AMERICAblog: Behold, the great American health care system
aquarius2
· 1 year ago
No hospital has the right to refuse emergency medical treatment. They can stabilize the patient and then transfer the patient BUT they must treat a life threatening event.
canuck55
· 1 year ago
As a Canadian who has single payer government funded universal health care as a right, I have never understood the American love for expensive, crappy, you can lose it when you change jobs and might not be covered because of a pre-existing condition and you can't go to this doctor American private (or sometimes non-existent) healthcare. My 82 year old dad is a great example of a working healthcare system. The Bionic Man, as I call him, has 2 titanium hips, a pacemaker, has had a few skin cancers lopped off and gets monthly doctor visits and tests for his blood pressure and all this costs him nada. And I know that he is getting the best of care and is enjoying an excellent quality of life. But in the US, if he had no health care, or even if he did, he would most likely be bedridden or dead. And then no one would have been mowing my lawn all these years. Why the hell people in the US don't rise up as one and demand universal healthcare is beyond me.
High Crimes & Misdemeanors
· 1 year ago
I think it has to do with that silly notion of the protestant work ethic, where you are supposed to pull yourself up by the boots and work your way in getting health insurance. If you don't work, cant work, or cant find work, well, you are shit out of luck. Stupid i know. How's that for silly 19th century thinking?? Tying work to something that should be a right. So damn glad Obama thinks health care is a right. That alone should be enough to garner anyone's support. But alas, we have some pretty ignorant people in this country.
sukabi1
· 1 year ago
you know, I don't think it has as much to do with the "gotta work for it" mindset. From the time I can remember back in the late 50's and since the republicans and others have been on a "commie hunt".... and EVERYTHING that didn't fit in with their "capitalist ideals" was suspected of and branded as either communist or socialist or nationalist and above all else EVIL -- everything or any one that inhibits their ability to turn a buck --- regulations, unions, ect. gets targeted at one time or another as being evil, anti-American, socialist, or commie...
I think the knee-jerk reaction to those code words that has been "bred" into the national conscience is finally about over for most folks* ...
*this obviously does not apply to McCain / Palin supporters or the campaign staff...
brian
· 1 year ago
You are probably right. People do not understand the difference between Social Programs and Socialism. They fear that Social Programs = Socialism, which it does not. Also, Republicans are greedy and do not want to help out society, only themselves.
High Crimes & Misdemeanors
· 1 year ago
I disagree, the Protestant Work Ethinc - or as you call it "gotta work for it" mindset predates the "commie" scare mentality. But I do agree with the assessment that greed is a factor.
ImpureScience
· 1 year ago
"I have never understood the American love for expensive, crappy, you can lose it when you change jobs and might not be covered because of a pre-existing condition and you can't go to this doctor American private (or sometimes non-existent) healthcare."
Most people I speak with here are under the impression that Canadian health care is minimal, rationed, and that people waste away for years waiting for really important procedures, which is why so many Canadians are lined up at our gates trying to get in. (?) Many are dead opposed to paying for medical care via taxation (horrors) when they have to pay more annually for their crappy private coverage.
The more I travel the more I realize how having universal benefits based on citizenship and taxes affects the quality of your life: people with systems like that make employment/life decisions based on what they like to do and what they're good at more often when getting employer-based benefits aren't part of the equation, and even with higher taxes they end up paying less in the end.
lynchie
· 1 year ago
As a Canadian living in the U.S. for the past 24 years and involved in the Healthcare industry i can tell you that it is all bullshit. The insurance companies and the hospitals, CEO's and doctors keep shovelling the line that there is this tremendous wait. It is simply not true. Canada's parliamentary system allows a government to be thrown out of office if they don't perform. That is why they just had another election and another minority government voted in. If healthcare was as bad as we hear there would be a revolt. Is it perfect, hell no, but if it is so bad why are we the only industrialized country without Universal Health Care. It is about the money, the money, the money. Will there be some waiting, probably. Read the original post and tell me that this is the best healthcare in the world. Tell me why we have 45 million with no healthcare. Tell me why the same drug in Canada costs pennies compared to here in the U.S. and don't give me the FDA garbage about inferior manufacturing. Pfizer's drug in Canada is identical. Money, plain and simple.
High Crimes & Misdemeanors
· 1 year ago
Well that happened to me once,kinda, I was so sick one day back in 2000. I had to call 911 myself because my stomach had cramped up big time. I was hurting so bad I was screaming in the ambulance. Of course they took their sweet ass time to drive me to hospital. They brought me to the waiting room, had me sit there for 45min. Needless to say I was not doing well. Moaning in pain. I asked when I could see a doctor, they told me i had to wait. Well the sickness took over and I finally had to let it go. I puked all over the hospital floor, in front of everyone one, pretty awful and gross. Needless to say I was serviced right away. I was put on a stretcher and whisked away, I was going to see a doctor finally. Yeah hospitals suck!
Andon
· 1 year ago
Canuck55 is entirely correct. But it goes farther than he suggests. If you are unafraid of medical costs, you can use your money to pursue your immediate interests instead of hoarding it against the costs of medical disaster. If in addition to cost-free treatment, as a senior you get a public pension, reduced rates on all sorts of services and goods, and even reduced taxation in some locales, you have a relaxed, anxiety-reduced existence which in turn must in some intangible manner improve your health or at least your quality of life in old age. Or so it would appear since Canadian life expectancy rates are well in excess of those in discombobulated States south of the 49th parallel. Why then do you do what you do? Is it a religious obligation akin to self-flagellation? A taste for pain? Self-hatred? Or just blind ignorance and stupidity as Canuck55 implies?
sukabi1
· 1 year ago
I think it has more to do with the health insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies owning our congress critters ... they work together to feed mis / disinformation to the public on cost / effectiveness / viability of a national healthcare system... and doncha know, it's a commie / socialist idea and is "Not the American Way"... besides, it'd be harder to make a buck...
And Parkland Memorial Hospital is in Dallas, and is the hospital where JFK died (as well as Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby). I can recall playing in the back yard as a young boy and my mom came out and said that Kennedy had been shot, so the name Parkland Hospital will forever be associated, for my generation, with that dark day.
Kineslaw
· 1 year ago
As someone who spent time in Parkland Hospital as a paramedic student, this doesn't surprise me much. My 1st ER rotation there someone had been waiting over 12 hours with a broken arm and another person had been in the ER 20 hours. This was in 2000, and I'm sure it hasn't gotten better.
H*ll, as a student, I even delivered a couple of babies in Parkland. Delivering a baby and ordering at a Mexican restaurant are now the only functional things I can do in Spanish.
On May I had to go to the ER at the county hospital here in Austin. I received substandard care for less than two hours, an IV and two cheap drugs to control an allergic reaction and it cost me over $1200. If I hadn't been a student and had access to the Health Center the three follow-ups would have pushed the bill to over $2000.
Two months later I went to the ER in Thailand and including the prescribed medicine, it cost $27. The Thai doctor looked at my rash, said I had Dengue Fever (I'm pretty sure, accent was a little thick) and said the rash meant I would be better in 3 days. No tests, no follow-up, but he was right.
I know people knock student health centers, but I always had good experiences at Texas. A population of 50,000 mostly healthy people paying about $60 a semester was enough to support the equivalent of least 10 full-time doctors, nurses and support staff. Office visits were included, everything else required payment, but the prices were reasonable and the health center accepted insurance.
You could always see a doctor within a day or two for an appointment and they also had an urgent care clinic. Doctors were judicious in the tests they ordered. They understood many of their patients weren't insulated from the costs and the doctors really tried to balance what was needed v. cost.
The student health center had a combination of salaried doctors, cheap preventative care and cost-awareness that any rational health care system requires.
l0rri
· 1 year ago
I recently spent 17 hours waiting to see a doctor in a local L.A. County hospital for a possible blood cot in my leg (I was sent there by a doctor). There were about 75 people in the waiting room along with me waiting the same length of time, with little groups of six or seven people going in to the treatment area at a time. After 17 hours, I finally saw a doctor for maybe five minutes. He didn't even physically examine the swollen foot/ankle. Now I have a $900 bill to pay. End result: I will avoid all doctors and hospitals like the plague for the rest of my life (unless by some miracle there comes a day when I can once again afford health insurance), and the taxpayers will end up eating it when I'm brought into the ER with a stroke, a heart attack, or other condition that could have been treated earlier. And yes, I am employed and I pay taxes.
SCLiberal
· 1 year ago
Any health care reform that includes the insurance industry is no reform at all. We don't need insurance. We need health care.
If this is capitalism, I'll go with socialism.
phalamir
· 1 year ago
Agree to pay the bill, ask them to send a rep over to get the check, frisk him/her, give them the check, and a bill for $200 for assessing the personal protection of the rep.
msra
· 1 year ago
My son was hit in the mouth by a baseball resulting in his front teeth ripping apart his upper lip leaving a mangled swollen, bleeding mess. We happened to arrive at a private hospital ER in a "wealthy" part of town at a non-busy time & were triaged through to the "non-life threatening" side where we were told specifically it would be a short wait as there were only 2 people before us. In the waiting room there was only one other person and they had a "cold". As my son sat there his lip continuing to bleed, no one ever offered one bit of aid, even when I asked for something to put pressure to stop the bleeding. Our "short wait" turned into 4 hours. No other patient came in or out in all that time except one. They finally put us in a filthy room with blood and used gauze pads on the floor at which point a nurse came in looked at my son's massively swollen mouth and asked "So what's the problem?", upon which she reached out and carelessly grabbed his lip causing severe pain. She then turned on her heels and walked out without saying a word. When I followed her and asked when he might finally be cared for, she told me she was busy and we'd just have to wait. Needless to say, we walked out, needless to say they sent us a bill for $200.00, needless to say I called up and reported it and they wrote off the bill which they claimed was for "triage". I guess I'm just grateful he didn't have anything life threatening.
jebauer
· 1 year ago
Chris, I watched my dad die in our shitty health care system and I worked within the health care system as a non-medical entity. When my dad got sick, I was appalled at how much we know BUT HOW LITTLE WE OFFER the sick people of this country. For all their socialism bashing, the Republicans seem to be forgetting something. If you base a capitalist, free market economy on making money off of sick people, you're going to end up in a country with alot of sick people and a few filthy rich people. We keep building bigger hospitals while prices soar and people get sicker on pharmaceuticals that are supposed to take the place of HEALTH CARE. Our country at this point has little to do with health and especially has little to do with care. And the doctors and nurses who have devoted their lives to saving people are equally as frustrated... at least the ones that are there for the right reasons. I don't believe capitalism belongs in health care.
SecretScoundrel
· 1 year ago
This is the ER story to beat all -
I was called to the ER here in NC to visit my father who was taken there due to a hear attack. The rest of my family was already in the ER waiting area when I arrived. As soon as I entered the sliding glass doors of the ER a deranged "patient" ran towards me, sucker punched me and shoved me to the floor. A hospital security guard was close by -what did he do? He grabbed me off the floor with blood running down my face and hauled me through the ER halls trying to throw me out the back door. All the while doctors and nurses are asking "what's going on? Am I OK?" When he couldn't find the back door and I finally gained enough composure to insist to see a doctor, he brought me back to the waiting room. The guy who punched me was still there - I wanted to press charges but the security guard refused saying that he was distraught due to his wife in the ER. My sister called the police and we did press charges against the man.
But the thing is - I did see a doctor. I had a broken nose and a fractured rib. Afterwards the hospital sent me a bill for over $1200. When I refused to pay it, they threaten to take me to court. I told them I would look forward to it. I never heard back from them.
Dr David Black
· 6 months ago
Health insurance is a must and chiropractic costs are usually covered. It give you peace of mind ! Dr.David Black www.blackchiropractic.com.au
Dr David Black
· 6 months ago
Public health services are in a mess ! People pay taxes but receive no benefits. Dr.David Black www.blackchiropractic.com.au
All Comments
My 82 year old dad is a great example of a working healthcare system. The Bionic Man, as I call him, has 2 titanium hips, a pacemaker, has had a few skin cancers lopped off and gets monthly doctor visits and tests for his blood pressure and all this costs him nada. And I know that he is getting the best of care and is enjoying an excellent quality of life. But in the US, if he had no health care, or even if he did, he would most likely be bedridden or dead. And then no one would have been mowing my lawn all these years.
Why the hell people in the US don't rise up as one and demand universal healthcare is beyond me.
I think the knee-jerk reaction to those code words that has been "bred" into the national conscience is finally about over for most folks* ...
*this obviously does not apply to McCain / Palin supporters or the campaign staff...
Most people I speak with here are under the impression that Canadian health care is minimal, rationed, and that people waste away for years waiting for really important procedures, which is why so many Canadians are lined up at our gates trying to get in. (?) Many are dead opposed to paying for medical care via taxation (horrors) when they have to pay more annually for their crappy private coverage.
The more I travel the more I realize how having universal benefits based on citizenship and taxes affects the quality of your life: people with systems like that make employment/life decisions based on what they like to do and what they're good at more often when getting employer-based benefits aren't part of the equation, and even with higher taxes they end up paying less in the end.
Money, plain and simple.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1exiyBYnJ00
New cartoon and song and Palin. Check it out.
H*ll, as a student, I even delivered a couple of babies in Parkland. Delivering a baby and ordering at a Mexican restaurant are now the only functional things I can do in Spanish.
On May I had to go to the ER at the county hospital here in Austin. I received substandard care for less than two hours, an IV and two cheap drugs to control an allergic reaction and it cost me over $1200. If I hadn't been a student and had access to the Health Center the three follow-ups would have pushed the bill to over $2000.
Two months later I went to the ER in Thailand and including the prescribed medicine, it cost $27. The Thai doctor looked at my rash, said I had Dengue Fever (I'm pretty sure, accent was a little thick) and said the rash meant I would be better in 3 days. No tests, no follow-up, but he was right.
I know people knock student health centers, but I always had good experiences at Texas. A population of 50,000 mostly healthy people paying about $60 a semester was enough to support the equivalent of least 10 full-time doctors, nurses and support staff. Office visits were included, everything else required payment, but the prices were reasonable and the health center accepted insurance.
You could always see a doctor within a day or two for an appointment and they also had an urgent care clinic. Doctors were judicious in the tests they ordered. They understood many of their patients weren't insulated from the costs and the doctors really tried to balance what was needed v. cost.
The student health center had a combination of salaried doctors, cheap preventative care and cost-awareness that any rational health care system requires.
If this is capitalism, I'll go with socialism.
I was called to the ER here in NC to visit my father who was taken there due to a hear attack. The rest of my family was already in the ER waiting area when I arrived. As soon as I entered the sliding glass doors of the ER a deranged "patient" ran towards me, sucker punched me and shoved me to the floor. A hospital security guard was close by -what did he do? He grabbed me off the floor with blood running down my face and hauled me through the ER halls trying to throw me out the back door. All the while doctors and nurses are asking "what's going on? Am I OK?" When he couldn't find the back door and I finally gained enough composure to insist to see a doctor, he brought me back to the waiting room. The guy who punched me was still there - I wanted to press charges but the security guard refused saying that he was distraught due to his wife in the ER. My sister called the police and we did press charges against the man.
But the thing is - I did see a doctor. I had a broken nose and a fractured rib. Afterwards the hospital sent me a bill for over $1200. When I refused to pay it, they threaten to take me to court. I told them I would look forward to it. I never heard back from them.
It give you peace of mind !
Dr.David Black
www.blackchiropractic.com.au
People pay taxes but receive no benefits.
Dr.David Black
www.blackchiropractic.com.au