Discussing Health Care

Kathy (http://stevenbell.blogspot.com/) poses a serious question and it deserves a serious answer.  Frist the question:

You seem like a smart person. I don't understand why you and others, who clearly see how our government screws up so many things so badly, can possibly support government health care.

I don't want the Republicans to fix health care, because they can't. The Democrats sure as hell can't do it either and Hilary's health plan is one of the scariest things I imagine when I think of hte possibility of her getting into office.

If you haven't faced a serious health condition first hand, I think it's difficult to see how completely people have been screwed over by government health plans.

This subject comes up frequently on one of the pediatric brain tumor groups I help moderate. Hundreds of members, from all over the world, including from some of the countries we hold up as examples of what a good government-run plan should look like.

So this topic came around recently again, we need a good health plan to take care of us.

Government-sponsored plans are like HMO's, they work great when you don't have a medical condition that's expensive to treat.

But you got to read about Ellen's experience in Canada firsthand. Ellen had metastatic renal cell cancer, even though she lived with it for years, she was considered terminal.

So, when she got a little bump on her face, a metastasis, that could have been removed by a simple outpatient surgery, the government said that terminal patients can't have surgery for metastases, only radiation.

So poor woman ended up puking her guts out for over a month because radiation is cheaper than surgery.

Then there's the matter of antinausea drugs for treatment-related nausea. The good drugs are Zofran (ondansetron), Kytril, Anzamet. Miracle drugs, the nausea is gone with no side effects.

There are also cheap drugs available, benadryl and phenergan for example. Both will knock you flat AND they don't work.

But Canada wouldn't pay for good drugs for Ellen, and when they did, they'd give her something like 3 pills for a month.

Zofran is designed to be given 3 times a day, not 3 times a month.

I know personally over half a dozen families who have crossed the border to the U.S. because MRI's are a scarce resource in Canada, they come over here and pay $2000 so they can get an MRI today instead of in 6 weeks.

One boy I know died waiting for his MRI while the parents fretted over whether or not to pay for an MRI here that they could little afford.

Obviously this is a sore topic with me, but it's the truth. I may have to pay more than I otherwise would, but I could take either one of my boys down to the ER today and if I screamed long and hard enough, they'd get their MRI before 24 hours had passed.

In Canada, that's not necessarily possible. In my online group, this experience has been echoed over and over, in the U.K., in Australia.

I don't want Hilary or any other government idiot telling me what medical care I can or can't have. The lives of my kids is way too precious to place in her hands.

Besides, where will we go for MRI's when she gets her hands on our health plan?

So very many things about our nation's health are screwed up right now, but placing our lives in the hands of a screwed-up government and taking away our free choice about medical decisions is not the way to go.

And that's what I think about that.

To begin with, Kathy, I don’t believe Sen. Clinton’s universal healthcare coverage is based on the Canadian model.  And because it isn’t, I’m not sure what the relevance of paragraphs 7 through 17 is, and not being a Clinton fan, I’m not interested in defending it to you or anyone else.  Of all of the Democrats in the race, only Dennis Kucinich has proposed a single-payer system similar to the other western democracies.  (Note:  of all of the western democracies, the U.S. is the only one that doesn’t have some system of guaranteed healthcare for its citizenry.)

Let’s talk about the “superior” American system.  Don’t have any serious, long-term problems in the U.S. without insurance.  We may have the best cancer care industry in the world, but there is a buy-in price that eliminates a huge number of people who will die sooner rather than later because of the inequality of care.  Sure, we have a few general hospitals that offer service to the poor on a first come, first served basis.  As a Christian, do you feel that your responsibility to the poor is satisfied with King-Drew in L.A.?

I agree that we have been poorly served in this country by our government.  In 1993, the Republican Party and its allies among the Democrats, completely shot down any attempt at healthcare reform.  They did not offer an alternative to Mrs. Clinton’s plans.  They just shot her plan down.  In the past dozen years, they have offered nothing, save one boondoggle of a pharmaceutical plan which helps seniors pay for overly expensive medicines, but which benefits the pharmaceutical industry much more than it benefits individuals.  I give the Republicans complete credit on that one.  They controlled both houses of Congress and the Presidency.  It is their plan, and it’s a very expensive plan.

You seem to imply that not having any sort of government guarantee of healthcare is by far more beneficial to having any sort of government plan.  That’s always easier for someone who has health insurance to say.  But let’s look at what we do have for a moment.  Do you think having private insurance guarantees you treatment?  Ever have to wait in line for a kidney?  I believe a young woman in Southern California died recently because her private carrier considered the recommended treatment to be experimental. 

If it weren’t for government intercession, no one sick in this country would be able to get insurance.  It would fall into the same category as car and homeowners insurance:  you can’t use it but once, because after you’ve used it once, your rates go up disproportionately to the cost to the insurance company.  That’s the free market system without government regulation.

What you seem to fail to grasp is how truly awful the system is in this country.  You’d rather take potshots at Hillary Clinton than to hold your own political party to any sort of standard for anything.  Your political party has not participated in the debate over healthcare.  Your party instead has given us a war in Iraq which has cost us close to half a TRILLION dollars thus far.  If that money were spent here, Kathy, we could guarantee everyone in this country exemplary healthcare.

The overwhelming majority of people in this country have indicated their desire for the government to make healthcare more accessible to everyone.  It is the function of government to respond to the voiced demands of its population. 

I’m personally very tired of hearing Republicans scream “socialized medicine” each time an attempt is made to make healthcare universally accessible.  There are much scarier things about which we should worry.  It’s too bad Republicans weren’t screaming and demanding “decent, honest government” as their President and Congress screwed this country these past seven years. 

If you don’t like what the Democrats are proposing, propose something better.  Work with them rather than just simply attacking various plans because you have a visceral dislike for one of the Democratic candidates for President.  Universal health care is going to happen in this country in some form or another whether you like it or not, whether you approve of it or not.  If you participate in the discussion perhaps your experience and insight will help to guide the planning of the system we will eventually have.

Meanwhile, I found a site where Americans are begging for help.  It sure makes me feel like our system is superior to the Canadians, the English, Australians, New Zealanders, the French, Germans, all of the Scandinavian countries.  Yep, it sure does make me feel superior:  http://www.google.com/Top/Society/People/Requesting_Help/Medical_Needs/

Personally, I’ve been dealing with HIV for over 20 years now.  I, too, have some experience with healthcare delivery in this country, and like you, I too have strong opinions.  Unlike you, however, I don’t blame those who would seek to reform our system for our bad system.  I do blame those who only know how to oppose change for the inability of our system to improve.

Comments

[StopUnumSupport]

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Ron Paul 2008!

[Lab Kat]

Send this chick to me.... I was without insurance for nearly a year because I wasn't employed and I had too many "illnesses" for the insurance bean counters to be comfortable with. I'm still paying doctor and lab bills on what are considered vital, base services, such as a Pap Smear.

[Houston]

Lab Kat, Kathy is a devoted wife, mother and evolved human being. I mean no disrespect to her with my argument. In her comment, she asks one very pertinent question: why do we trust government with such an important topic as providing universal health care? I can understand why many people might have such a negative opinion about the ability of government to provide basic services to the people. After all, the Republicans have been telling everyone how evil and inefficient government is for the past century. By the time Reagan was running for the Presidency, roughly between 1964 and 1980, all the man ever said was how bad government was.

No credit is given to the government for its many successes in transportation, space exploration, education, -- I can go on.

She seems to think that universal health care will somehow deprive her of choice, as if she has choice now. Kathy has no choice when it comes to health plans. I doubt if she could find an insurer in this country that would cover her family.

Some people do not believe that there is enough pie to serve everyone at the table a piece of it. Rather than share the pie with all who hunger, they would restrict who can sit at the table. The problem with that attitude comes when you lose your place at the table.

She's at least partially right in her cynicism in regards to the government's ability to do anything well. She knows the ability of her political party to make any good idea a boondoggle.

[facilitheal]

Congrats! The world needs more sites like this, and more people with his heart and caliber.


Roberta from http://www.health-care-facilities.com/>Medical Care Facilities

[Kathy]

This is for StopUnum. Thank you for posting the link to Michael Moore's video.

I have relatives in Sweden, Denmark and Norway. My mother's side of the family immigrated to the U.S. from those countries during the mid to late 1800's through Ellis Island, by boat and train and on horseback back in the days when ladies rode sidesaddle.

My mother's brother lives on the 800-acre plot of land given to their family to clear and develop for logging, in the same house my mother was born in.

From what I know of Norway from my relatives, not having been there myself, that video paints an accurate picture.

Norway is not the United States. First and foremost, Norway is a country of white folks with jobs.

Did you see anyone in that video who wasn't white? An important scene missing from their part of the world is the hordes of uneducated, poverty-stricken immigrants illegally crossing the border about 30 miles south of where I live.

Norway goes to great efforts to maintain the quality and restrict the quantity of their immigrants. They recognize that they have limited resources and that to keep up the quality of life they enjoy, the restriction of immigration is an important factor.

I live in one of the areas of our country most strongly affected by illegal immigration and it bothers me immensely that the people who are here illegally get better health care coverage than my sister-in-law on disability. She paid into our system for years and now that she needs the same services she funded for the floods of people from the south, she can't even get enough money to pay for her drugs, let alone her lodging and food.

I personally will never support any universal health plan that isn't also accompanied by a strict immigration policy. I have compassion for those folks, but I just can't afford to take care of them and support my own family.

[Kathy]

Two final comments and then I'll stop hijacking your blog. I don't feel comfortable posting all of this on my own blog for a number of reasons so I hope you'll forgive me.

1. King-Drew: That place is a train wreck. I support shutting it down and directing their patients elsewhere, I personally am not sure that any amount of money can fix the place. But my view is branded as racist, a large number in the black community want that place to stay open at whatever cost and that's where they want to go. So whatever I guess.
2. Regarding your "site where Americans are begging for help": http://google.com/Top/Society/People/Requesting_Help/Medical_Needs I believe you're a smart person so I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you gave it a glance and didn't actually check any of the links. I actually looked at that site. I found:
   • A Muslim man living in Europe with mercury poisoning
   • A man in Romania needing surgery
   • A missionary family living in Mexico
   • A Lithuanian girl with AML
   • An intellectually challenged girl in Africa
   • A Ukranian woman with Hodgkin’s lymphoma
   • A Venezuelan girl injured by a drunk driver
   • A Biblical Prophecy / End Times site masquerading as a request for surgical expenses
   • Four pure spam sites
   • A man seeking funds to save his parents' miniature schnauzer
   • A man seeking funds for surgery for his golden retriever
   • A woman who classifies herself as a "cyberbeggar" seeking funds for Lasik
   There were plenty of other sites that were more legitimate, but based on the criteria some of those folks are using to ask for money, it occurred to me that maybe I'm missing a financial opportunity to help my own family.

But you don't have to make that point to me. If you'd wanted a list of sites of legitimate people asking for money for healthcare you should have just asked me, I could have provided a much better list. It occurred to me reading that list that I'm missing a financial opportunity to help my own family.

But we don't play that way. At Christmas my family gives us small gifts, the rest of the money goes to St. Jude, at our request.

Steven and I will be on the radio next Thursday helping our local country music station raise money for St. Jude. You want to make a real difference in the lives of really sick children, stop with the political rhetoric and send a check to St. Jude.

I personally guarantee that money will be used well no matter who gets into office.

OK, I'm done now.

[Houston]

Kathy, you are very welcome to hijack my blog from time to time to make me examine differing points of view. I feel this was a good exchange.

You're right, I didn't read but half a dozen or so of the "plights," and being a lazy person, I used it rather foolishly. I stand corrected.

It's interesting that you tie illegal immigration into your reasoning. It's a good point that needs to be examined. So let's do it.

I'll bring it to the front page by doing a blog posting on immigraton, legal, illegal, and otherwise. You have a distinctly different perspective than mine. Mine is enlightened and naive. The only illegal immigrants I know are Gay men living in San Francisco with their partners. I don't consider them to be an invading force, but I do think they are treated unjustly. You see hundreds and thousands of desperate people passing through your area, sometimes like locusts, consuming everything in their path.

Can any two people have a more disparate experience on the same subject?

I'll get busy and start writing.