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Thread: some things never change.

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    Default some things never change.

    the other night i watched a documentary about our national health service and the battle to get it started in 1948.the main opponents were the elite of the medical profession,consultants,surgeons down to general practitioners.they were doing very nicely,thank you,as the system stood and didn't want it to change regardless of the fact that the vast majority of people couldn't afford proper medical care.the mortality rates of babies was shocking.the opponents waged a campaign of scare stories and smear attacks against aneurin bevan,the politician whose brainchild it was.it was the first step on the road to communism,doctors would be told by the government who to treat and not treat,bevan was being paid by the russians.in the end it was the people who decided,who when given the choice between seeing a nhs doctor for free or their old doctor,chose in their hundreds of thousands the nhs.the opposition crumbled and the rest is history.
    then tonight i watched a news report on the bbc about the opposition to obama's plans for health care changes in the usa.i'll be honest and say i don't know what his plans are but what struck me was the similarity of the oppositions tactics to that of 1948.the scare stories regarding communism and socialism.the right wing media and their smear campaigns.it seems to me that the ones who oppose these schemes the loudest are the ones that don't need to use them.i find it amusing that those who defend the "let the market decide"system were the first with their hands out when the banks were collapsing on a daily basis.tax payers money is good enough for them but not for the healthcare of ordinary people.
    anyway i wish mr obama good luck and i hope the good people of america get a scheme that looks after them.
    john.

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    I hear ya. It's pretty ugly here right now. I just hope we can settle on something that helps everyone.

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    I am on the Obama email list and get emails on a weekly basis, and honestly I stopped reading them a few months ago because it eventually became like spam (LOL) so I havent been up to date on his health care reform. The things Ive seen on yahoo kind of scare me, I thought he was going more for the let the government control your healthcare, even tho it would be free, so I dont know. I could be wrong. I hope im wrong.

    I do hope its not like his school proposal, all government run schools, no private schools. I dont know about you but where I live, I am very fortunate to have a "public/private" school, where the local town pays for our school system in conjuction with government funding. It is #2 in the state for education. The public-- all government run schools in the citys around me (where I getsdid my edumication darnit!) are among the lowest in the state. I know its that way everywhere. If his plan goes thru for this, the schools in my area will become government run, funded, and taken over. All teachers will make the same- great for those who are not paid well now, but bad for the great teachers who work at the schools, who are hired for their excellence, paid out of their budget for it, and know they have to work hard to meet the standard to keep it!

    its very complicated and lots of issues in there so i wont go into it. Ill have to research his medical agenda more... now youve got me interested. Heck, I campaigned for him, may as well see what he's doing now. He just threw me when about 50 things changed after he got into office. I just kind of switched off the obama support to, "uh, i dont know this guy" lol. Lets hope he is on track and gets health care the way it should be!
    Georgia In Ohio... On a Mission for Remission!

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    As a strong proponent of health care for all being a canuck, I see private health care merrits too. To many a time my husband and the surgeons can't operate because the quota for the day is done, or there are no more money in the kitty. They go around it by saying it was an emergency or the case was started before the end of the day just so that they can operate on as many as they can. Government controll is fine and dandy when there is money to spend but badly falters when there is none and essential services are cut. Waiting lists for surgeries are at least 3 to 9 months long. for hart patients or other urgent cases this it's impossible
    Jolanta

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    Surgery here is determined by clinical need, but they also have a cap at 3 months (I think). The target for cancer patients is 2 weeks. However, as with anything involving politics, claims vary wildly! I can only report things as I have experienced them.
    In my own case, I've always received treatment within a few weeks and in one case of a questionable skin cancer, the following day! (turned out to be nothing ) I am currently waiting to hear about my ear grommets op, but I'm expecting to have to wait a while. Even I don't consider it to be that urgent.
    Last edited by Jack; 08-11-2009 at 04:18 PM.

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    The idea of "rationing" health care understandably scares the pants off everyone. The thing is, we're already rationing health care with our current system.

    State medical assistance is nightmarish. It takes MONTHS to see a specialist, even with quite serious and life-threatening problems. When I had Arizona medical assistance, I needed an infected molar surgically extracted during my early days with Wegs. (Good thing, because AZ medicaid only pays for tooth extractions, not fillings or anything else. So poor people have to have healthy teeth pulled all the time--even kids)

    The nearest medicaid oral surgeon was a 3 hr drive across mostly desert. They offered to provide "transportation" in the form of a regular guy in his regular car (ie, no medical training), but it would take a few weeks to get it scheduled. None of my docs, dentist, etc...would okay any of that. I was still on oxygen and in dicey shape. The surgery was extremely high risk. Medicaid wouldn't authorize a local oral surgeon to do it, and non-medicaid surgeons weren't even allowed to treat me even if I paid myself. For 2 weeks, I had a painful, infected tooth and I was on heavy immunosuppressants. They wouldn't budge. Finally I had to go to a local one and just forgot to tell him I had medicaid. I put it on a credit card. I wrote the governor and explained what I had been forced to do.

    Rationing also happens with private insurance. Most insurance won't authorize Rituxan unless everything else has failed, because it's so pricey. Sometimes not even then. Insurance companies have caps on how many visits you can have in a year for certain types of treatment (eg, physical therapy, chiropractic, psychotherapy). There are lifetime policy caps. I live in fear of all those things every day, and I have what would be considered excellent private insurance.

    Denial of services is a major problem, too. I have a permanent fracture on the underside of one kneecap, due to a fall 20 yrs ago. I fell last year and it's substantially worse. I can barely use the knee. But because it's a pre-existing condition, I have zero insurance coverage for it.

    I think a lot of people with good insurance are content because they don't really have to use it. Get something like Wegs and reality hits. I also think a lot of people don't know how it is to be uninsured or underinsured. There was an excellent story on NPR last week about a mobile medical assistance team. I did a blog piece on it if you're interested (not to promote my blog or NPR-- it was just a good example of how uninsured people live).

    I do believe we can find a way to work together. Everyone wants good health care, and I don't believe anyone truly wants anyone else to suffer for lack of it.

  7. #7
    Doug Guest

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    I think a lot of people with good insurance are content because they don't really have to use it. Get something like Wegs and reality hits. I also think a lot of people don't know how it is to be uninsured or underinsured. There was an excellent story on NPR last week about a mobile medical assistance team. I did a blog piece on it if you're interested (not to promote my blog or NPR-- it was just a good example of how uninsured people live).

    While there, don't forget to read Sangye's other postings, including a highly entertaining one about a turtle incident and another about "sniffing the lower back" (I won't spoil it by going into more detail, but this is Sangye at her humorous best! + 1

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    This healthcare issue seems like it should be such an easy fix, BUT it is not. There are so many cirlces to spin to make it work. If anyone can do something, it will be Obama. I believe that anything is better than nothing at this point.
    Currently my daughter is past the age of "student", but she is still a student at the University and because myt husbands insurance company does not insure past age 23, she is now completely without insurance. ARGHHHHH! She is not alone! There are millions of Americans without insurance and if they do have insurance they are insurance poor (like me)
    A disease like WG can really mess you up, becuase it is a chronic disease, if my husband would try to get another job, they may not insure me or anything to do with the WG because they do not have to at this point. Obama is trying to change thatm unfortunately it sometimes is at the expense of other positives that the private insurance companies offer now.
    Its a crap shoot! I trust that highly intelligiebnt people are working on this and hope the "light bulb moment" comes sooner rather than later
    not enough coffee for this gal today
    LIsa

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    Question, supose someone of your doughter's age got our dreade BFF, and has no income or very little off. Will they not get any treatment? Please tell me that they would treat the person. there must be state run hospitals
    Jolanta

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    I know of such people, and they are going without treatment. Some are waiting for state assistance to go through, but of course that assistance is often not adequate or even close. Meanwhile, they are damaging organs, living in excruciating pain, and risking their lives every day. If these stories were in the headlines, I can't imagine there'd be the arguments we're seeing. Or maybe there would, but I just can't stand to think of it.

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