(no subject)

[serene]

I've been working on getting sterilized since last November or so.

Me, to someotherguy: sterilization appointment april 6 (consult, not surgery.)

Him: You know, if America had socialized health care you'd have to wait months for an appointment like that...

Comments

[janetmiles.livejournal.com]

I hope the consult goes well, that you are able to get the surgery, and that it is uneventful.

[darklily1.livejournal.com]

I've had government healthcare, run by the US. I was a minor dependent of a military serviceperson. I wouldn't want to go back to that. It's not so much waiting for months for a non-emergency medical procedure that bothers me ...it was having to go to the ER for ear infections and the like because there I couldn't get an appointment with the family practice department for months.

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

And you understand that that's the situation for all uninsured people and MANY of the insured working class, *right now*, yes?

[darklily1.livejournal.com]

Yes, I do.

And you realize that although I have insurance I have to pick and choose how much therapy/what therapy my son gets becasue I cannot afford the co-pays for all of it that has been recommended and that I "make too much money" for any assistance. I pay extra taxes so I can be self-employed so I can be able to take him to doctor/therapy appointments/spend the extra time with him that is necessary for him to do everything.

[hel]

I just posted something in this vein on my LJ, about my current health stuff and lack of insurance. I'm amused at the convergence of topics.

[someotherguy.livejournal.com]

Oh don't get me started.

I've got the government run security patrol (aka "Police") and I've still had stuff stolen out of my car. I've paid them I don't know how much in taxes over the years and what do I get out of it? Parking tickets!

And what do I hear on the radio and read in the newspaper? Wankers on one side yell that the police need more money and wankers on the other side yelling that the police department needs more government oversight. More Money? More government involvement?.

Come on people, didn't the breakup of the Soviet Union teach you anything? Socialism doesn't work. What we need to do is is get the government out of the security business.

Let the free market fix it. If people want someone to patrol their neighborhood they can hire a private security firm. If they want a crime investigated, they can hire a private eye. If they don't want those things they shouldn't have to pay for them, and if they can't afford them they should either get a better job or make some cuts somewhere else.

We're adults; we don't need the government taking care of us like we're children.

</ sarcasm>

[kightp.livejournal.com]

Heh. You do that particular riff entirely too well. I had to look twice at the username. I know people who actually make that argument - yes, for police services, and (dear gods) roads and highways.

Me, I say bring on the socialist handouts! If it's good enough for corporate America, it's good enough for the rest of us.

[redandfiery.livejournal.com]

I had to look twice at the username due to his fluent and syntactically correct usage of UK English obscenity. It's not often I see an American using "wanker" as an insult!

[someotherguy.livejournal.com]

You can blame/thank the BBC for that.

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

Damn socialised television...

Sometimes I try to calculate how many times I'd be dead or bankrupt if it weren't for the NHS. At least four, I think. I'm lucky enough to have private health insurance, but that's just a nice extra to complement NHS care.

[haleth.livejournal.com]

You had me going for a minute. *applause*

for Serene: *hugs*

[darklily1.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid you've taken my comment a little to the extreme, which I was afraid of when I wrote it. While I don't want to be forced into a system that I think will be worse than what I currently have (private insurance), I think it's horrible that people are unable to get necessary medical treatment because they don't have health insurance and that something better needs to be devised.

It seems to me that what needs to be done is to identify what the problem is (the inability to get health insurance) and focus on it rather than completely overturn the system.

[someotherguy.livejournal.com]

For many people the system can't get much worse. So what you're really saying is that you don't want to be forced into a system that's worse for you. But that's kind of what insurance is all about.

Insurance works by pooling risk. With private insurance the insurance company is competing for your business which means they have to offer you the lowest price possible while still maintaining a profit. That means that they have to offer you a price based on your personal risk level.

Take that to the extreme: if the insurance company knew exactly how much your medical care was going to cost them for the rest of your life, they would charge you that amount plus a handling fee. That's not insurance, it's a really crappy savings account.

Predictive medicine isn't that good yet, but the principle is still the same: the more you need insurance the more it costs. If you can afford private insurance, you probably don't need it. If you need it, you probably can't afford it.

That's why most people who have insurance have it through a group plan of some sort. Forced or semi-forced pooling of risk based on criteria other than need is the only way to keep insurance reasonably priced for people who need it. And there's no bigger pool than "everyone."

[darklily1.livejournal.com]

I just wanted you to know that I did read your reponse, and I'd like to write a well thought out reponse, I just can't right now.

It may not seem like it, but I'm not a staunch/extreme anything. My opinions are formed, like everyone else, by personal experience. Talking with other other people about their personal experiences/opinions is to me the best way to resolve problems. I see too much, on every side, a belief that only one way is the right way.

[cassidyrose.livejournal.com]

While I don't want to be forced into a system that I think will be worse than what I currently have (private insurance), I think it's horrible that people are unable to get necessary medical treatment because they don't have health insurance and that something better needs to be devised.

There are plenty of people with insurance in the United States who are denied medically necessary treatments. Having insurance is no guarantee that anyone will actually get the health care they need because it benefits the insurance companies to deny treatment. That is one of the biggest problems with the way health care is structured in the US.

Also, I think comparing the possibility of universal health care in the United States with what you received as a military family is comparing apples to oranges. Just because that was government-run doesn't mean universal healthy care would look or work the same way.

You say would you would not want to trade in your insurance for something you think would be worse. OK, but what happens if you become uninsured? There are any number of reasons this can happen and many, many people in the United States do not have insurance (and therefore basic healthcare) because they have been deemed uninsurable. Group plans (where you typically cannot be excluded) only last while you are employed and COBRA only lasts so long and only so many can afford it (COBRA for my family of three is ~$1,6000 a month which for us is only even remotely manageable for a very limited time).

Then there is the "pre-existing condition" issue. If you do not maintain continuous coverage an insurance company can deny you treatment for anything predating your coverage with them. This is so scary it is not even funny. While I have the good fortune of maintaining coverage for a number of years I may not always be so lucky and many are not.

It is hard for me to think that universal health care could be significantly worse than what we have now for all the reasons noted above and many, many more.

[darklily1.livejournal.com]

Just to begin with...none of what you said is anything I don't know or haven't been subject to.

Think about it...if it benefits the insurance companies to deny medical treatment, why would it be any different for the government? They aren't going to spend the money for any and all treatment, they are going to have rules just like the insurance companies. This would lead to one of two things...either everyone being having the same governement healthcare and sick individuals that do not respond to the treatment that they allow being out of luck or people being allowed to spend their own money on supplemental private insurance to and having to deal with the difficulties of two systems...and possibly still being denied coverage.


Just for the record, insurance companies can still claim "pre-existing condition" even when you maintain continuous insurance. Our current one tried to do it a few years ago, right after we changed to them from another company(no gap in coverage). My oldest child had an ear infection. They tried to insist it must be part of a pattern of treatment started in the previous 12 months. The pediatrician had to send them my child's records for the preceding 12 months. There was no pattern, there was no pre-existing condition. It took forever to deal with that.

[darklily1.livejournal.com]

Just for the record...my mother, who had both coverage as a result of my father's military career and a group health coverage my father kept after his second retirement from the government...died about a year ago. She had great health insurance...she died less than a week after being diagnosed with lung cancer, because her doctors treated her for months for a pulled muscle instead of cancer that had metastisized to her bones and broken her arm. She finally had an x-ray three weeks before she died, in an ER, because she couldn't handle the pain anymore.

This didn't happen in the military medical system, in case you are wondering. This was private practice.

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

of course your own experience has formed your opinions, but you might want to consider that one experience with a certain type of plan does also not represent _all_ such plans. also, government-managed care in a country where not all care is done that way is bound to be different than where the entire country is handled that way.

i've had government health care for more than half my life (various countries in europe and now canada), and managed private health care / none whatsoever while i lived in the US.

from my experience i'd pick government health care in a heart beat. i'd only pick private care if i were quite wealthy. because the managed private health care i was under in the US really was only better in one respect: i didn't have to wait as long for surgery. non-life-threatening surgery, that is. elsewhere i've always had care right away when it was a matter of acute trauma or standard maintenance.

here in canada i have had to wait at most a week for a GP appointment, and that was when my last doctor retired; normally it's been a couple days. if i couldn't wait that long, and it's not urgent enough to visit the ER, i could use a walk-in clinic, of which there are three in this middling sized town.

mind, there are probems with the health care system here: as an example, my MiL had to wait 6 months for a hip replacement. i think that's too long, because man, hips gone bad might not be life-threatening, but they're damn painful. but my BiL has had excellent care for his epilepsy and weak ligaments and depression all his life, and he's not having to live under a bridge just because he can't hold down a full-time job. i think society-wide, those make up for each other. still, i think care in rural areas and surgical scheduling both need lots of help.

but overall? health care in the US is a nightmare compared to what else i've experienced.

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

That situation is not true of all government-run healthcare, either. Here in the Socialist Workers' Utopia of New Zealand, I can usually ring my family GP in the morning and get an appointment either for that afternoon or the next day.

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

Right, and that's generally what I hear from other people in countries with universal care. The horror stories I hear are almost always hearsay from Americans.

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

Well in this case it was based on direct experience, but I've had people register genuine surprise when I tell them about how our health care system actually works, rather than how they've heard it must work.

[darklily1.livejournal.com]

Here's a website where people (from around the world)dealing with lung cancer discuss some of the problems they are facing:

http://www.inspire.com/groups/lung-cancer-alliance-survivors/discussion/are-we-sure-we-want-socialized-medicine/

Many of them discuss problems with not being allowed to get drug therapies that are available in the United States because their government thinks it's too expensive. In countries where it is allowed, many of them pay extra for private insurance on top of the government system. Many of them complain about the amount of time it takes to get appointments for necessary services.

[loveberry.livejournal.com]

My buddy haleth keeps linking me to you, so I thought I'd friend you. I hope that's all right. :)

Also, this post is made of win.

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

Of course it's all right, and thanks. :-)

[loveberry.livejournal.com]

:D

[trixtah.livejournal.com]

Tee hee. Nice one.

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

(: