We just got copies of the bill for the 2 and a half days and 2 nites I spent in the hospital for my ulcer. The total was close to $6,000.00! Fortunately, our health insurance paid all but 12 dollars and change (of course, this does not include the individual bills from my doctor and the gastrointestinolgist which haven’t arrived yet…but the insurance should take most of that, too.)
It started me thinking about people my age (lower 60s) with similar problems (there must be millions of them out there) who don’t have health insurance… and I wonder what they do if they require a long hospital stay… or if they have a bleeding ulcer requiring transfusions. At some point, the emergency room is not enough and they have to get into the system.
This is why I support universal health care. It should be the right of all Americans, as it is the right of all Canadians, British, and French people. The fact that it is not is shameful.
As I look at candidates, the one who comes closest to a universal system is the one I’m going to campaign hardest for.
a universal system
Slightly O/T; here’s a universal, maybe utopian system (the below clip ended up on the cutting floor when Michael Moore made Sicko):
I posted the following in a comment to the clip a couple of days ago:
Two comments:
* Moore does not lie, but this is still not an accurate reflection of reality.
* I know the guy committed for fraud….
The short answer-they-men,women and children- die…plain and simple.
A recent horrible story is about the young boy who had an abscessed tooth and parent couldn’t afford for him to go to dentist-he died from some sort of poison from the abscess….all because they didn’t have the 90 or so dollars they were told it would cost.
administered by lower than pond scum.
I too once had really good medical insurance. They paid for my son’s ruptured appendix totally. However this good insurance company apparently didn’t put enough money in the boss’s annual bonus so now we are stuck with shithead’s insurance company. By that I mean United Health Care, yes the company sued under the RICO statutes, the company who “got rid of” Willaim McGuire with a golden parachute worth 1.78 billion. Now a formerly serious and productive work enviornment has turned into daily bitch sessions about executives and the extent of their assholianism.
Now lest you forget I am from mAssachusetts where this type of insurance is mandatory. Yes, they refuse to regulate it but instead demand that you buy shitty insurance. Let this not become a model for the nation.
Now you may say something is better than nothing and this in general may be true yet if you are going to advocate for this I want a comprehensive, and by comprehesive I mean a total unfailing non-Satan inspired piece of real US, mom and apple pie bona fide legislation. Go ahead, I dare ya, to ask for something real.
When you don’t have any food, you go hungry.
When you don’t have water you go thirsty.
When you don’t have health care you don’t get sick, or if you get sick you don’t go to the doctor. You don’t go to hospitals. If it is life ending, then your life ends.
Really, it is quite simple.
I am in the later part of 6o’s. I don’t have insurance. I have medicare, but from what I have read about their restrictions, disclaimers, non-covered statements, I am not so sure just what they would take care of if I needed it.
I have decided not to need it. So it is pretty straight forward for me.
I’ve been here (on earth) long enough to get the lay of the land, I’m not opposed to moving on to a new adventure when the body gives it up.
But Universal Health care, the real thing without the insurance co. middle men is a must for everyone in our country. To do otherwise is unconscionable.