This may shock you but I think I am for the public option. Think I am.
After much thought about “socialized medicine” and trillions of dollars of long term debt, I am reminded of Keynes comment that in the long run we are dead.
Yes, there are concerns, plenty of concerns, but what finally got me to this point is when the University of California county hospital pushed a deranged old woman into a cab and dropped her off at shelter. She was bleeding and was deranged and was alone.
In France and England she would have continued to gotten treatment in a nursing home.
The United States I believe in doesn’t do that to it’s citizens.
Yea I am for profits and the innovations they bring about but at this price?
In addition we do have some aspects of socialism here such as public libraries and schools (comments on that later) and police and firemen and medicare and medicaid. All are taxpayer supported and five of them work pretty well most of the time.
I freely admit I am far from a health care economist and I am very much a free market guy but on this I am wondering.
However, in America bleeding and deranged senior citizens shouldn’t be treated like a dying cow.
In closing some sort of public option will come about. It’ll be in steps. The feds will grow it and we’ll pay more taxes which I am usually against, but then I come back to that deranged woman tossed in a cab like a bag of garbage and ask myself what in the **** has happened to this nation?
After all there but for the grace of God that could be my Mom.
homegrownboy,
just so happens my son is a musician who drove a cab for quite awhile in the Richmond area. I always ask him to tell me what he sees out there, what he discovered about “taxi driver life”. His most disturbing stories all had to do with learning that feeble vulnerable elderly men and women are being dumped out to the curb of nursing homes, into cabs, with instructions to take them to the nearest emergency room.
At first he protested the inhumanity of it, some of these people seemed near death, they wanted him to lift the people out of the wheelchair into the cab – they said they were not permitted to do it. He would ask why they would not call an ambulance and where the doctors were – the answer was always the same – none of that was paid for. Hard to say what the racket was, where Medicare comes in, but I agree with you. In America we can do better. My son decided he could not stomach it anymore.
When we argue about free markets, he laughs at some of my theory after what he saw with his own eyes.
Hard cases make bad law. This principle applies in all circumstances.
Your hardship stories–and I have no doubt they are true–do not mean a nationalized public option health care system is the only available alternative.
I do not know of a single church, whatever its political proclivities, that would not take an elderly person in. The Catholic church’s Ministry of Caring comes to mind. I also do not know of a single charitable organization, that if faced with a deranged elderly person, would not do everything in its power to help.
You act as if there’s no viable alternative than the public option. That’s arrant nonsense.
Wasn’t it you, Homegrown, who wrote only recently about the perils of a nationalized health care system, saying that “My dr informed me that if he doesn’t go into research at John Hopkins, he’s putting a deli take a number counter for his waiting room because things will be so bad and so slow and so inefficient that he as a trained dr will be reduced to treating his patients like a store clerk. (nothing against store clerks”
While I said that you should post what you think regardless of flak, I have to say your hyper-emotional appeal–on the sole basis of one story and your attachment to your mother– for the installation of a public care option completely disregards the fact that there are countless religious and charitable institutions which would gladly help the helpless.
American people care, and they’ve founded all sorts of institutions that reflect their concern for the helpless.
Honestly, your hyper-emotional response and solution to your response allies you with those who forsake logic and common sense for a government solve all, nanny state solution.
Your logic reminds me of the anti-life forces who proclaimed that coat hanger abortions would prevail if federal law was not changed to permit “choice.” Alternatives to abortion on demand were not even considered. Emotion carried the day. “Scare tactics about the number of “coat hanger” abortions carried the day.
The result? Absolute carnage on request. No matter what the reason, abortion on demand was legiitmized. Abortion for sex selection–still not strongly opposed by feminists who pushed for abortion on demand; abortion if one’s jean’s were too tight; abortion for Down’s syndrome children–it doesn’t matter, chiefly because horror stories similar to the ones you tell concerning the elderly won the day and a “totalizing” law of the land was established; namely that one could have an abortion on request no matter what the reason.
Summary: You, too, are asking for a “totalizing” solution of a nationalized health care system which would have pernicious and long-reaching consequences; a no-exception solution–this when alternatives already exist and are under utilized.
Consider the anti-elderly thinking that pervades the current proposed legislation and ask yourself if the nationalized health care legislation which already is deciding against the medical treatment of the elderly would foster a favorable response to the cases you cite.
Fay Voshell
Your support is welcome, but I don’t think the current public option variants do much for long term care (nursing homes).
Thanks to all for the comments. It’s rare when I’m conflicted. Very rare.
Again thanks.
The Public Option will do nothing to alleviate the cases you speak about.
If that was the case the VA would be a shining example if medical care and it is not. My oldest son practices at one in CT.
Do not be conflicted. Establishing a system which will wreck health care for the country in order to prevent the very few cases you mention is not good policy.
Mike Protack
If your cab lady is over 65 she already has a public option. But Medicare does not pay for long term nursing home care.
If you need a nursing home the safety net is Medicaid, and it is a slender reed.
If she is not yet 65 she has to, as Fay points out, pray that some Good Samaritan plucks her out of that cab and helps her find a charity home.
Can’t you just tell Fay V. is a person with great health insurance and plenty of money to afford it? She has hers so . . . don’t mess with success.
Like Fay says, all this complaining about hardship and suffering and doing without care, why . . it’s just . . well it’s just “arrant nonsense”.
Some of the scariest places in the world are LTC homes. Both private and publicaly funded. However, in publicly funded ones they seem to have much harsher conditions although the food is usually better.
Hey Homey… do you have a link for this story? I can’t seem to find it anywhere.
I think the last time we visited this subject, was it not established that Mr. Protack enjoys full health insurance coverage under the government run single payer system known as TriCare?
I recall he said his employer gave him “choice” so he picked the government run insurance system? Although he dodged the question, his lack of an answer was the answer?
Over at the anti-government blog Delaware Politics we find arch enemy of public health insurance Mr. Anderson also insures his family through the government run single payer TriCare system.
What’s the reason both of these gentlemen choose government run insurance for themselves while at the same time telling us it stinks?
Sounds like someone needs their lithium meds.
No, I do not have TriCare so that fact was not established.
No, I did not choose the government option of any kind, I never dodged the question.
I do not have insurance with my employer-it stinks. The choice I made was to take the $$ my employer gives me and I went somewhere else.
You need to revisit reality.
I look forward to your apology.
Mike Protack
Sorry to start such a brou ha-ha, at least Mr. Kowalko isn’t chiming in calling me names. (yet)
Fay’s comment re: hard cases making bad law is very instructive. Laws based upon emotion – while they do have their place – can be damaging to many more who are “innocent”.
Yet, I find it amazing that here in the USA, not Botswana, we have taxi cab drop off service for bleeding and demented sick people.
Is the answer, or at least part of, having a Br. Ronald style ministry available for such instances aka a MOC nursing home which deals only with the indigent?
In our mobile society – one good outcome of the collapse may be that families stick in the same area like they use to-is that you have loved ones there to assist with your needs. As mentioned we’ve been here since the 1700’s and all live within a 16 mile radius. I am fortunate.
Yet, the America I believe in, and that my ancestors fought for, would have never thought that leaving the sick and old in a tin can alley ward could have ever happened.
There is a better way and we owe to it society to find it. We also owe to it to our wallets.
Massive spending isn’t the answer. Motor V style lines isn’t the answer either yet allowing groups like Kaiser Permanante to make billions while turning away the poor isn’t the answer either.
We’re the most imaginative, creative, resourceful people God has ever placed on the Earth. (Yes I am a proud Judeo-Christian American Exceptional guy) and I really feel, indeed believe, we can find an answer that works.
This is about three things: economics/demographics/care. We can develop the model.
If SURJ, led by our host, can tackle prison health care we most assuredly can tackle non prison care.
So where do we start?
Before we destroy what the United Nations has determined is the best healthcare delivery service in the world, let’s make sure that the fundamental theory… namely that in Britain, the woman would have stayed in the nursing home … is true. I have just posted 4 stories in the British Press from the last week which disproves the fundamental theory.
Please check the post here: https://resolutedetermination.wordpress.com/2009/10/17/about-healthcare-reform-rebuttal/
Mike P.
Thanks for clarifying. I apologize for jumping to conclusions. If your employer health insurance stinks and you went elsewhere – just curious – you, as a retired military person why not TriCare?
I never heard of TriCare until this health insurance debate began. Just trying to learn what works and what does not.
I recently signed on to public option Medicare. Had it for a year now. Before, I was paying around $1000 a month (perfect health, never a claim, with a $5000 deductible. So we would always be reluctant to see a doctor colon test dermatologist etc because it was out of pocket on top of the $1000. The Company was Golden Rule, said to be one of the better bargains, except the premium doubled in six years. Getting onto the public option was like paying off a mortgage. Now we see the doctor, no strings attached, virtually no paperwork. I do pay an extra $200 or so a month for a private supplemental policy. Bottom line – glad to be out of the for profit lousy insurance I had.
I am curious about TriCare, it is one of the most established and largest public options – my understanding is military folks prefer it. It works good for them. Can you tell us the pros and cons of your experience shopping for profit health insurance versus public? Why decline TriCare if it’s supposed to be such a good deal?