posted on Jul, 22 2009 @ 03:18 PM
As I've said before, government subsidized health care is not new to America. We've had Medicare and Medicaid for a generation or more. Many
states have public hospitals, which are often teaching hospitals, that provide care for the indigent. There is also of course the VA system.
As someone who has for most of his life had to depend on public health care through both the state and the VA, I can tell you that it is better than
nothing. In most cases the health care is more than adequate.
The problems that one must face in making do with this kind of health care is that the patient is at the mercy of the system. Sometimes it works out
really well and sometimes it doesn't.
Sometimes you can get your needs met in a timely fashion and sometimes you have to wait and wait.
Often, you have to put up with hospital staff that is worse than rude. Sometimes they are dangerous and your recourses for such maltreatment or
malpractice are nonexistent.
Don't get me wrong. When I was destitute or nearly so and I needed health care, I was willing to put up with almost anything to get the treatment I
needed. In a couple of cases, I would certainly have died without that care.
However, I can tell you that the typical American is not going to want to put up with the indignities that I have had to endure to get the care I
needed, from smart-ass doctors, to nurses who let me go for hours without administering my pain meds, to the aides that would let my broken leg hit
the floor just so they could get a chuckle, to physical therapists who thought they were on the staff of some medieval torture chamber.
Tongue-in-cheek rhetorical questions about the impending health care bill are fine, but I can assure you that this is no joking matter and if this
bill passes, I can assure you that almost everyone who thinks this is good policy will probably live long enough to regret it.
If you have problems with your HMO now, believe me, in time you will long for the halcyon days of private-sector managed care.
[edit on 2009/7/22 by GradyPhilpott]