often from Guatemala or Mexico, without any legal immigration status here.

A study was once done to determine whether people would like to receive ten dollars as a gift.  Everyone wanted the ten dollars.  But when told that they would only receive the money if someone of another skin color also received the money, then people became much more ambivalent.  People didn't want the ten dollars if someone Black was going to receive ten dollars as well.

As for health care, some of us would rather die for lack of care than see "illegals" get care.  And that is precisely what happens.  Every time someone spends two hours in an emergency room proving their right to receive medical care, someone else -even someone with insurance - waits in a longer line to get emergency treatment.  Unless EVERYONE is covered then EVERYONE will wait in long lines while the human resources of our doctors and nurses are spent dickering with insurance companies.

Here's an analogy:  How many houses would burn down if firemen had to check homeowners fireman insurance before firemen put out fires?  How many houses of insured people would burn down while firemen were checking on the insurance status of the uninsured.

Somehow, we are all able to understand that unless everyone has access to public firefighting efforts than no one is safe from fire.  Perhaps we understand that because fires once spread from house to house, burning entire communities down.

Well, today the child in your child's school who lacks health insurance is going to give your child Swine Flu.  Swine flu spreads from person to person regardless of insurance or non-insurance status, just as fires once spread from house to house, before free, public firefighting became the norm.

If you neighbor can't depend upon the fire department then your house and his might burn down together.  You can't protect your house except by putting out the fire that is inflaming your neighbors house. 

Your analogy for insuring everyone in the U.S. is well stated. 

In 1994 Proposition 187 in California was passed withholding  from illegal immigrants social services, public education, and public health care.  Emergency services were exempt only because they are mandated by federal law.  In November of the same year it was legally challenged and a restraining order was issued. In 1997 it was found to be unconstituional and eventually was dropped in the appeals process which killed the law.  The precedence for care to illegals already exists.

In 1965 when Medicare was instituted it resulted in desegregating hospitals because they could not receive federal funds if practicing segregation.  

The point here is that when the public sector is left to its own devices without regulation or constitutional challenges, prejudices and special interest groups have the economic sway to control and mislead the general public.     

I don't know really what to add to this, but I'd like somehow for dental to be included in the mix.