"Europe considers healthcare to be a right, not a privilege." Boom. That's it, right there. In my book, I wrote an entire chapter on the Norwegian social/healthcare system. What struck me while doing my research was how damned humane it was. PEOPLE were the priority, not profit. Here in the US, it's the opposite.
In 2010, while shooting baskets at a 24 Hour Fitness in Portland with my ex-girlfriend, I went up for an easy jump shot. As soon as I did so, I felt as if someone had shot me in my left Achilles tendon. I've known some pain in my life, but never anything like that. I knew that it was a partially torn Achilles tendon immediately, but I was unemployed and had no health insurance. Thus, I couldn't afford to see a doctor. My solution was to avoid doing anything stupid for several months and hope for the best. Unfortunately, it would be 14 months before my Achilles felt good again.
It didn't have to be that way. It shouldn't have been that way. But in America, access to healthcare is directly proportional to the size of your bank account.
Erin's a nurse practitioner in an outpatient oncology clinic, so I'm way too familiar with healthcare horror stories. We're the only country in the industrialized world without single-payer...because Republicans and insurance companies know that suffering equals profit. And there's no shortage of profits to be had.
America's healthcare delivery system sucks; we're barely Third World in many respects. Yet, in what many on the Right will argue to the death is the greatest country in the world, one can die because they can't afford treatment. That's criminal.
Meanwhile, my Achilles has never been the same. We went to a baseball at Petco Park in San Diego last month, and someone behind me pushing a woman in a wheelchair rammed it directly into the spot where the tendon tore so long ago. After 11 years, it's still sore. Would it have healed better if I'd been able to get proper treatment? It's hard to imagine it wouldn't now be in much better shape.
"America considers healthcare to be a privilege, not a right." He who has the gold gets the treatment.
There was skiing in my first marriage. It was *deeply* problematic for me. Because my husband's parents were diplomats stationed abroad, ski vacations took place in Klosters, Switzerland, a ski resort town near Davos. They had found Klosters when they were stationed in Belgium, and my ex-husband was a child.
I am not at all athletic. I do not care where a ball goes. My love is a nice dog walk on a scenic trail. But I was not able stop taking gym before injuring my knees several times.
Despite my problematic knees, my young husband really REAALLY wanted me to ski. So I took one week of lessons and then he took me on an intermediate slope, which in Switzerland is very high up and exceedingly steep. Yep: I eviscerated my knee.
I had no health insurance at the time, because I had just graduated from grad school and my policy expired when I got my degree.
Suddenly, I needed a complicated surgical procedure, and a week in the hospital. Thank the Gods I speak German!
My operation and hospital stay cost my father in law almost $10K, which is a fraction of what it would have cost in the USA.
Furthermore, since quite a few people have the same Unhappy Triad accident I had while skiing, the Swiss doctors were experienced aces at that surgery. Every single person I have ever met who had ruptured their medial collateral and anterior cruciate ligaments, and creamed their meniscus like I did, but received surgery in the USA, had a much worse scar and less mobility than I do.
For comparison purposes, recently my husband had a three day stay in a local hospital here in Washington State. We have Kaiser health insurance. We owed almost $10K *even with health insurance* and the total bill was above $80K.
Healthcare is a human right. Europeans understand this, but a certain political party in the USA has been obstructing healthcare reform legislation for my entire lifetime, and I was born in the Eisenhower administration.
President and Mrs. Clinton tried and failed to pass healthcare legislation. Back then, I was still living in DC and doing PR for causes and candidates on the Left. I worked for a non-profit ally of the Clinton effort to pass healthcare reform.
Did you know that Nixon tried to pass healthcare reform, and failed?
Thank the Gods that President Obama succeeded. But the USA has a long way to go still.
Healthcare prices are still insanely expensive here. The system needs more reforming still, including reform to the price of medical education, and the practice of abusing residents as they are trained in hospitals. We also need reform for drug pricing: Big Pharma is just as greedy as the other healthcare sector profiteers.
So I am not surprised by the story of John's healthcare situation. But most Americans have been propagandized to believe the USA's medical care is the best there is in the world
Great piece! What are people here so afraid of with nationalized health care? Loss of profits, I presume... I'll be writing about this issue, from a different angle, on my Newsletter.
I receive the only really socialized healthcare in the US: As a veteran, I get VA. So here's a story about my recent adventures in modern medicine.
My regularly scheduled colonoscopy would have been in 2020. But the plague year shut everything done. So when I got my postponed one in July, the doctors discovered a polyp that was of a size and shape (the shape was the bigger issue) that they couldn't deal with it. It was biopsied, and came up as something that would eventually become cancerous.
I was set up with specialists in St. Louis. Various problems arose so that it was not until the 8th of this month that I could go through the procedure again, this time with the specialists. They could not remove it either, which means I must have surgery. (Laparoscopic, which involves 3 small slits in the abdomen into which the instruments are inserted, to be operated by the surgeon w/o sticking their fingers into my guts.) This will involve a 3 or so day stay at the St. Louis VA hospital (different from the place I had my second colonoscopy.)
The doctor there wants a pre-surgical video consult. Prior to that, he's scheduled a CT-scan, which will happen at my local VA.
None of this is costing me a penny.
Were my income to exceed my currently penurious status, I'd start looking at things like copays for my scripts; as it is, I don't pay for them either.
The American "healthcare" system is nothing of the sort. It is a revenue generating system for the obscenely wealthy predicated on milking the sick.
"Europe considers healthcare to be a right, not a privilege." Boom. That's it, right there. In my book, I wrote an entire chapter on the Norwegian social/healthcare system. What struck me while doing my research was how damned humane it was. PEOPLE were the priority, not profit. Here in the US, it's the opposite.
In 2010, while shooting baskets at a 24 Hour Fitness in Portland with my ex-girlfriend, I went up for an easy jump shot. As soon as I did so, I felt as if someone had shot me in my left Achilles tendon. I've known some pain in my life, but never anything like that. I knew that it was a partially torn Achilles tendon immediately, but I was unemployed and had no health insurance. Thus, I couldn't afford to see a doctor. My solution was to avoid doing anything stupid for several months and hope for the best. Unfortunately, it would be 14 months before my Achilles felt good again.
It didn't have to be that way. It shouldn't have been that way. But in America, access to healthcare is directly proportional to the size of your bank account.
Erin's a nurse practitioner in an outpatient oncology clinic, so I'm way too familiar with healthcare horror stories. We're the only country in the industrialized world without single-payer...because Republicans and insurance companies know that suffering equals profit. And there's no shortage of profits to be had.
America's healthcare delivery system sucks; we're barely Third World in many respects. Yet, in what many on the Right will argue to the death is the greatest country in the world, one can die because they can't afford treatment. That's criminal.
Meanwhile, my Achilles has never been the same. We went to a baseball at Petco Park in San Diego last month, and someone behind me pushing a woman in a wheelchair rammed it directly into the spot where the tendon tore so long ago. After 11 years, it's still sore. Would it have healed better if I'd been able to get proper treatment? It's hard to imagine it wouldn't now be in much better shape.
"America considers healthcare to be a privilege, not a right." He who has the gold gets the treatment.
Dear Stacey,
There was skiing in my first marriage. It was *deeply* problematic for me. Because my husband's parents were diplomats stationed abroad, ski vacations took place in Klosters, Switzerland, a ski resort town near Davos. They had found Klosters when they were stationed in Belgium, and my ex-husband was a child.
I am not at all athletic. I do not care where a ball goes. My love is a nice dog walk on a scenic trail. But I was not able stop taking gym before injuring my knees several times.
Despite my problematic knees, my young husband really REAALLY wanted me to ski. So I took one week of lessons and then he took me on an intermediate slope, which in Switzerland is very high up and exceedingly steep. Yep: I eviscerated my knee.
I had no health insurance at the time, because I had just graduated from grad school and my policy expired when I got my degree.
Suddenly, I needed a complicated surgical procedure, and a week in the hospital. Thank the Gods I speak German!
My operation and hospital stay cost my father in law almost $10K, which is a fraction of what it would have cost in the USA.
Furthermore, since quite a few people have the same Unhappy Triad accident I had while skiing, the Swiss doctors were experienced aces at that surgery. Every single person I have ever met who had ruptured their medial collateral and anterior cruciate ligaments, and creamed their meniscus like I did, but received surgery in the USA, had a much worse scar and less mobility than I do.
For comparison purposes, recently my husband had a three day stay in a local hospital here in Washington State. We have Kaiser health insurance. We owed almost $10K *even with health insurance* and the total bill was above $80K.
Healthcare is a human right. Europeans understand this, but a certain political party in the USA has been obstructing healthcare reform legislation for my entire lifetime, and I was born in the Eisenhower administration.
President and Mrs. Clinton tried and failed to pass healthcare legislation. Back then, I was still living in DC and doing PR for causes and candidates on the Left. I worked for a non-profit ally of the Clinton effort to pass healthcare reform.
Did you know that Nixon tried to pass healthcare reform, and failed?
Thank the Gods that President Obama succeeded. But the USA has a long way to go still.
Healthcare prices are still insanely expensive here. The system needs more reforming still, including reform to the price of medical education, and the practice of abusing residents as they are trained in hospitals. We also need reform for drug pricing: Big Pharma is just as greedy as the other healthcare sector profiteers.
So I am not surprised by the story of John's healthcare situation. But most Americans have been propagandized to believe the USA's medical care is the best there is in the world
Bollocks it is.
Healthcare is a human right.
Great piece! What are people here so afraid of with nationalized health care? Loss of profits, I presume... I'll be writing about this issue, from a different angle, on my Newsletter.
I receive the only really socialized healthcare in the US: As a veteran, I get VA. So here's a story about my recent adventures in modern medicine.
My regularly scheduled colonoscopy would have been in 2020. But the plague year shut everything done. So when I got my postponed one in July, the doctors discovered a polyp that was of a size and shape (the shape was the bigger issue) that they couldn't deal with it. It was biopsied, and came up as something that would eventually become cancerous.
I was set up with specialists in St. Louis. Various problems arose so that it was not until the 8th of this month that I could go through the procedure again, this time with the specialists. They could not remove it either, which means I must have surgery. (Laparoscopic, which involves 3 small slits in the abdomen into which the instruments are inserted, to be operated by the surgeon w/o sticking their fingers into my guts.) This will involve a 3 or so day stay at the St. Louis VA hospital (different from the place I had my second colonoscopy.)
The doctor there wants a pre-surgical video consult. Prior to that, he's scheduled a CT-scan, which will happen at my local VA.
None of this is costing me a penny.
Were my income to exceed my currently penurious status, I'd start looking at things like copays for my scripts; as it is, I don't pay for them either.
The American "healthcare" system is nothing of the sort. It is a revenue generating system for the obscenely wealthy predicated on milking the sick.