Fuck I want "socialized medicine" and I want it now!

The BBQ Pit
441

Just so those of you doubters out there have another situation to consider, I’ll tell you the situation that my family has been in.

My wife and I got married one semester before she was done with college, and she had a job working for a non-profit agency as a victim’s advocate as soon as she graduated. She was working 20/hrs per week at $12/hour, and was on track to go full-time within a year or so, if she stayed in that position. At that point, I was halfway through a Master’s degree program and had just got an appointment as a research assistant, making $1500/month. We were in pretty good shape, or so we thought. We both had the student health insurance plan that was available through the university (she was still eligible, since it was available up to a year post-graduation). This was basically critical-care-only insurance. My wife has hypothryoidism, which wasn’t really covered by that insurance, but we could afford the medication and blood tests.

Well, within a month of that happening, we found out that my wife was pregnant. It wasn’t planned, but we wanted the baby. We were completely unable to get any kind of insurance that would cover the pregnancy, as it was considered a “pre-existing condition”. All the insurance plans required that the pregnancy rider be in place for 9 months before it would take effect. (I’m completely not joking. I wish I were. It’s funny to me now, but sure wasn’t then.) Also, the thyroid condition would not be covered under any private insurance plan either.

So what did we do? We made the only choice that would make financial sense: my wife quit her job. With just my income, we were just barely under the threshold for her to qualify for Ohio Medicaid. She was a healthy, productive, tax-paying adult, working for a social service agency, and due to our messed up medical system, had to quit her job to qualify for government health insurance.

And I have to tell you that Medicaid was the best health insurance she ever had. Once she had jumped through all the hoops (they made her take a pregnancy test in their offices), just about everything was covered. We did not see a single bill for anything. All her thyroid tests, prescriptions, everything were covered, including all the ultrasounds, prenatal visits, etc.

A month before our son was born, I got a full-time position as a software developer, working for a medical imaging company (where I am still employed). The benefits include health insurance for the whole family, and it’s about the best plan you can get. But there are still lots of hassles - for example, for outpatient lab tests, they limit who you can go to, since they only have arrangements with certain labs. We often have to call with them and argue about why they are charging us for this or that, even though there is only supposed to be a $15 copay per visit.

So what’s my point? At this point, I don’t know that switching to a single-payer system would really do much of anything for me. But it sure would have made a big difference for us 4 1/2 years ago. My wife could have continued working, helping victims of sexual assault and abuse. And I’m sure that there are lots of people like us out there, who have had to make the difficult decision to quit a job in order to get some kind of health care, since there is nothing available. Private insurance might as well not even exist if you have any kind of medical condition, since the premiums and exclusions are so outrageous.

Those of you who think you shouldn’t pay for other people’s healthcare are either extremely selfish or extremely short-sighted. I’m in a good position right now, but if I were to lose my job, prospects could be pretty dire if we had some kind of medical emergency while without medical care. And that’s how you should approach this: think about you, or someone like you, and what would happen were you to lose your job and have a severe medical problem. Are you prepared to lose your house, your life savings, and everything? Or would you rather subsidize everyone to some extent, and know that if you need medical care, no matter what happens to your employment situation, it will be available? Basically, even if you have no heart, do you at least have a brain?

442

I’m sure you didn’t mean to, but you sound like a Southern White man saying: “Yes, but if we free the slaves, what’s in it for us?”

443

One wonder’s why Americans who presumably care enough about other Americans on the whole just like any other population of a developed country continues to have difficulty in implementing UHC. I think Medicare/Medicaid has nuetralized the political force of the elderly and a lot of liberals on this issue.

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Oh well, I’m late to the party, and I’m sorry if I’m repeating things. Apologies if this is a bit disjointed or Kerouacky- I’ve just finished a 12 hour shift.

I bet “you’ll have to wait 10 years to see a doctor and you won’t get tests and then you won’t get treated” was brought up as an argument against socialised healthcare.

I’m currently working in an Emergency Department that sees 43,000 patients a year. Our average time from triage to departure either back home or to a ward is 3hours.

If you come in by ambulance having been triaged as very unwell, you’ll be met at the door by a doctor. Otherwise you’ll be triaged and seen in turn (yes, I’ll see the man with the *crushing central chest pain *,who staggered in 2 hours after you arrived, ahead of you if you’re here with a sore toe you’ve had for 3 weeks).

You get your blood tests, xrays and such immediately, results within the hour.
You get the first 3 days of whatever medications we think you need supplied free of charge by our department.
You’ll get reviewed by us in a few days if we think you need it.
You’ll get admitted and treated if we think you need it.
You’ll get referred back to your GP, or on to a specialist, if we think you need it.

I am lucky to be able to look at a patient and make a treatment plan based, not on their worth to society, not on the amount they earn, not on what they can afford, but based on what I think would be the best option for them as an individual. I get to give rich people who want invasive tests for minor complaints a few tablets and re-assurance and I get to give poor people expensive medications that change their lives without bankrupting them. Like I say, I’m really, really lucky.

I pay my taxes and I’m glad of the system.
The poor bear a disproportionate burden of illness, some as a cause of their poverty, some as a consequence of it. The only way to fight health inequality is to fight healthcare inequality, and that means that the rich and well have to suport the poor and sick.

The USA spends a higher percentage of their GDP on healthcare than any country in the world. So socialised healthcare might actually work out cheaper for the country as a whole…

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The resistance is amazing to me, truly. The advantages seem so enormous.

If you understand why it’s much cheaper to get good health insurance, as part of a large group, as opposed to as an individual, then you should be able to understand. An enormous savings is to be realized as everyone becomes part of one, single, very large, group.

Another enormous saving is to be realized as preventive care is available to all for conditions like diabetes, etc. Instead of the system absorbing the higher costs of dealing only with the cataclysmic results when hospitalization eventually occurs.

There is another huge savings to be had in having a single insurer protocol, for all things. Far less forms, far fewer bureaucrats, streamlined system.

Now your medical care will be directed by your doctor not some bean counter. No more being denied care your doctor feels is required, because your doctor is determining your access to resources.

Peoples savings, retirement, homes, children’s college funds and financial futures should not be reliant on the vagaries of good health. The citizens of the wealthiest nation on earth should not be one bad health turn away from financial ruin. Children should be able to play sports without worry of health coverage, people should be free to change jobs without risking health coverage.

It would put an end to people buying quality health insurance at great cost, only to discover, when tragedy occurs, it’s not really the ‘quality’ they thought they were purchasing. Victimized by an insurance company shell game we have all come to just accept as part of the ‘way it is’.

How sad, but no, I won’t feel sorry for the insurance company employees who loose their jobs. They’ve had a good run, but they should be considered just like the candlemakers when the electric light bulb took off. Times have changed, deal with it.

All of these advantages without mention of the moral values reflected in living in a country that believes that access to medical resources should not be dependent on how much money you make, but rather by your need.

I get that the world ‘social’ freaks some people out. They need to get over it. It’s just not that hard to understand, in my opinion. Though I do admit a lot of people on both sides of the issue have invested a lot of time and money making sure the waters are muddy.

446

Which is what medical insurance is SUPPOSED TO DO, no? Funny how it doesn’t anymore.

447

Regarding Rand Rover, I did some mulling and while I don’t know if his namesake Ayn made any statements about single-payer plans, I figure she’d have a dim view of insurance companies, since they resemble in some ways the parasitic characters in Atlas Shrugged. In that novel, whole industries had popped up of people who “had friends in Washington”, i.e. honest folk found themselves having to deal with (and pay) shady go-betweens just to get things done in an increasingly regulated world. Similarly, these regulations had become so convoluted that any arbitrary decision could be made and justified at any time, on the whim of whoever was in charge at that moment. Consider the character of Orren Boyle, who uses his influence through Wesley Mouch and others to push passage of “The Steel Unification Plan”, which clearly exists only to let Boyle grab wealth from Hank Rearden. Now consider the various health insurance companies: they contribute a great deal of complexity to health care, get large amounts of money for it, and use some of this money to make campaign contributions to get favourable laws passed. I don’t even have to slide into Directive 10-289 territory.

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I understand that it might be a wee bit too much to ask you to support something that could put you out of business. But I hope that if you do carefully examine the pros and cons and the weight of the evidence comes toward UHC, you’d have the moral courage to put your livelihood on the line for the greater good.

449

I actually have some experience with both systems, though I don’t have health insurance in Canada just yet. (Read: Warning! Anecdote!)

If you have an American family practitioner, you pay more, but because you’re a customer, the doctor spends more time talking to you, and probably knows at least a bit about you as a person – and you may have the same doctor for decades. In Canada, they take less time and are more businesslike, since you’re not a customer in the same way. Hence, more attention.

You’re also more likely in Canada to have a physician from a slightly-less-wealthy country (in my case, South Africa), which I imagine is the result of somewhat lower wages. Not sure about that, though.

450

…and sorry for offering a comment that was out-of-date. I hate it when that happens.

451

A lot of South African doctors come to Canada because its a hell of a lot less violent. That said, they’re awesome for dealing with trauma. We don’t get a lot of machete wounds or burning tires injuries in PEI.

PS: What Irishgirl said.

452

At long last, here is the cite for the comparison between health care in Canada and in the USA. Sorry for taking so long – the search function does not work for the word World, and I was searching for World Health Organization. My thanks to Chez Guevara who figured it out.

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=5456070&postcount=10

453

In the UK the private sector makes extensive use of NHS facilities as well as NHS trained staff. The private sector does not have ‘real’ hospitals, they have glorified hotels.

When anything serious happens private patients are packed off to the NHS.
The NHS subsidises private care.

454

:smiley: