It dawned on me what a lot of these protests are about dealings with health care. There have been a number of news shows that have been able to get the opposition on the show. I have compared this to what is shown on FoxNews. FoxNews tends to be a friendly atmosphere to the protest organizers, who are allowed to speak their talking points without rebuttal. As long as they can stay on script they mention how people all over the world come here for health care and all the other points which proves to them the system we have is the best in the world.

When the same people go on other networks and are faced with reasoned questions, these same people are exposed for the empty shirts they are, because while saying how much they have the proposal given by Washington they don’t have a solution to the issue. According to them there’s nothing wrong with the health care system because they don’t have anything wrong with their health care.

Their position is based on theory, not on the reality of some people.

I like it when they talk about how people all over the world come here for health care. You know what, they are so right. When people need to have big surgery, because of the current system people do try to come to the United States for health care. When they speak of this example, it’s always illustrated with someone from Canada coming to the US because they were placed on a waiting list for care they need. They get to a hospital and have the means to pay the money to get the care needed. The sad piano music swells, a tear wells up in the eye, emotional connection is met.

Many of the people that would bring up that lovely story won’t talk about the other side of the coin. With those of us living further south, we get the discussion about crowded emergency room. We’re told about how emergency rooms are used as preventative care places because people with little income can’t afford to see a doctor. The emergency room becomes the doctor, which isn’t what they were designed for. With crowded emergency room people who ‘need help’ can’t get help right away. And, they will definitely point out; the reason why the emergency room is crowded is because of people illegally in this country using them. I’ve heard this complain continually on radio talk shows.

So on one hand they talk about how people all over the world come here for care, which they say is good, yet some sections of health care is bad because of the influx of illegal and uninsured people using the system not as intended.

Another thing I noticed is Americans aren’t getting a lot of care in the US along the southern border states. People who need medication or minor checks such cosmetic surgery or dental care, are wiling to go to Mexico where it’s cheaper or easier to obtain. So you have an example where medical care, even when not done by the ‘best and brightest in the world’ are willing to go South of the border to get procedures done or buy cheaper medication. Is that right?

At my old job, my employer paid for insurance, but they had a clause that if you smoked you had to pay $25 a month for coverage. Just before I was let go they instituted another plan where you had to be pre-screened for a number of conditions. If you didn’t get pre-screened you would have to pay $25, just like a smoker. There were a lot of people that smoked at the company; however the company touted how it helped reduce smoking at the company. The pre-screening wasn’t a request you could opt out of. While they said you could, the kicker was the payment you had to do if you refused to get the screening. I was a bit paranoid and decided to take the $25 hit rather than get screened because I figured the diabetes would show up on the test and that could be used to either up my contribution anyway or make adjustments to my policy. See, we never got a clear answer as to why the information needed to be gathered but because of the amount of cost cutting going on those of us who thought about it assumed this was a way to pass on the rising costs.

Right now I don’t have insurance but when I got sick last year I was shoved and moved into the hospital so quick I didn’t have time to think about what was going on. By the time everything was done, my bill was almost $20000. From what I could read from my insurance, they would pay for everything. It turned out that I ‘owed’ a little over $400 and this was discovered after I got a bill from the hospital and compared it to the mountain of paperwork I got from the insurance company. You know the joke about the $1 aspirin? It was on the bill!

Here’s a fun example I’ve mentioned before about health care cost. When I came home from the hospital I had a paper shopping bag full of medication. Luckily I had money in my account because I thought it was all covered but I had to pay $80 on the spot for it but the actual cost was $200 for everything. Sounds like I saved a lot of money. When I had to refill my testing supplies I didn’t have a prescription so I couldn’t apply it to insurance. The testing meter turned out to be just like buying a computer printer; the printer is cheap but the ink will kill you. The test strips for the meter I had were the most expensive ones on the market, costing $1 a strip for a box of 50. The strips are specific to the meter company, so you can’t buy a cheaper test strip if it doesn’t work for the test meter. It took some time but I was able to find a cheap meter/ test strip combo that cost $25 for 50. That’s what I use now to test myself, all done without insurance because I have no insurance.

I can’t go to the same doctor I had because of insurance coverage. Well, I could go but instead of the $25 fee I pay for a visit I would have to pay $100 and that doesn’t include the price of any tests he might give. So right now I’m winging my health care because I can’t afford to pay for the coverage I need. The crazy people who talk about killing this proposal have their health care right now and could care less about people like me, nor do they care about rising costs because they don’t pay as much because their insurance covers it. Maybe if they had to live the life some people do and understand how that impacts their lives maybe they wouldn’t just shout their opposition but come up with a solution.

 

<< PREVIOUS
NEXT >>

Copyright © Chaotic Fringe LLC. All rights reserved.

Let's Really Talk about Health Care - August 07, 2009
Home | News | Entertainment | Blog | Podcast | IMVN | Everquest 2 | Links | Photos | V-Blog