Thanks, ocjim.

When I was young people used to say that socialized medicine was Communist and that we were better off dead than red. So I found it rather amusing when every other developed country in the world adopted a system of socialized medicine and the United States was the only developed country left in the world without one. I guess it meant that despite what anyone may think, the Communists won and they have taken over the entire world except for us.

Do you think if we nuke ‘em we can get other countries to give up their Communist health care?

It is kind of a shame that some people are so afraid of socialism that they’d rather die than have decent health care, but it may be some sort of Darwinian survival of the fittest type thing.

So, I guess there’s no chance whatsoever that Ed would watch “Sicko.” I’ve heard that anyone who even watches the trailer for that film gets drummed out of the dittoheads and labeled a loony liberal. At least the 9/11 first responders in the film know the truth. They got health care in Cuba for free that they couldn’t get here at all. Now the dirty Communists are even saving American lives—how subversive can you get?

Ed deals with the generalities, stereotypes, and emotion-laden talk points that right wing talking heads use in the place of reason and logic.

And by the way, Ed, the V.A. system is not an example of socialized medicine. It could probably best be described as a totalitarian Communist system because it is centrally controlled and the government decides what the V.A. can and cannot treat and exactly how they must or must not treat it. In a system of socialized medicine, such decisions are usually up to the individual health care providers and their patients.

According to my dictionary, “social” means “pertaining to public welfare,” and “socialize” means “to adapt for the needs of society.”

Since our Constitution says that the Founders intended (the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States says that it is ordained and established “in order to,” which is a statement of intent), among other things, to “promote the general Welfare,” it appears that socialized medicine is well within our Constitutional rights.

Ed, have you seen Michael Moore’s film, “Sicko,” about socialized medicine?

It is not the fault of socialized medicine that our government chooses not to have any oversight with regard to most Pentagon spending, so that in recent years there were trillions of dollars reported lost, missing, and unaccounted for, but oversees every penny of the V.A. medical budget which has been drastically reduced so that V.A. hospitals are understaffed and underfunded.

I think you can watch the film for free online here

The one-payer system in France sounds like a vast improvement over what we have and cost much less. Our over-priced system does provide good “medicine” and choice for a minority. But what about the rest and where is the choice for the overwhelming majority of Americans.

For the uninsured and under-insured, the choice is bankruptcy given a critical illness or injury.

By Mark E. Smith, March 19 at 10:34 am #

Thank you very much for that information.  I appreciate it very much and I will use it. 

Also, let me express my sincere appreciation for Congessmen like Dellums.  They fight the good fight.

Garth, I used to volunteer in a district office of former Congressman Ronald V. Dellums (now Mayor of Oakland) and he introduced a single-payer health care plan in Congress every single year of his 24-year tenure as a Representative. As I recall, it usually never got out of committee and he was called a “pinko” and a lot of other names. The plan sat in a 2-volume large binder set in his office. One of my neighbors ridiculed me for working for the “Communist” Congressman until one day her health insurance premium doubled and she asked me if Rep. Dellums could help her.

I don’t have skin cancer yet (knock wood), but I ordered some stuff called cansema salve because a friend told me it had worked for him. It has a long shelf life, possibly longer than my own as I’m no longer young, and seems like a good thing to have on hand instead of waiting several months for appointments while something metastasizes.

Our health care system sucks. I’ve been diagnosed with internal cancers three times and told I had to schedule surgery. Each time I told the doctor that I needed time to think about it and would be back in two weeks. Then I’d get out my juicer and go on a carrot and cabbage juice regime and each time when I returned to the doctor I was told that the condition had disappeared. Nowadays whenever I start to feel under par I google the symptoms plus the word “juice,” get out the juicer, and drink whatever fresh juices are recommended until I feel better.

More people in the United States die each year of legally prescribed drugs than of illegal drugs. I don’t use illegal drugs and I’ll be darned if I’m going to use the even more dangerous legal ones.

I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts that those 22,000 Americans who, according to Ralph Nader, died last year because they didn’t have health insurance would’ve liked to have “just some guy” looking in on their health.  Compared to that megalomania, I’d prefer it.
Two years ago, my wife waited 6 weeks to see a doctor for an examination that confirmed what she feared, skin cancer.  Then she had to wait another six weeks for an appointment at a hospital. 
In a recent survey, most doctors are for the single payer health plan.
And to think that Harry Truman first tried to introduce this in the early 50s.

It’s my understanding that universal health care does not take away one’s ability to buy and maintain private health insurance coverage if that is one’s choice.  I agree…that surgeon spoke out of turn.  Who cares what his political viewpoints are at such a time? I’m glad Mr. Robinson hasn’t had to pay a dime out of his own pocket. 

However, even for those of us who have managed to keep our health insurance coverage through these tight times, we still have rather large deductibles which we DO have to pay ourselves, and that amount can be daunting when we consider the costs of even the most minor surgery.

QUOTE: The last thing the surgeon said to me before they rolled me into the operating room was, “You know, if you and Obama had your way with health care, it wouldn’t be me doing this operation. It would just be some guy.”

You know, that’s utter crap. I live in Canada, where we have had what Americans call “socialist” healthcare since the 1960s. My husband had surgery on his hand last year, and guess what: it was done by a surgeon who specializes in hand surgery. I’m afraid that the “some guy” we usually ask to do this kind of thing was sweeping the streets that day, so we had to use a specialist.

Sheesh.

Gaylordcat, I don’t care if you respond or not.

You wrote, “Do you know what stabilization means?”

Yes, I do.

“If you’re having a heart attack, they stabilize you as they would any patient; if you are snake bit, they stabilize you as they would any snake-bite victim.”

Snake bites are not very common in the U.S. In the case of a snake bite the ER would try to get the proper anti-venom.

Heart attacks are very common in the U.S. In the case of a heart attack, they would stabilize the patient and discharge them with a referral to a cardiac specialist. They don’t do triple-bypass surgery in an ER, and hospitals that do cardiac surgery don’t accept uninsured patients. If the reason you had a heart attack is because you need a bypass, you won’t get it in the ER. If you’re not insured, you won’t get it at all. The next time you have a heart attack, they’ll stabilize you and discharge you with the same referral. Eventually, without treatment, your condition will deteriorate to where they won’t be able to revive you in the ER.

They’re not throwing anyone out, they’re stabilizing them and referring or transferring them to specialists and hospitals that won’t accept them without insurance or the ability to pay cash. For the person who is inevitably going to die without treatment, it is a distinction without a difference.

At least he didn’t get the surgeon who mutilated and maimed 500 patients. He told one of them just before she went under ‘I’m going to take your uterus too’. And he did. He went on operating and harming patients for years and has only recently been arrested. I think he and Mr. Robinson’s surgeon were brothers under the skin. The crazy surgeon would have told Mr.Robinson ‘I’m going to take your penis too’ and from what I’ve seen of the American health care system sometimes that’s just about all the male patient has left. There are plenty of really good models for health care systems for America to choose from. I think the one in Taiwan is the pick of them because it was designed by the citizens of Taiwan. In other words they got what they wanted, not what the doctors wanted. They asked the patients not the doctors. How amazing! In their system you don’t even have to waste time and money going to a GP before you get to see ‘God’ i.e. the specialist - you can simply make the decision that you need to see a specialist and go and see one. It’s time the American medical profession ceased to be an expensive scam, run for the doctors, the health insurance industry and not the patients. That would really give you choice, not the phoney choice these people always put forward of ‘choosing your doctor’. When they’re all bandits how is that a choice? Design a decent health care system and you won’t need to worry about that. I recently heard an American on the radio explaining that he was in hospital for a week, had tests and was examined by a neurosurgeon. The bill? $240,000. You don’t need a medical degree to make the diagnosis: RIP OFF. And for the poor it’s simpler - just R.I.P.

Mark E. Smith

Do you know what stabilization means? If you’re having a heart attack, they stabilize you as they would any patient; if you are snake bit, they stabilize you as they would any snake-bite victim. ALL persons who qualify for EMR treatment ARE stabilized. After stabilization, if the EMR has not the means to treat the ailment, you are transfered. Try it sometime. You may find rude people, but THEY CANNOT THROW YOU OUT.

Finally, can you back up all your claims with sound evidence? In most all hospital EMRs there are signs explaining that the EMR of that hospital cannot turn you away. You appear to cast the medical profession in some evil place where doctors and hospitals treat people like pieces of meat. I’ve been on this planet 70 years, and even before laws were enacted to protect people, doctors and nurses were always ready to give aid. Somewhere, sometime, something horrible has happened to you related to medical care.

Thanks for a rousing discussion. Enjoyed it. I will not respond again.

Gaylordcat, please read what you posted carefully.

Being entitled to emergency care, trauma care, and stabilization, does not entitled you to treatment. If you are having a heart attack, your condition will be stabilized long enough to transfer you to someplace where you’ll need insurance. If you go to an emergency room BEFORE the condition has evolved into an emergency, they’ll diagnose you, tell you that it isn’t an emergency, and refer you to someplace where you’ll need insurance. Many uninsured people die because they have to wait until their condition has developed into an emergency before an emergency room will see them, and it is then too late for them to be saved.

Screening may mean simply telling the patient that their condition is not an emergency and cannot be treated there.

Emergency care means stabilizing an emergency condition until the patient can be transferred or referred to a place of treatment, which emergency rooms are NOT, except for the purpose of stabilizing emergency cases so that they can be transferred or referred to places of treatment.

And “appropriate transfers” means to places that are NOT emergency rooms and therefore do not have to accept uninsured patients. It is not appropriate to treat patients in an emergency room, except for the purpose of stabilizing an emergency condition so that the patient can be transferred or referred to someplace other than an emergency room.

Emergency rooms ONLY treat emergencies. And then only for long enough to stabilize them sufficiently so that the patient can be transferred to referred to someplace that requires insurance or, if the patient is indigent and uninsured, and if there happens to be a charity hospital or free clinic in the vicinity, perhaps they’ll be referred there.

There is no right to treatment in an emergency room, only to screening, stabilization, and transfer or referral to a place of treatment.

Mark E. Smith, please read:

Know your emergency room rights
Federal law gives you the right to emergency care, regardless of your ability to pay. Here are the details on how you should be handled at the hospital.
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By Insure.com
When you’re injured and in the emergency room, the last thing you want to have to do is fight for treatment. Fortunately, a federal law passed in 1986 to prohibit a practice commonly known as “patient dumping” gives you the right to emergency care regardless of your ability to pay. The federal law applies to hospitals that participate in Medicare—and that includes most hospitals in the United States. However, the patient-dumping law does not give you carte blanche.
What you’re entitled to
In a nutshell, the federal patient-dumping law entitles you to three things: screening, emergency care and appropriate transfers. A hospital must provide “stabilizing care” for a patient with an emergency medical condition. The hospital must screen for the emergency and provide the care without inquiring about your ability to pay.
Hospitals cannot transfer patients until their condition has been stabilized. There are a couple of exceptions: if a patient requests to be transferred and is fully informed of the consequences of being moved, or if a physician feels that the medical benefits exceed the risk of the transfer
For instance, if a hospital is not equipped to deal with a trauma case, the emergency room physician may transfer the patient to a hospital that has a trauma center. Patients themselves sometimes will want to go to another hospital, either because they prefer that hospital or because their doctor is there. If you ask to be transferred to another hospital before your condition is stable, you’ll most likely have to sign a form to show you’ve given your informed consent.

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Insurance/KnowYourRights/KnowYourEmergencyRoomRights.aspx

This is how a writer supports opinions with facts.

Eugene Robinson’s ultimate conclusion is wrong on two counts. First,we already don’t have our choice of doctors.  Those of us in HMOs must use HMO doctors and hospitals - even if they are far away or poor quality - or else the HMO won’t pay.  People in PPOs can go to any doctor who will take their insurance, but they pay more if they go outside the network.

Second, no one is talking about taking away choices.  Obama’s health plan, and the health plans under discussion in Congress, are based on letting people who have health insurance stay with the coverage they already have.  Everyone would be allowed to choose coverage from a variety of other health plans.

No one is talking about taking away the right to choose your doctor - any more than we have already lost that right.

@DMFD, who wrote, “There is not one person in this country (illegal or not) that can walk into a hospital with a problem and be turned away.  It is the law.  The hospitals have to treat you regardless of insurance or not.”

Wrong. If you manage to get to an emergency room, they have to diagnose you. They do not have to treat you. They simply refer you to a doctor or hospital that does not have to treat you unless you’re insured.

Do you think that if you walk into a supermarket, they have to let you have a loaf of bread whether or not you have money to pay for it?

Health care corporations are just like any other corporations, required by law to maximize profits for their shareholders. Free clinics will treat you and Family Health Centers will offer a sliding scale, but doctors don’t work for free. You can’t see a doctor or enter a hospital without going through the receptionist who has to check to see if you’re insured. If you’re not, they’ll refuse to see you.

Only with socialized medicine can everyone be assured of being treated. In a single-payer health care system, the doctors know they will get paid and therefore the receptionists will not turn anyone away.

As for being treated by “some guy,” there are still G.I. Bill doctors around and treating patients. Some of them could never have gotten into medical school if they hadn’t been considered war heroes from WWII and the government hadn’t paid their tuition. Many of them could never have competed if females and minorities had been allowed to enter the professions. I’ve been “treated” by these incompetents, so I usually try to find a foreign or female doctor who didn’t get through school because the university needed the tuition money and the instructors were afraid to flunk them.

Many years ago I was in a Vocational Rehabilitation program and they gave me three solid days of testing, after which they announced that I had the potential to be either a doctor or a librarian, the two top careers in their occupational index. Since they couldn’t pay for training for either career, I was allowed to take vocational skills classes at a community college. When I found a gap in my schedule, I tried to sign up for a premedical class. There were only six students in the class, whereas most other classes had sixty students or more. I was denied admittance to the class, even just to audit it, because, as the school’s counselor told me, “That class is only for people who can afford a medical career.” Not the best, not the brightest, but the ones with the most money.

More people in the United States are killed by prescription drugs than by illegal drugs. I’m in a senior building and many of my neighbors take thirty to forty pills a day, not because they need them but because the doctors think of Medicare patients as cash cows and prescribe everything they can think of.

Our infant mortality and life expectancy rates are those of a third world country. With the exception of certain charitable hospitals, the health care industry is like any other for-profit industry and you only get what you can pay for.

Most of you can’t write. Your rambling opinions must resemble the confusion at the Tower of Babel after languages were changed. Not many of your opinions are supported by facts, and when they are, most facts are from websites of questionable validity. Are you, perhaps, jealous of Robinson because he can write well, or do you just want to bitch and complain about anything? You sound like a symposium of crows.

I believe Eugene Robinson is saying that right now his employer is paying for his medical bills while others without insurance would face financial ruin.  In his last 2 paragraphs he is stating that he is willing to pay more in taxes, as do other countries, for a single-payer heathcare system where you do have the freedom of choices and doctors.  This is why it has becme personal for him.  Am I wrong or are others’ comments not understanding what he is saying?

This was really a stupid article. Yes, indeed, in the States IF your boss has an insurance to cover his employees, you dont see the bills, maybe you should, then you would understand the plight of those who dont have insurance. In the “horrible socialistic” countries in Europe, where we have national health insurance coverage, WE HAVE the choice of doctors, from the very best to the very worst! We have the choice of hospitals too. Just as in the United States of America!

Re: tropicgirl

Your comment: “This entire article reminds me of when Glen Beck had his ass-surgery.”

Glen Beck had surgery on his ass…..?  It couldn’t have been cosmetic surgery because he’s as ugly as he always was…..hmph.

How does Robinson know his doctor isn’t just “some guy”? (Was his doc joking? I assume so. Hope so.) Eugene notes that treatment was fairly standard. But I can well appreciate his feeling of gratitude. Claws are most useful things for human beings. Way more than brains, though preferably claws directed by brains.

We mostly give docs way too much credit. Surgeons by now are only slightly more skilled than butchers who actually used to perform surgery. Other kinds of docs by now are just slightly more-skilled crystal-ball gazers. No matter advances in medical imaging. (Which has been greatest medical breakthrough since “some guy” thought of anesthesia. Computers have benefited humanity more in the form of medical imaging than in any other way. At the same time they’ve allowed for more expedited triple-billing.)

When I had occasion 35 years ago to slice through two tendons of extensors running down backside of right arm to right-hand forefinger tip, and then had to have surgery just about immediately, “some guy” (a resident at the time at a public hospital) did a terrific job of microsurgery, sewing each of tendons back together. Took six weeks of healing and a couple months of physical therapy before good as before. And therapist was just “some gal.”

A few points:

1)  Employer-based healthcare is possibly the dumbest-ass idea even U.S. Government ever let loose on citizens;
2)  Medical personnel ain’t hardly what they used to be while charging fees that would embarrass frauds sucking down bonuses at AIG;
3)  (Following on #2: Education in general ain’t what it used to be back then);
4)  (Following on #3, I’ve worked with post-grads who can’t write complete sentences);
5)  So-called “choice” (among personnel) is last refuge for those (mainly members of Congress, along with newly elected President—all recipients of bribes doled out by AIGs of the world) who insist on continuing current healthcare-provision system; and

My mom passed three weeks ago this evening, of complications from lung disease, specifically (supposedly) of pneumonia. But personnel never exactly said so because after all the making of images not one could say with any certainty that she was suffering from pneumonia at all. No tests of any kind were conclusive.

What I mean by crystal-ball gazing. And a couple of these guys were SOME guys. Reportedly.

As with Robinson, industrial-strength antibiotics were delivered up. To zero avail.
My brothers and I will never know for sure what directly killed mom, who by now has been reduced to a heap of ashes. (At cost of $2,500. How much can it cost to reduce a body to ashes? I’d a set her up in a pasture atop logs I first cut and then set fire to myself—in Native American or Buddhist tradition. At least she didn’t demand to occupy real estate after death.

One can’t set dead relatives on fire in these here United States. No profiting by that.

But my mom DID benefit from Medicare for long as she lasted. Never mind SOME guys who turned out no more than “some guys,” and one gal who never did show up at the end. I knew a woman died a cancer a year ago. She got best treatment from “some guys” at LA’s Harbor General. She got into City of Hope briefly—as test case. (All she had to work with was Medi-Cal.) “SOME guys” at that joint could do not a wit more than “some guys” at Harbor General. She passed, mercifully with morphine patch still in place.

The “freedom to choose” argument (made by insurers and “SOME guys” and gals more likely to be found on golf courses or in the Bahamas than at practice is as red-herring as any rationale excusing current system ever was.

Ask yourself, how DID docs in the 50’s do well financially while treating patients via house call minus MRIs and CAT scans and many modern drugs?  What has changed is the huge paperwork overload - the administrative costs and the required myriad of tests to prevent law suits - it’s a combination of defensive medecine and insurance company profit-taking.  With HMOs calling all the shots and fear of suits the doctors themselves are complaining.  Too many middle-men - too many grubby hands between the patient and the treatment. 
  The doc in this piece is accurate.  What many, many US citizens do in Robinson’s situation is head for the store and self-medicate - the lucky ones survive, the others end up in the hospital paying huge amounts.

This is the STUPIDIST read from Eugene yet. Eugene, are you trying to talk dumb or are you really this dumb?

1.  Your insurance company overpaid this whack-job of a surgeon. Thats why health care is truly unaffordable and always will be if there is profit in it.

2.  This WAS just “some guy” that operated on you. But he made out like a bandit.

3.  Your “infection” never should have reached the point of surgery. You were not treated properly to begin with (probably “some guy”). Your finger was sore much earlier and no one did anything, including you. Admit it.

4.  The reason you had an infection from food to begin with (you realize it was from your unwashed food, don’t you?) is that our food sources are now controlled by BIG AG. Their (our) “food crops” are a putrid soups of contamination, pesticides, filthy recycled garbage used as fertilizer, hormones, drugs, generic modifications. Big Agriculture did for our food supply what the HMOs did to health care. (You call yourself a journalist and you don’t know these things?). God only knows what was or could have been on that food. Imagine if you accidentally put it in your mouth. Thats how a lot of kids and old persons end up in the hospital.

5. And, if you DID end up with a super-resistent bacteria or other germ, its was probably slowly cultivated by our American health care system, in the many filthy hospitals with bad infection procedures that make it dangerous to enter ANY American hospital. Over-dosing patients on anti-biotics IS CHEAPER than keeping a hospital clean. With our HMO health care system, even hospitals can’t afford the best practices.

So where does this stupidity leave us? You, for one, my friend, I really think you need to go back to school. You’re not even at the level of a community college course on public health. You have to have at least SOME idea of what you are talking about. Seriously, you need to do something about those “intelligence gaps”. Don’t preach this garbage to others and pass it for stimulating conversation. Its phlegm. This entire article reminds me of when Glen Beck had his ass-surgery.

The problem with acedotal evidence like this, is that you try to argue from the specific, and extrapolate that out to some general statement of the overiding principal of a system.

In this case the Doctor is the hero, but there are other cases where that is not so, people given the wrong blood, having the wrong organ removed, etc..

None of these proves the case either way.

Actually there can be no argument but that the American Medical system is a disaster, an expensive over bloated system that ill serves, those that have health care just as much as those that don’t.

I’m glad your hand is ok, but I suggest that the next time this happens you try a little neosporin along with your bandage.

$29,000 for a treatment of two $20 injections that any family doctor could have done or paramedic for that matter. They will never see a dime. I want to thank all the insured people reading this. as you paid for this one way or the other.

DMFD(AKA: Don’t Mention the Facts, Dude) is that while anyone can be treated in an ER, you pay astronomical amounts more for that treatment than if you could buy into a health care plan. If everyone in America bought into Medicare, no one would pay much more than one hundred dollars a month. All routine and preventative medicine would be covered as well as the medication to get better. Single-Payer, Universal Health Care is a RIGHT in this country as a founding principal of RIGHTS to LIFE, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. You don’t have the right to LIFE if you go bankrupt paying for medical bills.

Your false argument based on loose facts is a constant obstacle to real progress. What you’re asking for, to use your car analogy, is that some people are able to afford Jaguars and BMW’s and the other people just have to find a way to pay $6000.00 for a two-month lease on a 1979 Pinto because they just too undeserving to be able to afford a better means of transportation. Illogical.

Wake up folks.  There is not one person in this country (illegal or not) that can walk into a hospital with a problem and be turned away.  It is the law.  The hospitals have to treat you regardless of insurance or not.  If you are one of the unfortunate without insurance you have the same choices now you would if the government gave you their insurance.  No better no worse.  Of course some people have better coverage than others; some people have better cars than others, better homes, etc. I hate to sound so crass but it is reality.  And sometimes the reality each of us lives in is not where we want to be, but that’s a whole other issue.  Peace

What are folks afraid of with universal health-care? That they won’t be able to pick their doctors? That they’ll be limited to what’s covered and what’s not? How would that be different from what’s happening to so many insured folks now?
For years we paid a good chunk of our hard-earned
monthly paycheck for family health coverage with a large,well-known California healthcare company for services we seldom needed to use just to be
covered “in case”. Ironically, when we did need
service, we were directed by doctors to the least
and the cheapest so the company could make money.
The company made national news when with this
kind of cheap treatment resulting in unnecessary
deaths, they were legally told to change their
ways, which they did minimally. What a ripoff.
 
All Americans should have the right to a universal healthcare system that offers choices
of any doctor and top-notch health services.
To say this can’t be done is nonsense. It can be
done and done well.  We have top-notch fire
departments and police departments and we have
bad ones.  Our healthcare system with robber
health insurance companies is obscene and needs
dumping. Let’s get moving and push for a brilliant universal healthcare plan without the
insurance companies.

Allow me to finish the truncated quote:

“The last thing the surgeon said to me before they rolled me into the operating room was, ‘You know, if you and Obama had your way with health care, it wouldn’t be me doing this operation. It would just be some guy.  And I’d have to drive a cab at night to make my boat payments!’”

I’ve been fortunate throughout my life. I come from a healthy family with no history of major medical issues. Other than some sports related injuries, I’ve had very little reason to make use of my health insurance.

Recently, another sports injury sent me to the Dr with a screamingly painful dislocated shoulder. After a few x-rays, an MRI, painkillers and therapy I was awakened to the stark reality of just how much my employer insurance covered… not much. The injury was relatively minor, yet I still ended up paying several thousand out of pocket. I can’t even bring myself to consider what it would have cost if I had needed surgery.

I’m not getting younger, so the statistical certainty of more medical care in my future (probably for much more serious problems) scares the bejebus out of me.

What everybody else said.

I’m too pissed off at Robinson to write anything coherent right now.  And I’m still waiting for the day HE does.

-Wexler

“...What is relevant is that I have good insurance, which I obtain through my employer, and haven’t paid a dime out of pocket for my treatment.”

What do most health car reform detractors have in common? They HAVEN’T PAID A DIME OUT OF THEIR POCKETS FOR INSURANCE! Most of the whiners who dis health care reform, have good coverage from their employer and are not paying for it. If you are aren’t paying for your own, you probably haven’t noticed that premiums have gone up 300% this decade! You don’t suppose any of this relates to all of the bad debt created by medical care given to people without insurance?

If you have a free ride on health care, fine, how about the 60,000,000 who are uninsured and the millions upon millions who are under-insured and won’t know it until their medical 9/11 occurs? Try spending $600-700-800-900 per month on poor health care coverage! How about that, COMRADE?

Re: Eugene

Your comment: “What’s changed is that I also feel more strongly about the ability to make my own choices. I decided where I would be treated and, ultimately, what would or wouldn’t be done. I’m willing to pay for that, too.”

Sure…. but what you are actually claiming whether you see it or not is “the false alternative”.  In other words, if I give you three choices, you ACCEPT that as all the choices you have.  However, maybe others exist, but you do not include them in your assumption because they were not “on the list” so to speak.

Your premise, “I’m willing to pay for that, too.” is all well and fine as long as you CAN “pay for that, too”.  What happens when you cannot?

Additionally, I’m not viewing you as an opponent of single-payer, or as someone opposed to “universal health care”, but I can tell you that the specialist who treated you IS opposed to single-payer, and it has nothing to do with skill or expertise.  It has to do with the Almighty Dollar.  Specialists do lie, I know this factually in my own dealings with them, do they ALL lie…..NO.  But many do, and those that do view medicine as a business and not as a craft, skill or even a life-saving measure of humanity.  My premise would be this…. if the physician who made this erroneous preposteration to you is truly worth their salt, would he/she lament otherwise?

Remember, Josef Mengele was ALSO a physician.

* “Experiments submerging victims in subzero water temperatures to determine the effects of hypothermia in downed pilots.

“One of the most disconcerting events of the Shoah, was the escape of Mengele after the war. While many physicians were brought to trial as war criminals (see The Physician War Criminals; Mengele escaped most likely to Argentina. For the next 60 years his name became synonymous with medical aberration and the epitome of barbarism. Many who had done far less than Mengele were sentenced to death and imprisonment at Nuremberg and beyond.”

http://www.shoaheducation.com/mengele.html

So…. this statement that the doctor gave you a little “wake-up” call is questionable in its merit or more likely without any merit at all.

Correction

NHS introduced in 1948.

Tony Benn - on National Health System (NHS) -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37wkX2gklzo

USELESS ANALOGIES

Everyone can quote the story of the car driver who ended up in the river and because he was NOT wearing a seat belt he lived. Whereas if he had had it on he would (maybe) have drowned.

But in general we are all better off if everyone wears seat belts. You when you hit someone. You when someone hits you. The driver of the car you hit and the driver of the car that hits you. All of us.

Similarly we are all better off with a free-at-point-of-service universal health care system. Regardless of one hand (clapping(?) and maybe) getting a better job under the present laissez-fair system. Also known as the screw-everyone-else-I’m-alright-Jack system. And the ‘if this goes on another ten years the country will be bankrupt’ system.

INDUSTRIALIZED WORLD

In the general case, the rest of the industrialized world uses single payer health insurance. And it works, and works _very_ well, in countries like Germany, France, Holland, UK, Canada and Norway.

In all cases the care is much better than the average US care for the population as a whole, because we have 46m uninsured who get _no_ regular health care and drag the averages down.

Averages like longevity, quality of life and general health of the population.

As Dr. Stephen Bezruchka has pointed out, the stress of the US ideologically-driven dog-eat-dog system actually reduces the health of the well-off too. They would live longer and be healthier in a more equitable system. Sounds strange. But makes sense in a spiritual fashion—‘We’ are monkeys—And we suffer too when some of our number (are made to) suffer.

TONY BENN

Any eighty year old could make a better case than you just did.

Well perhaps not. But here is an eighty four year old who did.

Tony Benn in Sicko—On the UK National Health System—Socialized medicine introduced free for everyone in the UK in 1946—“If we have the money to kill people, we have the money to heal them”.

Tony Benn—Greatest Living Englishman - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-2h0o3uZ-8

Dr. Stephen Bezruchka - Is America Driving You Crazy? -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5oJPRuFDIk