Healthcare Mess in America

I never liked anything done by Michael Moore. Most of his movies are self promoting and full of exaggerations and half truths. He is apparently an extreme liberal but I have my doubts as to his real feelings on many things. He is making a great living in show business and we all have to remember that he is really just an entertainer and does what he does not out of some moral cause but just to make money and make himself more marketable.

But I do have to give him credit for his latest money maker movie Sicko. When he was talking about the plight of some of the people in the movie he was even able to conjure up some tears in his eyes. Some of them may even been sincere.

 In my opinion and you know that you can take that to the bank. One of the biggest whores of the world is the health care medicine industry. NOBODY SHOULD MAKE MONEY OFF OF OTHER PEOPLES MISERY. I know that is quite harsh and unsympathetic, but that is how I feel. Mr. Moore’s move Sicko even if it is exaggerated and bent to his personal flavor, does show many of the problems we as a nation face in the medical field. I know a little about what I am talking about as I worked in a hospital for about 3 years after I retired from my regular profession. I could tell you stories that would latterly make you sick to your stomach.

 Now do not get me wrong, people like doctors, nurses, ambulance drivers etc, should be fairly compensated for their work. Pharmaceutical companies and hospitals should be paid for what they do, but they should be non-profit. Meaning no share holders to be paid or profits made. Some money could be set aside for research but with no shareholders to answer to, all the money could be spent on making life better for all of us in the future.

 Ok I am talking about socialized medicine. Oh my God I can hear you saying. “Government can’t even get running of some of the basic functions we need in the country right and now you want to put our health in their incompetent hands”?????? Well not exactly. We could have another cabinet appointment that would head a commission that would oversee this function. There would have to be a very high level panel that was in charge of oversight and regulation with very strong auditing functions, better even than the IRS with that kind of power to correct or adjust health care providers who mistreat the system. The operation and organization could be like the Fed is handled in government with the director serving past any political party; much like the Supreme Court, but appointed by the President with approval of the Congress could dismiss the director for mismanagement or malfeasance. Well I do not have all the details worked out but you get the idea.

 Other countries do it and they love it. The opposition says, well it does not work that well. You have long waiting periods. That is true for elective treatment, but emergencies are handled as fast if not faster than what we are doing now. Heart attacks go before knee  replacement that is true, but shouldn’t it be that way? One of the other things said is that doctors leave and go other places. That is correct, places like the USA where they can make more MONEY. If they couldn’t make more money here than where they are, they would stay home and there waiting time could be reduced even more. I am not against doctors at all. In college I wanted to be a doctor and was registered as a premed student at a major college here in the US. I had two roommates who also wanted to be doctors. I was the son of a poor construction worker, they both, John and Kent, were sons of doctors.

 As a child I had a doctor who brought me into this world. When I was sick, more than once he sat in a rocking chair in my bedroom and watched over me through the night to make sure I stayed alive. He was a kind loving man who had patched up many GI’s in WWII; so many so that he had to spend some time in an institution to try to get his mind back. But he was one of the most respected doctors in our town and we all loved him. Yes he made a lot of money had a big black Cadillac, but money was not his biggest motivation. The sincere desire to improve our lives was his cause and we all knew and trusted him. He really took his oath seriously.  I wanted to be like him. In contrast the two guys I roomed with just wanted to be rich like their dads.  I am afraid that many young people getting into medicine are driven by the same thing today. Not all of course, I and I am sure you, hear of the ones who are sacrificing to make things better for all, but there are just not enough of them.

 Insurance companies are not all bad either. There is a place for car, home, and life insurance. Let’s let them concentrate on those fields and take managing health care away. It is the only sane thing we can do. Now they do not want to lose all the MONEY so they push the biggest pushovers in the world Congress and no changes are made. We got to stop this. Other countries have and we must as well.

 People are losing their homes and everything they have worked for because they can’t pay for profit motivated health care. Nobody in a country with socialized medicine is loosing their homes for this reason. The biggest cause of bankruptcy in this country is because of some catastrophic health condition that happens to people. There are people who were paying for health care but did not understand that there were so many ways for the insurance company to not pay claims. It is not the fault of the insurance company employees, so don’t take your anger out on them, it is the executives, and lobbyists and shareholders who demand great profit who are to blame. For crying out laud, when banks need money they go to insurance companies.

 We have to fix this folks. In elections demand that the candidate you are voting for will support nation wide guaranteed health care for ALL citizens no matter what. I know money does not fall from trees. I don’t expect to get the healthcare for free, but there should be a fair way for us to pay for healthcare without profit that will make it possible. I have some good places to get money that I will talk about in other parts of this rant.

                                                             Copyright © 2001- 2007 W3OZ All rights reserved