Thursday, August 06, 2009

The bitter pill of health care in America

I had a near fatal heart attack in 2006.
My wife has the same cancer former Chief Justice Rehnquist suffered from, and she has had 6 surgeries, and also chemo and radiation since 1995.
Because the economy has GUTTED our business which depended on leases of equipment, we cannot afford private health insurance any longer.

AND THE LAST THING I WANT IS GOVT HEALTH INSURANCE

Where we live there are a FEW (3?) major private insurers. There is NO free market. You can imagine the result.

My wife goes to a specialist at Mass General who teaches at Harvard. Our initial experience with this rare cancer revealed a local LACK OF KNOWLEDGE as to what to do which resulted in nearly disastrous misjudgments which we as private citizens corrected by taking control of the course of therapy, with legal recourse with regard to our insurance company in which they were compelled to agree my wife could go to Mass General where they had a clue.

One cannot sue the govt if they do the same job with health care they have done to the American Indian. It is ILLEGAL.

Instead, ENSURE that if a plan is available in Nevada is it available EVERYWHERE. If it available in Connecticut it is available everywhere.

THIS, the free market, and competition will ensure lower prices, and better products.

The only areas I can think of in which the govt made things better are civil rights (which they eventually messed up utterly by official discrimination against another 'race', and attempting to demand equal outcomes rather than equal opportunity), and WAR.

If the government offers ANY cheaper health alternative the eventual outcome is ordained.

That's why Walmart, Rite-Aid, Walgreens etc have driven out their competitors ..cheaper will sooner or later become irresistible in the fullness of economic cycles and time.

Anyone who argues otherwise is a fool or a liar.

Including Mr. Obama.

7 comments:

midnight rider said...

Epa! How are you? Where ya been?

revereridesagain said...

We missed you. But our aim is improving...

Just kidding, so glad to see you back again!

Pastorius said...

Glad to have you back, Epa.

Epaminondas said...

I hit my yearly quotient of Howard Beale moments.

nunya said...

DeMint's plan will make what's available in Nevada available everywhere.

Over the last year and a half I've had endometriosis, which isn't fatal, or even very serious in most cases. My case wasn't serious, but you never know what's going on without surgery. There's just no real test for it. It's painful and it sucks but my crappy insurance got me amazing doctors. I had to pay for all the office visits this last year but that's fine. I'm lucky to have had the two doctors I've had. (One unfortunately retired, hence the second doctor.) I've read about women in Canada go through in forums and such. They invariably believe that an ultrasound will detect endo because that's what doctors tell them. You have to do an ultrasound to rule out PID at first, but after that it's useless. These women go untreated, suffer horrible pain, and end up infertile. It's terrible. It took me a month to get in to see my last doctor but when I did he offered to operate the next Tuesday.

I've spent $10,000 that I don't have, undergone 7 months of horrible hormone treatments, had 2 surgeries, and I'm not much better in terms of my pain but I wouldn't trade places with a Canadian woman for anything. I know what's going on. I know what my long-term prognosis is. I now that if it gets really bad again I won't have to wait a year for surgery. I know that I can trust my doctors and that they're doing everything they can. I know that if some great treatment comes along I will have access to it.

Shoot, I'm even happy with the state's role in it because I thought my insurance company was ripping me off for a couple hundred dollars so I turned them in to the Indiana Department of Insurance and I got my money.

Why would anyone want to change everything that's right about American health care? Tort reform, immigration reform, and DeMint's plan would make it damn near perfect. It needs little more than some tweaking around the edges.

Also, I don't think the Wal-Mart analogy is apt at all because Wal-Mart can't suffer insane losses year after year, decline considerably in terms of what they provide, and hang around, let around drive out the competition doing that. Government will most certainly do all of the above.

Epaminondas said...

Sorry about your Endometriosis jd.

My point about Walmart is that sooner or later the cheapest available alternative will always win out, even over superior products, and that common sense tells us this is so ..thus making Obama's claims about increasing competition a farce, and SO absurd that one is compelled to wonder at just how stupid he thinks we are.

nunya said...

Thanks, Epa. I'm very lucky, really, to have received such excellent care, plus it's all one one side so I should still be able to have kids no matter what. I'm sorry about what you guys went through. There's no comparison, really. I just think that even when you have something that's very sucky but not serious like I have, when you remove hope (ironic, no?) and faith in one's doctors and in the system that could be devastating. Even if you think your doctor sucks you can just get another one. Choice makes a huge difference, too. I can't imagine going through something like cancer or a head injury in Canada.

I see where you're going with the analogy and it does make sense in that respect. I think that when it comes to surgery and such people will always go with the 'Cadillac' version no matter what it costs, but with medicine and doctors, you're absolutely right. Plus, under socialized medicine it's damn near impossible to get a specialist. Here it's just as easy and cheap as a GP more often than not. It also stifles innovation, which will be devastating for the whole world if it happens.

Israel probably would run the world sooner or later if it were to happen, though. I doubt Obama considered that.