The dignity of Human life is something that God does not take for granted and neither should we.

Friday, January 04, 2008

Haven't we had enough of American non-healthcare?

I was going to begin this post by saying something like, "I hate to pile on", but in reality I do not and so I won't. American healthcare sucks. It is NOT the best in the world. How can I say this?
Here's just 2 examples from this week:

A friend whose parents are uninsured called me to ask for prayer in part because his father who experienced multiple-organ failure could not be admitted to a transplant hospital until a deposit of $225,000 was made. No this isn't a typographical error - St. Luke's Hospital in Houston wanted $250,000 to admit my friend's father. He is currently at the county hospital (Ben Taub) and may die there because America which spends more than $10 billion per month building our empire in Iraq won't help a dying man without making huge profits.

Example number 2 is a woman who came to my house incredibly thankful that we had a used nebulizer for her daughter. We inherited it when a friend died earlier this year. She was thankful because although she has health insurance, it won't pay for things that are "non-essential" like nebulizers.

As an American, I am not accustomed to blindly accepting stupidity when I see it. Years ago, when stupidity reigned in the telecom industry, some other chaps and I saw it and did something about it and I can proudly say I was part of a revolution which brought about low calling rates and ubiquitous service around the world. I am itching to try the same thing with healthcare.

2 comments:

Bob said...

So then, are you proposing deregulation of the health care industry? If so, I'm with you. If you mean HillaryCare, I'm agin ya.

Sporklinger said...

Deregulation has not helped any American industry. Are airlines or telecommunication better now that they are deregulated? No. While the dream of Capitalism is to let markets work to bring about lowest costs, the reality is that like Marx communism, completely free markets are a dream. I wish that we could have a system whereby the consumer (patient) interacts financially with the provider without a middleman. However, I have come to realize that this too is a dream and will never happen in America. So, we are left with accepting the current system which is on par with Paraguay, or trying to change the system in some way. The insurers and large hospitals who own the Congress aren't going to go quietly into the night of consumerism. So, our only option is to look to a federal system which works. I choose France. My French friends have excellent healthcare with no pre-existing conditions and they have private insurance. But the French government does not allow insurers to charge more than a reasonable market rate, as is done in the U.S. with auto insurance. For the poorest of the poor, the government picks up the tab. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1447687