Notes of Concern…..
…… Jackson Blair
BLESS YOU!
When you awakened this morning did you sneeze? Bless You!
After rising and showering and brushing your teeth did you feel achy and thought you might have a temperature? Were you concerned about a red spot on your leg? And did a little dizziness cause you some concern?
If these things happened to you in The United States of America, you would actually consider going to see your medical general practitioner. You would call him in the morning and it is highly likely he would see you in his office in one or two days.
Play out the same scenario in Canada or England and you are in for some surprises. They have health care systems that started out like the one being suggested by The White House for Americans.
Let me cut to the chase:
I do not have a solution for rising medical costs.
I do not have a suggestion for a better program.
I do think we need to manage health care more professionally and with a sense of urgency in our country.
That said, I do not think what is being proposed is going to make anyone happy after it is enacted by the Congress.
I have a vacation home in Canada. I do not have a doctor in Canada. If I awake with the symptoms outlined above, my only recourse is to go to the emergency room of the hospital. At the emergency room it costs $500 to walk in the door, without being seen by any doctor.
Last summer I needed to get a prescription. My U.S. based doctor faxed it to a local drug store in Canada. The druggist told me she was not able, under law, to fill a prescription from the U.S. In order to get the medicine, I had to find a Canadian doctor who would re-prescribe the drug. However, no Canadian doctor was open to seeing a U.S. citizen because of the Canadian health program requirements.
Choices: do without the medication or head to the emergency room with $500 in hand.
Decision: I did without the prescription, which was probably not a good move.
This same scenario would play out for me had I been in London.
Here is another scenario about the rationing of health care.
You are 80 and discover a lump in your breast.
Your neighbor is 40 and discovers a lump in her breast.
In rationed health care, one could realistically decide that spending money on treating the 80 year old was not in the best interests of the program but treating the 40 year old was.
Assume you are financially well off. One of the things your financial success brings is the opportunity to find the best doctor and the best hospital in America to treat your life threatening disease.
Under rationed care, you might need to leave the country to accomplish that.
All your life Doctor Wonderful has treated you in your small town. Under rationed health care, the government will tell you what doctor will treat you, and how long you will wait, and what he will be paid for his services.
I have a friend in Canada who has a heart problem. In our country, as I understand his problem, a bypass would probably have been ordered and would have taken place. In Canada, the severity of his problem is weighed and he is placed on wait list before any such surgery is planned or scheduled. As of today, he has been waiting a little over two years.
He commented to me that he would have been much better off actually having a heart attack, which would have resulted in immediate care.
As I mentioned early in the column, I am certainly not an authority on this subject nor have I done a great deal of research. I do think the subject needs widespread discussion and the proposed plans need to be easily understood by citizens.
I am just an aging American who has serious reservations about the government running anything, let alone a program that will define how I can get health care, when I can get it, who I can get it from, and most importantly: whether I am young enough for them to bother spending the time and money on me.
I urge my readers to watch this program carefully. Do not think of it as a Democrat or Republican program. Insist on knowing exactly how it will affect you personally. Once you have determined how you feel, you had better speak up, loudly and often, or you could end up with a very different set of Golden Years than you might have anticipated.
My last suggestion: see if the members of the Senate and the House exempt themselves from any program they suggest. That will tell you more than I could ever explain in a column on the subject.
