American Thinker:
Three weeks ago, I was struck with an intensely painful, and briefly highly dangerous, MSSA staph infection, with a full recovery underway.
The experience, plus time on my hands recuperating, has given me a personal appreciation of the coming nightmare of universal healthcare.
The month-long recuperating period has afforded me the opportunity to think holistically about my medical experience, especially as it relates to health care policy.
My conclusions are based solely on direct experience, in particular what I learned watching the system operate up close and personal.
Given my general conservative political views, I am mindful that I do not want to take advantage of “patient” status to discuss grander matters of health care.
So here goes, with apologies in advance if this post steps too far into the stream.
I leave from the story that it took eight days from the onset of the severe pain until I was under genuine medical care. As it turns out, the pain was due to a raging staph infection in my bloodstream, whereas my doctors to date had convinced themselves that it was a disc pull.
The unfortunate consequence was eight days without a blood test. I was even discharged by the attending Emergency Room doctor with instructions to get a massage, which I did, to my walloping regret.
In retrospect, I believe it is fair to chalk up the missed diagnosis to normal bad luck and a difficult to diagnose condition. I focus instead only on the medical care received once I was properly admitted to one of the best hospitals in the U.S., in a luxurious (and expensive) private room, getting exceptional attention.
Here is the one thing I want to communicate, without being polemical or partisan.
Under Elizabeth Warren’s plan, or anything resembling a dramatic increase in demand for health care, inevitable once health is declared a “right,” no less a fundamental human right, I never would have left that hospital alive. Without any doubt.
Why? For a couple of reasons that I want to share.
…simply put, if the Govenment owns the air you breathe via the EPA and the lungs you breathe it with via UHC, they own YOU.
…he who owns both sides of a river, owns the river…
Trouble is the stupid asshat Democrats are talking universal insurance coverage not health care! Every American (and most of the world) can be given healthcare insurance but can’t be guaranteed any level or quality of healthcare
I think I just signed up for the ObamaCare Tinfoil plan. You show up at the hospital and wait until you either drop dead or prove yourself too stubborn to die. If it’s the latter, you are assigned to the communicable disease ward for a week, and if still around are offered a gun instead of food and water.
Hey, it’s universal and almost affordable. Should I feel grateful?
Really??? Come on, if universal insurance is so great why haven’t other countries established it, worked out the bugs and start offering it to Americans at a reduced cost??? Hint, they want us to set it up, give it away and the only catch is, we get to pay for it. Their cost . . . zip. Nice deal sucker. Nothing is free, if you haven’t notice.
I already HAVE universal healthcare, THANKS to Der Kommissar Obamassar!
I have, NO healthcare. 😡
Wait till all of the doctors are millennials and they just tick the ‘OKBoomer’ box. They’ll earn gold stars with The State for saving money (rationing).
Illustr8r, if they’re not millennials they will be foreigners. My sorry insurance provider assigned me a new primary care physician, a guy from South Korea. I’m sure he is a fine guy, but we can’t understand each other. I’m pretty close to dropping out of the system.
With the passage of Obamacare it is no longer about health care, it’s about money. Hospitals over bill the Insurance companies, Insurance companies over charge policy holders.
I just had a conversation about MRI fees in Omaha, NE. $315 to $1200 for the same test.
In the old adage of “Shit runs downhill”, who’s at the bottom, the middle class and those that could use the help. And by “help” I mean people who are working to make their lives better, not couch bound whiners.
A few examples:
HCA Holdings – CEO R. Milton Johnson – $17.3 million
Banner Health – CEO Peter Fine – $8.7 million
Mayo Clinic — CEO John Noseworthy – $2.7 million
Making hospitals disclose their fees is a good start. Competition is a good thing, and I believe that’s called Capitalism, not Socialism.
More here:
https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/compensation-issues/17-healthcare-ceos-make-list-of-overpaid-executives.html
@Joe I know. My primary care dr quit seeing patients last year to go into, “the business of medicine.” 🤷♀️ Took me forever to find another and she moved to an office in another town that is very inconvenient to get to-no notice-found out after trying to get an appointment. I have a specialist that I have to see and I had to jump through hoops with my insurance to continue with her. Any lab I have to get has to have prior insurance approval. My “specialist” confessed to me she hates how medicine has evolved. She spends too much time on the computer ticking boxes on forms. She misses the time she used to spend with her patients.