The Self Titled Sicko

It seems that we are on the brink of proving Senator Rockefeller right when he said that Americans would get Hillarycare even if they "had to stuff it down their throats." An interesting visual, to say the least. Canada's health care system and Cuba's health care system are being touted as the end-all be-all of health care systems. Are their systems better than ours?

I remember a chapter title in a book by John McMillan called Reinventing the Bazaar. The title of the chapter was "He who can't pay dies." This is the first time I ever heard that phrase, and it made me think. It says so much about how health care is organized. If you are poor, sorry, no health care. If you just can't afford to pay the outrageous prices for operations, sorry, no health care. The phrase also makes it clear that in this type of system, health care is not a right, but a privilege earned through wealth. When we are speaking about human lives and the quality of life, it seems almost inhumane to even begin to subscribe to this type of system where the poor are left behind, and as far as health care pricing goes, the middle class is also left behind. That is until the alternative is examined.

I recently came upon a website, which has been linked to in this post. Its freemarketcure.com. The article that I read there was called Socialized Medicine is Sicko by Stuart Browning. He writes about the Canadian system. Here are just a few facts, yes facts, about their system.

1. Canadians are waiting (due to rationing) for about 800,000 procedures
2. The median wait time for health care procedures in Canada is 17.8 weeks
3. Stuart writes," It is not hard to find Canadians who have waited months to get an MRI"
4. Waits for health care in Canada go like this : "the wait to see a specialist, the wait to get a diagnostic test, the wait to get surgery - and then the wait for rescheduled surgery after one's initial surgical appointment has been cancelled - sometimes multiple times - a routine phenomenon."
5. "Lindsay McCreith, a Canadian with a suspected brain tumor... had to wait four months for an MRI. Instead, he crossed the border to the U.S and got it in two days."
6. "Janice Fraser who, unable to urinate, needed to have a pacemaker-type device implanted to control her bladder. Unfortunately, the hospital arbitrarily rationed the operation by doing only one per month. Janice was number 32 on the list - nearly a three year wait. She ended up waiting so long that she developed life-threatening infections, had to have her bladder removed in an emergency procedure, and will now wear a urine bag for the rest of her life."
7. "In May, the Toronto Star ran a story about an Ontario man with a fist-sized hole in his head - due to an car accident - who had to wait one year for surgery to close it."
8. In Britain, Doctors at Glasgow University published a study claiming that, "464,000 deaths had been caused over the last 30 years by the NHS in Scotland and that "the vast majority of people - around 250,000 - who died due to inadequate or delayed treatment were heart or stroke patients."

These are just a few examples but they signify the widespread problems with a nationalized health care system. Lets look at some of the problems that are facing our own system - as told by Michael Moore (http://www.news-leader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070713/ENTERTAINMENT01/707130346/1005/ENTERTAINMENT)
(http://www.eurekareporter.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?ArticleID=25979)
(http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11208212)

1. An 18-month-old girl dies of cardiac arrest because a hospital refuses her care because her mother's insurance company isn't valid at that hospital.
2. A single mother raising children on $1,000 a month is paying $240 a month for two inhalers.
3. An elderly woman with fresh stitches in her scalp is left at curbside by a taxi because she's run out of time at the hospital.
4. 50 million people in the U.S. without health insurance.
5. An accident victim who has to choose which finger to have reattached because he can't afford to pay for both.

Okay, so now there are horror stories from both sides here. What are we to do?

Before we take that plunge and decide where we might go with our health care system, lets look at a few of these above examples.

1. The first example is the 18 month child that has a cardiac arrest and dies because the mother's health insurance is not valid at that hospital. Is it not against the law for that hospital to refuse service for emergencies, let alone dire emergencies? I wonder what the backstory is for this unfortunate child.
2. The second is a mother that earns $1,000 a month but pays $240 for two inhalers. Not to be cruel... BUT $1,000 bucks a month comes out to $6.25/hour for 40 hours a week or $8.33/hour for 30 hours a week. My first job's starting wage was $5.75. After I getting raises putting me up to 6.25, I have never earned anything less than that since 5 years have passed. Just a consideration. Next, what are the inhalers for? I am near sighted. I do not need to have lasek surgery, though I would like it. Is it the same for the inhalers?
3. Maybe I'm misunderstanding this one, but is this an example about a woman that took a cab to the hospital and it left her because she took too long in the hospital? If so... makes sense... Call another cab?
   
4. Read the freemarketcure.com - it provides another view of the claimed 50 million.
5. I personally do not believe that the hospital refused to put back on a guys finger because he couldn't pay. Hospitals have to treat your medical problem by law. That means if you have the fingers, they have to put them back on. What a foolish story. Imagine a doctor standing there asking the guy, can you pay for me to put back on your fingers? Oh no, just one of them. I think I'd like to keep the index one, if thats alright. If the man can afford to pay for one, the hospital will set up a payment plan for him to get the second one. So stupid. So unbelieveable.

I have some further points on this issue. There are a lot of questions about the aims of our health care system. The most popular is that the doctors and hospitals are in it to make money. What that means is that they get you in rush you out, without really caring about you and your problem, but your money. You get to make the decision now about what kind of insurance you want and the treatments you want to have, up to the point at which you can afford said treatments. You can also get your treatments done quickly, though the critics claim without the right care.

In other places, the critics of our system say their doctors and hospitals are in the business to help the patients. There is a disconnect here, though. Do doctors and hospitals not make money in Canada or wherever? Surely the doctors do. But they get paid the same no matter who they see or who they treat. This means that they can go as slow as they need to in order to give you exactly the right amount of care for your problem. Or maybe they just aren't in any rush because they make the same anyway. What is the incentive in this system for creating new and better treatments? It can't be money, since that is not a driving factor in the system. Maybe its just feeling good. Or fame? Instead of your insurance company choosing what they will cover, its the government choosing. Instead of being limited to the treatments you can afford, everyone is limited to the treatments that the government can afford. That means essentially the same thing as it does here. You save your money (the government saves its money (ha)) and you get the treatment when you have enough (the government sets a waiting time for you to get your treatment, or in other words, saves the money for that time). I see no difference except that now everyone has to have the same limited treatment, no matter what they can afford. And the government tells you what kind of treatment you can have, despite what you want to get. Also, its illegal to get private insurance or look for a cheaper policy. The young, who most likely will not be plagued by old age type medical problems are treated the same as those that are more likely to have those medical problems. That means their money (tax money) is taken from them despite their need or lack of need.

Do you really get better care? Doctors still are in the business to make money, right? They have to live just like the rest of us and they surely don't work for free. Someone is still limiting the care you can get, whether its yourself and your pocket book or its the government and its pocketbook.

I will admit that our system needs fixing. I'm just very distrusting of the government's ability to handle the problem better than I can handle it myself. And I'm more afraid of the the slogan "We who can't pay, die" than I am "He who can't pay dies."