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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Universal health care: Meet the Boogeyman by Chris D., Unknown News June 26, 2009 # My favorite baseless healthcare misconceptions, fantasies, and blatant falsifications and the debunking responses I'm sick of repeating:
#1) You'll be paying for everybody else's problems, why the hell should you do that? Just cover your own. When you pay your $30-50 monthly premium for your insurance where do you think that money goes? Into a safe just waiting for you to get sick so it can cover your bill? Nope. Whatever cash doesn't go into payroll and bonuses and instead pays for the treatments of the lucky few, (AKA Medical Losses), is derived from the payments of ALL OTHER POLICY HOLDERS. If you luck out and your ailment is cheap enough to treat that the company will authorize payment — with a hefty co-pay — the money paid comes from another person that thinks they're covering themselves. You're paying for someone else and they're also paying for you whether or not treatment actually gets rendered. Yeah, you're paying for everyone else's problems. But unlike private insurance your ass is actually covered in the bargain. It's a fee that never changes and it covers services that don't need to be defined and aren't limited. You pay into the system, you're guaranteed to benefit. Moreover it's less money than most insurance premiums. There are those who complain that the unemployed or destitute will also be benefiting from the system. I like to call those people assholes. The unemployed and homeless were taxpayers at one point in their lives and with the opportunity will be taxpayers again. They're not some unintelligent species of rats carrying some twisted plague, they're people in a jam. Some try to get out, others dig deeper and wallow in their misery. But my homeless rant will have to wait for another time. One more thing to note is that by keeping the people AROUND you healthy, you protect your own health. The H1N1 scare right now? How much worse do you think it'll be if the people diagnosed with the flu are simply turned away and sent back into the general populace? People already avoid going to the doctor for fear of costs or of missing work due to something as trivial as the flu. In private care if you can't pay you get kicked to the curb and if your problem happens to be contagious it's bound to become somebody else's problem as well. It's a system that only treats the few, leaving the many to pass the disease back and forth while it mutates. If everyone gets treated and the epidemic is nipped in the bud, then there's much less chance you and your family will fall victim to it. #2) The Government will strangle you with red tape, decide who gets in and who gets out. The Government doesn't look at your medical records, doesn't ask any questions about you whatsoever unless a doctor is being investigated for issuing false claims. To my knowledge, the only people who see your records are your doctor and anyone you authorize your doctor to release those records to. When you phone the hospital you aren't redirected to some schmuck behind a desk in Parliament and there are no G-men with forms for you to fill out in the OR. Your doctor makes recommendations for you to see specialists, your doctor approves your discharge from the hospital, your doctor has the final say in your health. (Side note: I've discovered to my horror that this is no longer the case in my home province of British Columbia. While we appear to be a public healthcare on the surface certain things — work injuries, rehabilitation, physiotherapy — have been privatized. The Worker's Compensation Board of British Columbia is now WorkSafe BC. WorkSafe, sound familiar? It is now a nightmare, doctor's referrals are being denied because they have to
Conversely, an insurance company will look through every single one of your medical records without permission and circulate them to whoever they deem fit for the express purpose of denying claims. If you have to go to the hospital, you will need to pre-approve everything from the ambulance ride to certain operating procedures. In fact, depending on your insurance provider you may be DENIED TREATMENT at a hospital not owned by your insurance provider. An insurance company decides what medication you get to take, what surgery you get to have. Services are defined very specifically and deviations are not covered. #3) The Government will know everything about you and will use that information against you. See above. The only information the Government receives from your doctor is a bill, and they only question that if fraud is suspected. Why would the government care enough to blackmail YOU anyway? Besides, what could they even DO with a list of your medications or a certification that on the X day of the Y month you broke your arm while skiing? They already have your tax information, address, phone number, next of kin. etc. Just fear-mongering. The Boogeyman is that-a-way. He's not doing much, but he's standing right there. That's right. Fear him. #4) The quality of healthcare will be terrible, it's so much better privatized. In a *properly* run system the bottom line is never the bottom dollar. A barrier to progress in North America has always been the way we think. We assume a public system can only be sustained by the cheapest imaginable means or by some deranged rationing procedure. (Throw the word 'socialized' in there and the assumptions get entertaining.) If the US can sped nearly a trillion dollars a year on defense spending it can swallow keeping its hospitals up to date. If Cuba can manage universal healthcare under 50 years of a trade embargo that has crippled its economy and will continue to deny it many of the advances made elsewhere in the world then why the infernal blazes can't a wealthier country do the same? If the healthcare is so pathetic in a public system why do the English, French, and Dutch live so very much longer than Americans and suffer fewer infant mortalities? A doctor that receives pay based on an operational basis has no real incentive to keep you healthy, just treat the wounds you come to them with. Preventative medicine is passed over in a private system. The doctor doesn't profit, and the insurer doesn't want to pay for something it doesn't define as an absolute life-saving necessity. The American FDA is set up for maximum profit. A new drug doesn't need to actually combat whatever it is developed to treat, it just has to be proven to be better than a sugar pill. New pills are cranked out with nightmarish side-effects and outrageous price tags. The plethora of utterly useless medication pushed on the public is likely the cause of half the health problems we face today both physical and mental. Unless a fortune is to be had, medical research is sidelined. Most medical advances in North America tend to be made by students looking for exemplary grades and a scholarship to take the unholy burden of student loans off their shoulders. In terms of surgical skill one can certainly argue that more prestigious surgeons are seduced by larger paychecks, but what kind of hypocrite would leave a thousand twisting in the wind to treat a dozen? Not somebody I'm willing to trust with my life. Medical ability comes from education and dedication. When education is improved, medicine follows. Without dedication there is nothing. Simple as that. What incentive is there in a private system for someone to become a family doctor or general practitioner? People put off regular checkups in the private system because they cost money and any sign that could be creatively linked to a major illness could be used for retroactive cancellation of their policies. There's a shortage of family doctors, general practitioners, and pediatricians because the way things are they're just not profitable.
That line of reasoning goes hand in hand with the demented delusion of destitution attached to socialized medicine. No, there isn't just one chemo machine in all of Canada. (Bite me, CNN.) Adequate funding and proper management — not some insane rationing scheme — see to it that people are looked after. The severity of an injury or illness, not your pocketbook, can get you ahead in the line. (And quelling another crazy neocon fable, NOT your state-determined value to society.) The wait can be a few hours if there's a spot of trouble: natural disasters, riots, epidemics, etc. If the wait's long it's because there's people in the line. People that WILL get treatment. (Unless you're in semi-privatized BC. We've gotten bad man.) In private insurance you may be lucky just to make it through the door to the hospital. The emergency ward wait in America can sometimes be measured in DAYS. An insurance claim in flux or under appeal or tied up in some other bureaucratic bullshit can take months while you die slowly and in agony. While still paying into the damned policy no less. Those are the five most commonly stated arguments against Public/Socialized Healthcare and they're all a bunch of crap. There's no magical flawless approach to the problem but there are sensible solutions that don't leave the majority of us getting bled to death so some douchebag can make billions. Wouldn't you rather say that there was a GOOD reason you pay taxes? I mean, apart from the raises politicians give themselves all the time? And the administrative fees, no-bid contracts, unpopular wars, bank and insurance company bailouts... I'll stop now and let you digest the foot-long shit sandwich you've been eating all these years. If this could change the mind of a few doubters then please spread the word. If there's still some kind of problem with my logic here then let me know. If you're the type to believe three words Savage, Limbaugh, or Beck spew from their stupidity holes then please go chase a pretty shiny quarter into rush-hour traffic and see firsthand how healthcare treats the physically and mentally mangled. © by the author. This page is archived at unknownnews.org/0906-26CD.html
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