Although I am not a US citizen and I reside in Costa Rica, I do have some thoughts (for what they’re worth) about the health care situation in the USA.

I think that, for a country that purports to be the richest, most powerful country in the world, and that likes to think it has the highest standard on living on the planet, it should be embarrassing that people go without health care (and often die) because they either can’t afford health insurance or they are “uninsurable” due to a “pre-existing condition”.

I’ve been to US cities where people are dying in the streets, holding up cardboard signs that say, “Help me, I have AIDS”.  I’ve known people (with what would be considered decent-paying  jobs) who are sick, but don’t go to a doctor “because they can’t afford it”.

Health care, like education, should be a right, not a “privilege” in a country that “beats it’s chest” like the USA does.

Don’t get me wrong . . . I don’t know the solution to the problem . . . if I did, I’d be one of the pundits on CNN or Fox News.

However, from what I’ve heard and read, it doesn’t seem to me that President Obama’s proposed healthcare system is the solution either.  It sounds too much like the socialized medicine system that is struggling and failing in other countries.

Socialized medicine or “the single payer” system (or whatever you want to call it) used to work brilliantly in countries like Canada and the UK – when their populations were less and when the citizenry had a strong work ethic.  However, those countries have experienced exploding poplulation growth, especially due to immigration, and among those that are unemployed and on welfare or government assistance already.  Combine that with the near dissappearance of the work ethic and of the incentive to achieve, and the socialized health care systems in these countries are in ruins . . . because the number of people “feeding from the trough” far exceeds the hard-working citizens paying into the system.  Patients in Canada and the UK now wait for months and months for desperately needed tests and surgery . . . because there are too many people “taking” and not enough “giving”.

The United States is already in a financial crisis . . . adding socialized health care to the situation will only make things worse, in my humble opinion.

John Stossel, on last Friday nights edition of ABC’s 20/20, slammed socialize medicine. According to the Wall Street Journal:

On Friday’s 20/20 on ABC, co-anchor John Stossel exposed the flaws in the Canadian and British government-run health care systems, and even showed viewers a clip of President Obama as he once expressed a belief that single-payer health care would be an acceptable system, even while taking the position that he would not pursue it, during one of the Democratic party presidential debates in 2008. During the January 21, 2008, debate on CNN, Obama said:

It’s fine for us to have a debate about how the best way to get there is, but to suggest somehow that I’m not interested in having everybody covered, or to suggest, as Hillary just did, that I was in favor of single payer, I never said that we should try to go ahead and get single payer. What I said was that if I were starting from scratch, if we didn’t have a system in which employers had typically provided health care, I would probably go with a single-payer system.

During the six-minute, 20-second segment, Stossel informed viewers of the long waits patients must endure in countries with government-run health systems – like Canada and Britain. He recounted that some patients – including world leaders and wealthy celebrities – come to America for treatment of serious conditions, and relayed the case of one Canadian woman who came to America to treat a clogged artery whose American doctor told her she would not have survived waiting a few more weeks for Canada’s government health care. Additionally, Stossel found that even patients waiting in emergency rooms in Canada have to wait an average of 23 hours for service.

Stossel recounted the case of a Canadian town with so many people waiting in line to be assigned to a family doctor that each month a lottery chooses four lucky residents. And in England, the shortage of dentists leads some Britons to pull their own teeth or try to repair problems on their own.

The 20/20 co-anchor summed up the importance of a profit motive for the health care industry to function adequately as he recounted that in Canada, private veterinary clinics provide health care for animals much more rapidly than the government-run system provides similar services for human patients.

Even though I am embarrassed to say that I once was a lawyer, I think that tort reform is an essential part of the solution.  As long as physicians and surgeons are forced to pay huge malpractice insurance premiums and live in fear of being sued for millions of dollars by the glut of ambulance-chasing lawyers that infest the country, health care will continue to be expensive.  In addition to malpractice insurance premiums, billions of dollars are spent on unnecessary tests and surgery, just to prevent some greedy lawyer or “whore” medical “expert” from “second-guessing” the physician or surgeon.

Secondly, I think that hospitals and physicians need to take a look in the mirror.  I have seen hospitals charge a dime for every tissue that a patient blows his nose into, and $5.00 for every disposable rubber glove that is used by a nurse. Basic aspirin is doled out at a buck or two per tablet, when the cost to the hospital is probably less than a penny.

Virtually every physician or dentist I’ve seen in the USA has one price if you have insurance and a lower price if you don’t.  That seems to me to be insurance fraud . . . but it’s common, accepted practice.

Also, physicians and surgeons certainly need to compensated for what they do . . . but they should practice their profession because they love what they do and because they want to help people . . . not because they want to get rich. As I see it, a lot of Americans need to adjust their sense of “entitlement” . . . and it’s not just physicians and surgeons – it’s corporate executives, professional athletes, auto-workers, lawyers, etc., etc.   Perhaps a physician who has spent many more years, dollars, and sleepness nights to attain his or her education, experience and professional license should earn more than a teacher . . . but not hundreds of thousands of dollars per year more!

In any event, as I said, I sure don’t know what the solution is . . . but I am interested in what others have to say.

The following is an interesting interview with Betsy McCaughney, former Lieutenant Governor of New York. Patient advocacy and health care policy have become her life-work.  In 2005, she founded the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths and serves as its chairman. The comment to this interview, found on YouTube.com, reads as follows:

Its goal is to develop a healthcare program which will provide the same quality of care for all required for all to be covered by it, no alternatives.

Medicaid and Medicare are already terrible government funded health programs.

Page 425 of the Obamacare bill mandates that the elderly and seriously ill undergo sessions to pressure them to choose death. Remember: Obama said the vote he MOST REGRETTED in the Senate was the vote to give Terri Schiavo one more chance to live. Obama wants DEATH for Americans and for America.

Learn from the mistake of the UK:

-Fewer Doctors

-Less Advance Medical Technology

-Waiting Lists

-Selective Service/Care

-Higher Taxes

-Choices are made by the Government

Medicaid and Medicare are great examples of the kind of health care the Government can provide; specific clinics and hospitals you may go to, limited pharmaceutical coverage (generic only, limited prescriptions in a month…), dental is NO LONGER covered by Medicaid as of July 2009, and many other debasements.

With this we will be forfeiting, yet again, another one of our freedoms.

Here are plenty of articles which advocate both sides of the issue:

• “Someone’s premiums” bought my lunch on gold-rimmed china (masbury.wordpress.com)
• ObamaCare – Oy, What a Mess! (barbarany_9.blogspot.com)
• Why the Free Market Cannot Fix Health Care (themoderatevoice.com)
• Wanted: A prophetic voice in the healthcare debate (masbury.wordpress.com)
• “We Have Talked This Problem To Death!” (timesunion.com)
• National Union urges President Obama and U.S. legislators to give Canadian health care system a fair hearing (newswire.ca)
• Thinking about the 18,000 Americans who will die this year because they don’t have health insurance. (iflizwerequeen.com)
• Addendum to countering the political Jabberwocky surrounding health care discussions (iflizwerequeen.com)
• Single-Payer Health Care Advocates Arrested in Senate (takepart.com)
• More on Single Payer insurance from a farmer’s viewpoint (iflizwerequeen.com)
• Live Blog: Obama Says Health Care Overhaul Will Pass ‘This Year’ (thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Look at What the AMA Did (delawarewatch.blogspot.com)
• Congress, Obama, Must Do Healthcare Reform Right (usnews.com)
• Krugman: Government Involvement Is Only Reason Health Care System Works At All (huffingtonpost.com)
• Salary (oldmdgirl.blogspot.com)
• We need single payer health care in the USA (thepetitionsite.com)
• Poll: People won’t pay higher taxes for universal coverage (seattlepi.com)
• About the Insurance Companies, Mr. President. With all due respect, sir, the current abominable USA health care situation is everyone’s fault. (iflizwerequeen.com)
• Obama and Clinton Inc. They are betraying what they absolutely know to be true: the private insurance industry must be evicted in order to provide health care to everyone (iflizwerequeen.com)
• Obama’s ex-doctor critical of health care plan (cnn.com)
• In Sickness And In Health (wonderlandornot.net)
• One Thing is Certain in the Health Care Debate: Change is Needed (myventurepad.com)
• Obama: Status Quo Will ‘Double Your Health Care Costs’ (blogs.wsj.com)
• Here’s A Healthcare Stimulus Package Tip … Reserve a Doctor Before It’s Too Late! (healthcommentary.org)
• Caplan Offers Reality Checks on Health Care Reform (bioethics.net)
• The Case for Price Ceilings for Health Services (thehealthcareblog.com)
• Ontario woman slams universal health care in TV ads (ctv.ca)
• Inside Asia: The Link Between Health Costs and National Savings Rates (nytimes.com)
• America’s Hospitals Can’t Afford Healthcare Cuts Obama, Congress Are Considering (usnews.com)
• Fake And Real Outrages In The Health Care Debate (huffingtonpost.com)
• Insurance, medical provider do not assure asthma control (scienceblog.com)
• If It Isn’t Broken… (powerlineblog.com)
• Take a look at Haiti today. This is what you get when business interests are put before the people. This is the direction that USA is headed. Honduras will get there quicker with Lanny Davis and Roger Noreiga’s assistance. (iflizwerequeen.com)
• Only One Way to Improve the Health Care System for Americans: Take the Profit Out of Health Care Insurance (iflizwerequeen.com)
• Politics Today: Health Care “Drumbeat Across America” (cbsnews.com)
• Health-Care Poll: Americans Support Obama’s Reform Goals (time.com)
• Socialist health care is the worst (americablog.com)
• Obama calls for end to disparity in health costs (ctv.ca)
• Obama tries hard sell to save his health-care overhaul (thestar.com)

Related posts:

1. America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009
2. U.S. Declares Public Health Emergency Over Flu
3. Some Thoughts On My Last Two Posts
4. Dr. Mario and President Obama
5. More Bad News!