1. I don’t know if you’ve been on the bus lately, but I have. There are a lot of crazy people on the bus. Oh, I get it…that’s why you haven’t been on the bus lately. You went on the bus that one time and encountered the crazy people and you haven’t been back.
2. I recently had a proposal writing job for a doctor who wants to become a PPP provider. It was inspiring to meet a doctor who provides care to low-income, uninsured people—and wants to do more of that with the financial help of the County of Los Angeles. Yet it struck me as entirely inefficient for this doctor to have to prepare a lengthy application for the County’s Department of Health Services. This guy is a well-established doc with almost 30 years of experience providing medical care in East LA. Let’s not waste his time with him having to come up with a business plan to explain how he’s going to fund care for people who can’t afford it—let’s let him be a doctor.
3. I have a friend who needs a liver transplant. She had to go before some kind of board and get interviewed to get on the transplant list, and she made it. Now she had to get an insurance rider to cover the transplant. It’s looking like she will get the care she needs, but it strikes me as completely wrong that she has to become an expert health-care advocate (for herself) when she is very ill.
No health care system is perfect, but the American system of health care is broke and baroque. Health care should not be a capitalistic enterprise. No, I’m not saying doctors shouldn’t be paid, I’m saying that providing health care should not be a money-making business.
The single-payer system isn’t perfect, but it is better than what we have now. We’re not going to get it at the federal level, because health insurance companies are major political donors. Some smart folks in Pennsylvania are advocating for it at the state level. Let’s do the same, so that the crazy people on the bus can get the care they need, so that doctors can be doctors, and so that my friend doesn’t have to wade through ridiculous bureaucracy at precisely the time she is least able to do so.
For your consideration:
Single Payer: Answers and Facts about Health Care for All
West Coast Grrlie Blather 
Amen! And I’m sure we each could add another half dozen to your list. Take this statistic for example: 60% of people who declare bankruptcy are challenged with medical bills. And 75% of those are INSURED. (Insert primal scream.) This is wrong!
Well. I think doctors have been saying for quite a while that they aren’t getting paid for what they provide.
This may cause a shortage of general practitioners. While the demand for medical care rises along with the old baby boomers aging. A potential demand & supply problem could require a rise in health care costs.
Anyway, future inflation & the related devaluation of the dollar alone will cause most things to cost more.
One answer some healthcare reformers will eventually propose is the limiting & withholding of health care, at all costs, from the elderly or seriously ill. Why? the worst rate of health return for funds spent.
Let’s pray for some miracle cure to the health care sickness.
What if you needed insurance to get the fire dept to come to your house? Or police insurance? The whole reason we have a government is so we can pool our money and talents together and provide/receive basic services, of which health care should be one.
KB, I think BASIC services from the govt is where we’re currently heading. The state/nation’s economic wealth & progress has not keep up with the growing poverty of its population these last couple of decades. Just from a mathematical equation it means we probably should cut back in our standard of living & govt services. A bigger pop of poor & rich, relative to a shrinking middle class.
btw, if you thought California’s road were the worse in the nation, well, you ain’t see anything yet! Pray! We need a single prayer from everyone concerned.
Mr V has spent his adult life uninsured, all day waits at county…sitting on the floor because they ran out of chairs. That was in the early 90’s during the gravy days. (fortunately he has good health and intervening friends within the medical field)…..
The dogs got a point
“The state/nation’s economic wealth & progress has not keep up with the growing poverty of its population these last couple of decades.”
Let an abscessed tooth go untreated and it’s carrier eventually shows up in your emergency room with much graver symptoms.
bleehhh
Kelly,
You lived in England you know that the NHS over there is beyond “broke and baroque”. It downright Dickensian. And you want us to move to a European, socialist model? You want examples?
Every generation of my family going back to my great grandfather has had a run-in with services rendered taking years to get done. My great grandfather had thrombosis for three years back in the 50’s before they got it taken care of. Imagine: toddling ’round London with a potential stroke-inducing clot lodged in his leg. Both my grandfather and my uncle had hernias. Grand-dad’s took 4 years to be operated on and my uncle took two years…except that they booked the surgeon for my uncle, but didn’t book the theater…back on the list for another year. When I nearly broke my neck, the NHS solution was a collar, a slap on the back and see ya! Not an ounce of physical therapy even, nothing. Is that the system you want? You can have it, Kelly, but don’t agitate to screw up the best system in the world (even with its faults) and not deal with the real problem which is rising costs.
As for your friend:
>It’s looking like she will get the care she needs, but it strikes me as
>completely wrong that she has to become an expert health-care
>advocate (for herself) when she is very ill.
Interesting…she’s getting her needs met by this terrible system, but there’s a fly in the ointment…your friend had to work for it. Who ought to do that work? A government bureaucrat? Not only is not the government’s job, it is your friend’s job. No-one else’s…that’s life. If you’re that bothered by her having to do it, why didn’t you? Why are you insinuating that it’s someone else’s, but you’re not willing to stand up?
As for government care, no thanks. They can’t handle ‘cash-for-clunkers’ without screwing it up. And remember: the government are the same people who gave you the DMV and the IRS. Yikes.