OK, it is time to start writing here, and what better place to start!
I’ve been watching this debate for months now, and I honestly cannot believe my eyes and ears. I won’t sit here and tell you that we don’t have major problems in the delivery of our health care, but as we learned by electing Obama, ‘CHANGE’ is just change… not necessarily ‘GOOD CHANGE’. Where do you think we got the term ‘from the frying pan into the fire’, anyway?
I spend a great deal of time in one of the glorious ‘socialized medicine’ countries: Italy. So let’s look at it for a second:
Free healthcare for all
Right? WRONG. Look at your paycheck. See all those little taxes that get deducted? Unemployment, Federal withholding, FICA, etc. etc. Italy has a gigantic one for Medical care… and it is higher than what I pay here in the states. Of course, if you are unemployed you don’t have that tax taken out, and you still get healthcare. But here in the states you can walk into any emergency room and get treatment even if you cannot afford it, and the quality of THAT treatment is far superior to what the healthcare in Italy offers.
Quality Healthcare for All
Really? Are we honestly drinking that Kool Aid? A friend of ours in Italy needs an MRI, and she needs it STAT! Since it is urgent, she will only have to wait a few months! She ended up having to go to a private clinic where she paid thousands. Yet she still must pay that tax.
Another friend has a 10 year old child with a serious heart condition. He needed an operation urgently enough hat he was instructed not to play until he got it. He was put on the waiting list, and finally went under the knife after six months.
I watch friends go to doctors for routine appointments, and when they do so they need to block off the entire day. Why? Because a 9:00 AM appointment means ‘sometime today after 9AM’. My wife was once in a waiting room awaiting her appointment, and after hours, she watched the doctor walk out to lunch with a waiting room full of people that had been there all morning.
I have yet to see a hospital that looks even remotely sanitary.
A semi-private hospital room means there are only 6 beds in the room. Private rooms? HA!
A job in the system is a job for life. The net effect is that there is no accountability for much of anything – it’s quite a bit like the DMV. So if you want care, you must always have a family member by your side to make sure you are always getting it. And tipping nurses for care is quite common as a consequence.
The funny thing is that when it is really, really serious, many that have access come to the states for healthcare. Why is that?
But the drugs are cheap
Yes, they are. I do believe that we need to find a solution to the costs of meds. Does that mean we need to emulate a world full of broken systems?
But That’s Just Italy
Yes, it is. It is one example of socialized medicine. It is where the bulk of my experience comes from. But I have heard similar first-hand horror stories from all over the world. Go ahead and research the state of the system in the UK, for example. How about France?
We’ll be more like Sweden and Canada
Will we? Let’s assume their systems are fantastic (They aren’t)
Sweden has about the same population as the State of North Carolina. That makes the USA roughly 3,300% more populous than Sweden.
Canada’s population is less than the State of California by itself, making the population of the USA more than 900% larger than that of Canada.
Additionally, every state in the union has its own laws, its own problems, its own culture. Do we really believe a federal government will come up with a wonderful plan that will be efficient, take care of everyone, and make us feel like we are getting better care?
So what’s the answer?
I don’t know. I don’t claim to be someone with the answer, just someone that doesn’t like what is being shoved down his throat. In other words, I don’t have to know how to make a great sandwich in order to know that a dog feces & moldy cheese sandwich will taste bad, do I?
I do know that a government-run healthcare system will most likely look like other government-run systems, and nothing about that sounds like quality to me.