Be prepared for the "FEAR FACTOR"

[OntarioVanMan]

No offense taken Greg...I am starting to lean to this system here abit if I can afford it...Its so different...I was used to everything included up there....physical every 2 years, lab tests, specialists...here I am in my pocket everytime I sneeze....

 

[greg334]

No offense taken Greg...I am starting to lean to this system here abit if I can afford it...Its so different...I was used to everything included up there....physical every 2 years, lab tests, specialists...here I am in my pocket everytime I sneeze....

Yea that is all true, but when you look at a few other factors involved, than it really is a better system here.

One thing that I really think that matters is the inclusion of the patient on treatment options and how things are handled.

I worked with a person overseas that had the same medical condition I had but she was not given any choices on treatments of it. Her hospital stay was twice as long as mine and her home recovery was even longer - where I was back to work in a matter of 6 weeks, she was out for most of the year. Her country, France, gave her marginal care at best and restricted her on meds but her out of pocket expenses were outrageous even by our standards. She came here after I met her and told what happened to me. She feels that even though France seems to be on the cutting edge of socialized everything, people over here don't get how luck they really are to be able to have choices on where to go and what is done to them.

 

[LDB]

The only reason anyone is endorsing and supporting Hilama and speaking positively about the prospects of socialized health care is lack of information and education on the abject failure of socialized medicine in Canada and Europe. You will be forced to pay an exorbitant rate for coverage and you won't have any choice or say in the matter. Once you are in your 60's and certainly into your 70's you can forget about getting any sort of expensive treatment such as organ transplants, major cancer surgery and treatment and perhaps even things like dialysis. The new liver will go to the 35 year old drug addict who never contributed anything to society but is only 35 years old. WAKE UP! Take off the rose colored glasses. The Obamily health plan is nothing more than government reaching deep into your pockets again to provide you an incredibly shallow benefit. Ignorance may be bliss but ignorance regarding this matter is a death sentence should you need serious major health care. Be educated not ignorant and see it for what it actually is. Ignorance is a choice and that's more choice than you'll have under socialized medicine. Ask someone who knows and isn't a politician.

 

[arkjarhead]

If you think govt. sponsored healthcare is good I think you are mistaken. I say this from my own first hand experience. Say I get sick and want to go see my primary care doctor. It's gonna take me at least 3 weeks to get in, but here is the crazy thing. I'm 100% disabled so I get priority and bumped ahead on the list. So average Joe Veteran has to wait longer than that. If you need to see a dietician or some other kind of of specialist you have to wait at least 3 weeks to see primary care, then another 2 weeks to get a call to set up an appointment with the specialist, and then God only knows how long until your appointment. I had a hard time with my tonsils a couple of winters ago. Long story short it took me 9 months to get into see the ears,nose, and throat doctor.

I try not to complain about the health care I receive at the VA, but sometimes it's plum crazy. Now people are saying everyone should have this. In one way I think they are stupid, and in another way I'm offended. I mean why did I serve? Heck if the lazy college boys are gonna be getting the same benefits from the government as the guys who served what was the point in me ruining my life? I should've kept my a$$ at home and partied like those chumps did. We earned what we get. Now everyone thinks they deserve the same. If you get it I hope it's of equal or lesser quality than what most vets get.

 

[Robsdad]

LDB.
I see right through you. If the subject matter cannot go your way it results in what a dumb a** he is. Well let me explain something to you mister. I resent some of the things you have sent my direction. When I said things that hit you close to home. I apologized. I have read time and again your articles and have had some issue with them. However I have never written about your post in a personal manner. I realize your deep conviction over this issue but I would hope that other Mods on this site would act a little more appropriately rather than taking pot shots at someone. You don't know me, what I am made of or anything. In the future if you have nothing more to do than shoot me and others on here down, I look forward to the day we meet face to face, at that time you will learn how the cat ate the rat.
Have a good day sir.

 

[LDB]

I do not consider anyone a dumb-a who is ignorant on any subject. I am ignorant on many subjects. Ignorance is just a lack of education/information on a particular subject. The most intelligent people in the world are ignorant of assorted subjects. I am ignorant of the practice of medicine but not of the business of medicine. I had a front row seat for that and didn't need years of chemistry/biology/anatomy etc. to comprehend and learn what I observed. I also had an inside track to a number of physicians and of the dozens of them, save for one single solitary exception, they all oppose socialized medicine. The exception saw it as a straight contract guaranteeing a certain annual income with minimal work. The rest saw it as huge restrictions and limitations on the care they could provide their patients. They saw how crippling it would be. They saw how unfair it would be. They saw how corrupt it would be. Those are the truths of national health care without the coloring of the glasses. Do you really believe Hilama gives a krap about any of us or our health? To the extent we might produce less so they'd have to tax us less they do. Beyond that they could care less. It is nothing but a HUGE new source of power and revenue to them and nothing more. I'm sorry if my frank assessment of socialized medicine is too brusque. I wasn't speaking of you or anyone specifically but of the group who aren't well enough informed to see it for the debacle it will be.

 

[Robsdad]

LDB:
I have only a high school diploma. Not college educated. Have earned my degree through the academy of hard knocks. But time lends one the ability to rationalize things to a degree of understanding for oneself. I have a wife with crippling arthritis. I worked and retired from a company with full medical benefits that were stripped from us after 18 months. I have no insurance at all. This may explain why universal health care looks attractive to me. Some health care vs. none cannot be a bad thing. Do I think the quality of health care will suffer. Surely I do. But I have a knee right now that is bone on bone. No cartilage left. I have no insurance or will any provider cover me with an existing. This post however was not for this subject. It just somehow filtered over to it. I see no way anyone person can make health care more affordable when the prices charged by hospitals and doctors are where they are today. Will universal health care or affordable health care solve all the problems of the 47 million uninsured, No. Will it give them hope that help is on the way, I think that is all I and many others can hope for.

 

[LDB]

I can understand in your situation the hope it could inspire. Based on being retired I'm presuming you are not spring chickens. If that's the case the reality is you are near or perhaps past the age where "universal" health care will offer you any benefit because you are outside the "universe" that can be most taxed to pay for it. You will be taxed of course, as will we all. I don't know of a good solution. I know a large part of the problem is due to all the "John Edwards" in the country that have driven the price of malpractice insurance to astronomical heights. In some places it costs and OB/GYN that delivers babies a quarter million dollars per year just for malpractice insurance. A neurosurgeon friend in Arizona was paying $200k annual premium in the 1980's! Doctors are forced to do 4 tests, 1 to diagnose and 3 to CYA from the lawyers.

If you know your personal physician fairly well ask him if you could have lunch together one day and get his input on socialized medicine and whether he believes it would be beneficial and compare his input to what Hilama tells us.

 

[Robsdad]

I will speak to him soon. We have a case (all retired employees) pending against our previous company. But we were not given a good feeling about it being overturned. It has cost all of us approx. $1500 each to try and fight this but who knows what the outcome will be. I would have never taken early retirement had I known what I know now. But they made it look so good at the time I and many others could not turn it down. A years salary. 100% of our retirement and full medical benefits for the family. But it didn't take long for the medical to go away. All we have is our retirement contract but the company has been sold twice since our departure.

 

[greg334]

Robsdad,
Don't take this personal but the thing is we really need to get government out of everything possible and return it back to what it was there for in the first place. The sad thing is health care is a mess because of government, and the same goes for the economy with the congress and the fed messing with the money.

If you want to improve things, start complaining about the taxes. I mean look at the health care saving accounts, to many it sounds good but the IRS has put so many restrictions on it that I and many who can save, are not allowed to use that program. It would be far far better to look at the Fair Tax and get on that band wagon than to hope for socialized medicine because once we reach a point that we have socialized medicine after the climb up of the American people, we will end up with Fascist style government just to keep a lid on things to keep socialized medicine going. If you don't think this will happen, look at Germany in the early 1930's.

The Fair Tax