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!

Karen - well written. You said, "Doing nothing is not an option". It is however for the special interest groups that currently profit from such a diseased system (pun intended) where delivery costs run 2.5 times more than other developed nations and with less effective outcomes. Their misinformation and rhetoric is why there is s much heat on the issue. The American people are being mislead by some whom they elected to protect their interest and by the Republican misinformation spin en masse. It is sad they have made such a basic right in a developed nation a partisan, petty and emotional debate to protect profit and promote inefficiency

Despite the head in the sand, we have the best system in the world, mantra, add into that the amount we spend as a % of GDP, spiraling health insurance costs (eh real villains in the piece) and you have a system in freefall.

You are so right: Doing nothing is not an option. And hasn't been for quite a while, but as they say denial is not just a river in Egypt

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.

I have gathered recently that it is unpopular when a Canadian weighs in on anything American but I have to speak up in favour of universal health care and I find the American resistance to it baffling. We have a blended system here, basic health care is covered but things like dental care, prescriptions, physiotherapy, massage therapy, naturopaths, and extra care (like a private room, or non-critical use of an ambulance) are NOT covered. Our system blends profits for insurers with taking care of the basic health needs of all of our citizens who seek it out.  I don't think our system is perfect because, in my opinion, it is too easy to fall through the cracks, but nobody here has to make the decision between losing a home or losing a loved one. We don't have an epidemic of bankruptcies associated with medical bills. People who seek care not offered by the system do face these issues here, but those situations are often by choice and are rare.

I hear often in your debate about a loss of liberty, or too much government control as concerns about even an opt-in tiered universal system and I find it puzzling. How is ensuring that all of your citizens have equal access to affordable, quality health care indicative of a loss of liberty and freedom? I wish someone could explain it to me because frankly, it sounds like a lot of paranoia and propaganda to those of us sitting outside the debate.

For the most part Canada and the US share very similar natural environments, we are exposed to similar teratogens and viral threats. Yet the average life expectancy in Canada is 3 years longer. We are number 14 in the world for highest life expectancy, the US doen't even crack the top 20 (38 according to CIA statistics from 2008). Now 3 years may not seem like tons, but our health care system is cited by impartial American experts as one of the reasons our life expectancy is higher. Less violent crime is another.

So, in all honesty I ask why people oppose helping their fellow citizens who are less fortunate. In every public debate when somebody is opposed it usually starts with something like this "I pay for health care just fine..." or "why should I have to subsidize them??" To that I say, your goverment under a Republican president, got the ball rolling on subsidizing wealthy corporations who had failed to do their jobs properly and ethically, why is subsidizing health care such an outrage? To those of you who have health care, count your blessings, and think of those who this program will help, because one day for circumstances outside your control, you may find yourself among them.

Your system covers 30 million people and is run on a province-by-province set-up. Canadians are busy rebuking us for not wanting a behemoth that is not decentralized as your system is. That does not make sense.

Would you want to be part of a 350 million person system?

I could accept a state by state system and I have said so.

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.

We only need to cover the working poor to complete coverage. We already have good coverage of the elderly, the poor and those with good jobs.

Why am I supposed to let the people in charge of the Post Office run my medical care when I don't need them just to include the working poor? I have been one and we can go to our country hospitals, as illegals do regularly and get treatment.

California is the 8th largest economic power in the world. Let it cover its own state and we, in Washington State, have a plan ready to go.

Obama doesn't want a "Canadian" system. He said that "it wouldn't work". What a crock!

He just wants control.