"News that's not known, or not known enough."
Helen & Harry Highwater's cranky weblog of news and opinion.
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"News that's not known, or not known enough." Helen & Harry Highwater's cranky weblog of news and opinion. |
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Tell the dying to go away
What happened in B.C. was our drunken wastrel of a Premier's attempt to promote private healthcare. He took an axe to the system and said it was broken to begin with. "It was like that when I got here" Doesn't hold any weight when you do it right before everyone's eyes. When he finally figured out we'd all rather swallow live scorpions than let that happen he conveniently forgot to fix what he broke. But my petty political problems are not your political, ethical, and moral catastrophes. The HMO is the most despicable racket I've ever heard of in my life. It's a Hideous Moral Outrage! HMO's will only insure only those they have no reason to believe will ever get ill, screw the people that do get sick or face death as often as they can, and even if they're forced to pay up and possibly save a life they will do everything in their power to take their money back from the doctors and stick the policy holder with the bill! How is that even legal?! The service is paid for already! It hurts the brain just thinking about it. No matter what problems I have with Canadian healthcare I will say this: We would not make a man choose which finger he could afford to save. We would not shove a woman in a taxi and drop her off frightened and disoriented in a bad part of town. We would not refuse a doctor's referral to any kind of specialist. We would not attempt to block medical testing or imaging. We would not try to convince someone with a tumor that they do not, in fact, have a tumor. We would not deny a life-saving bone marrow transplant. We would not tell a woman to take her dying baby to a different hospital. The funniest and most infuriating thing about one of the claims about socialized medicine is the constantly repeated belief that you wouldn't get to choose your own doctor. That is by no means true. While I've stuck with my doctor for a good many years I could make an appointment with any doctor that thought they could squeeze me into their workload. It turns out the only place you can't choose who treats you and where is in America. Poor baby Mychelle was insured, and the doctors of Martin Luther King Hospital wouldn't treat her because Kaiser Permanente would only allow treatment in a hospital it owned to reduce "Medical Loss" on the company's part. A baby girl died because her mother's health insurance company said "Sorry, you have to find another doctor to give her antibiotics, we won't let you choose this one... And we won't pay for an ambulance ride to the nearest hospital we own either, pay for a taxi." While I place the lions share of blame on Kaiser Permanente I will add that the doctors of MLK tarnished the good name of a great man that day. I can barely imagine a hospital telling someone that is dying to go away because they refuse to treat them. That doesn't happen in Canada or any other country with universal healthcare. You can't deny someone life-saving surgery, it's unconscionable. I wish all the luck in the world to those who support the movement for universal healthcare in the United States.
P.S. On a personal note I think the film was really worth watching. It had enough laughs in it to help take the edge off the deep and disturbing sorrow of the dismal truth of things. You will also find a new depth of hatred for corporate bureaucracy and Richard Nixon you didn't know could ever exist. I now see why so many Americans swore blind that he was the devil's personal bitch puppet. The extended interviews were also intellectually rewarding.
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