Happy Independence Day!

[chevalij]

You can't actually believe any of that can you? My sister has colon cancer and has received nothing but fast courteous care. Chemo, radiation, 3 surgeries. Total owing.... a nice thank you and some flowers for the nurses. Don't get me wrong, it's not perfect. It can be slow to see a specialist. But what that guy wrote is complete bull...

the ER overflowed with elderly people on stretchers, waiting for admission. Some, it turned out, had waited five days. The air stank with sweat and urine.

[SkinnyWire]

You can't actually believe any of that can you? My sister has colon cancer and has received nothing but fast courteous care. Chemo, radiation, 3 surgeries. Total owing.... a nice thank you and some flowers for the nurses. Don't get me wrong, it's not perfect. It can be slow to see a specialist. But what that guy wrote is complete bull...

Well, yes I can and I do. My health care costs are very reasonable and any co-pays I do have to pay are nominal. My father collapsed a few years ago and ended up having a quadruple bypass with a 118 day stay in hospitals due to many complications from diabetes, etc. The bill for the two weeks prior to surgery alone was over a quarter of a million dollars. How much out of his pocket? Zero dollars. He has the same health care plan that I have with the addition now of Blue Cross due to his age. The overall cost of the 118 days was staggering - zero out of pocket aside from normal insurance premiums.

When his surgery was deemed necessary, it didn't take weeks to see a specialist - it took hours at a Sacramento hospital that's in the top 1% for heart surgery in the state. Within two days the surgery was done and 12 hours of those two days were actual time on the table.

So, just as there are horror stories here I again wouldn't count your good fortune as necessarily representative of a robust ... and especially not a "FREE" system. You are paying for it along with your fellow countrymen, one way or another just like the Brits, etc. The evidence against socialized medicine goes as deep or deeper than any argument for it. It's like boiling a frog though. You've may have been in the water too long already.

[chevalij]

Not by any means trying to start a pissing match here. I guess that's where this frog tends to see the difference. Your system is quick, generally very efficient but coverage can be pricey. Ours (except for emergencies) can be slow but free. As for waiting 5 days for admission and sweat and urine.... never.

What would have happened to your father if he didn't have coverage? Just curious..

Also, I just did the math. Your fathers pre-op stay was almost $20,000 a day! Does that seam reasonable to anybody? Now, who's getting screwed....

[Possum]

....

You're judging a health care system as it existed in 1997? Thats more than 11 years ago :-)
the lack of health care for ALL Americans is actually more expensive than having a system in place. With the current system uninsured wait til the last minute to get care for problems that could have been cheaply nipped in the bud if they had gone earlier. So when they do show up its more expensive to treat. Uninsured patients who need to be in hospitals long term are often dumped on the streets, left to die or be helped by volunteer organizations that really can't provide adequate care. Add this that people who DO have insurance coverage often have their insurance rapidly depleted and then cancelled, and they are left to die broke at the bottom of the ladder facilities. My wife's Dad was one of those. He contracted incurable staph infection in his knee IN a hospital. He had 3 insurance policies and two government pensions. AFter only one year all his insurance policies were depleted, totally flat broke and left to die in a rehab center, which he obligingly did. The kind of care he got during all this was pathetic. My wife had to threaten one doctor for malpractice when he casually walked by and prescribed a drug that would have killed him which he insisted he must give to her Dad. He hadn't even read his chart and had no familiarity with his case. He backed off after she threatened legal action if he did anything. In attempt to help his health problems they amputated his leg to get rid of the infection. They had prescribed so many antibiotics that his digestive system turned to mush, completely incontinent, and his hearing was lost due to one antibiotic, they hadn't even informed that the pills were going to make him deaf. Welcome to America where politicians get excellent health care and the rest of the country gets corporate, pill pushing, barbaric care in the name of greed. Most politicians at the national level have stock in pharmceutical companies and get large contributions from same. The truth is the system isn't going to change because the country is run by corporations, not the people. You're going to see alot of promises made as usual this election but in the end there will be some excuses made and it will be business as usual.....

[JGundry]

Well, yes I can and I do. My health care costs are very reasonable and any co-pays I do have to pay are nominal. My father collapsed a few years ago and ended up having a quadruple bypass with a 118 day stay in hospitals due to many complications from diabetes, etc. The bill for the two weeks prior to surgery alone was over a quarter of a million dollars. How much out of his pocket? Zero dollars. He has the same health care plan that I have with the addition now of Blue Cross due to his age. The overall cost of the 118 days was staggering - zero out of pocket aside from normal insurance premiums.

When his surgery was deemed necessary, it didn't take weeks to see a specialist - it took hours at a Sacramento hospital that's in the top 1% for heart surgery in the state. Within two days the surgery was done and 12 hours of those two days were actual time on the table.

So, just as there are horror stories here I again wouldn't count your good fortune as necessarily representative of a robust ... and especially not a "FREE" system. You are paying for it along with your fellow countrymen, one way or another just like the Brits, etc. The evidence against socialized medicine goes as deep or deeper than any argument for it. It's like boiling a frog though. You've may have been in the water too long already.

Your employer clearly pays for your healthcare. I pay $5,600 per year for insurance that only starts paying 50% of claims once the $5,000 deductible is met and 100% at the $10,000 mark. Oh yeah it does not apply any routine maternity expenses towards the deductible. So my wife and I paid $10,000 ($12,000 if I had not paid in cash within 30 days) cash for each of our 3, thankfully routinely delivered children for a total of $30,000 plus out of pocket. And this was the best health insurance I could reasonably afford being self employed. It basically keeps me from going bankrupt if something terrible happened.

The rhythm guitar player in my band has a wife who is a general practitioner and their health insurance is just as bad as mine. You know something is messed up when doctors can't afford good insurance. If you have a plan with a small co-pay you are blissfully ignorant of how truly effed up the healthcare is in the USA. When I paid direct to the hospital for the delivery costs of our children I was routinely over billed and repeat billed for the same service. Not because I was slow to pay, I paid within 30 days in cash. But because they get paid by insurance companies for these "mistakes" in billing. Just try to reliably find out the cost of a procedure from your doctor or hospital. It's all horrendously inefficient. I get 5 pieces of paper for everything ever done with a MD or hospital. The mounds of paperwork and lack of any real billing standards are proof that the medical industry is so awash in cash that they don't even care to attempt to run it efficiently. There is 2,000 sq. foot office space below my office rented by the local mega hospital. When they were moving in I asked what they were going to do there the lady from the hospital said they were going to do "brainstorming" there. No shit this hospital is paying to rent an off site office space to "brainstorm" at. The kicker is they "brainstorm" there maybe one day every 3 months. The rest of the time it is completely devoid of humanity, it just a very hip looking room filled with bean bags and expensive Herman Miller furniture 99.9% of the time.

Just see how well our healthcare statistics like infant mortality stack up against the rest of the industrialized world. It is not coincidence that the Americans with the best healthcare coverage are Federal, State and Local municipal employees. The healthcare industry knows who butters their bread.

[mkat]

The system is a sham. Everyone deserves free health care.