Robot need oil.
On the off chance that somebody remembered that I described myself as suffering from anemia recently, I’d like to report that I’m doing much better now. I dragged myself, literally, to a doctor and learned, with only a little surprise, that due to internal bleeding I’d lost 3 of my 5 quarts of blood. My hemoglobin was a 5.4 where it should have been about 15. Yep, folks, I nearly died a couple weeks ago, and it just felt like being tired and wanting to sleep.
Quick note: I have no health insurance myself, haven’t had it for 7 years. The doctor, upon hearing my condition, declared my first visit free and each subsequent one $20. I have no way of expressing my feelings about his generosity adequately.
While some slapdash methods have prevented further bleeding while my body rebuilds its blood supply, I will be requiring a $4000 operation as soon as I can get my hemoglobin up to a 10. $2000 is going on the credit card and the rest will be paid in installments.
I’ll manage just fine, and I’ll pay for that operation in time. I won’t tie my fate directly to the issue of healthcare for all, but there are some obvious parallels. In another country I would have gone to the doctor about 5 years ago for the operation I needed, had it taken care of, and never would have been flirting with death all these years later. Yet, as some rightwinger will surely be quick to point out, I coulda woulda shoulda gotten some job that gave me health insurance (I tried to be a Geico man like Mike, but they wouldn’t have me), or not blown the job I had 7 years ago that had me fully covered. Spending five years pursuing Hollywood in a less than ingenious manner was a choice I made (although obviously if it had paid off, I’d be a model of self-reliance). Choosing not to pay $500 a month to buy into my company’s health care plan (when I typically make $1500 a month) was a choice I made. I did make an honest attempt to try buying healthcare for me and my honeypie last year. It was basically an anti-bankruptcy plan that wouldn’t have covered the surgery I needed anyway, and after they rejected my honeypie for pre-existing conditions, I said, “Fuck it.”
“Oh, yes, fuck it! That’s your answer for everything!”
[youtube mixjqLF51d8]
The first five minutes are the relevant portion…
So I can’t get the “YOU COULDA DONE SOMETHING!” that rightwingers are so quick to offer out of my head, even though I didn’t have the option to run off to Fox News like Tony Snow when $168K and full health care coverage was breaking his back. It’s true. Somehow, somewhere, I could have done something different and been covered. Somebody, somewhere, has a job I could have elbowed them out of for that coverage. That person is getting health care coverage right now, and maybe they don’t even need it! It was my duty to make sure that I was the one with coverage and they were the one working two jobs with no coverage.
But what nags at me more is the question, must it really be that way? And is America better that way? Is a greater number of Americans competing for a shrinking supply of coverage for ever more expensive health care coverage what this nation needs? Me, I don’t give a fuck about myself so much, or obviously I might have done more in the past. But it’s the others…
I can’t not think about the others, and what we’ve done to ourselves as a nation here. That’s why I support health care for all.
Anyway, feel free to send a message along the liberal grape vine to George Soros that I need $4k for an operation. I’ve surely been an obedient and dutiful liberal brownshirt for some years now…where’s MINEZ?
Ah, but really. I’ll be fine, and life is still sweet. We’re doing our best and we’ll get covered some damn day. I’m quite glad I didn’t jump on that pale horse last month. Hope all of you are getting by okay yourselves. It’s a rough world out there.
-jb
October 12th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
All of which begs the question: since you could have had health insurance, but chose not to, if you had gotten sick or injured beyond your means to pay, why should other people have been obligated to pay for it?
October 12th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
>(I tried to be a Geico man like Mike, but they wouldn’t have me)
Even with their insurance my PCP had to pull all sorts of shinanigans to get my ulcer taken care of. God bless Dr. Michael Burns and his box full of trial sized Nexium packs.
October 12th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
First of all, Dana, I must insist again that you actually read what is written before trying to shoehorn it into your 3-4 talking points.
I’m not expecting anybody to pay for me. I’ve long known I stood some risk of either falling over dead or being bankrupted in case of an emergency. And like I said, I’m paying for this, not you (although you’re free to…:)
But after I take care of this problem, the principle is the same. I will hopefully be healthy the rest of my life until I am murdered at age 95 at the hands of a jealous husband. I will gladly pay my taxes so that other people will have access to healthcare, not just myself.
Just like I pay some taxes right now, Dana, so that the government will be there for you, were you to have a debilitating stroke or car accident that drained your coffers and left you begging the state to take care of your useless hide. I think that’s the right thing to do, rather than kicking you out onto the streets, Dana.
October 12th, 2007 at 7:30 pm
Dana incapable of seeing past the talking points jb, don’t – you’ll forgive the expression – waste your breath
still, I’ll field that question for you Dana: ’cause we’re a civilized society, not some Ayn Rand-worshipping cult of cutthroats?
October 13th, 2007 at 9:15 am
First, I’m sorry to hear about your health problems. It’s often frightening how close we can come to death without even realizing we are there until afterwards.
Second, I’ve stated previously that I’m deeply disturbed by the insurance system as run in our country. As you know, my husband is uninsurable because he had one of the most treatable cancers there is, but, since it has the word “cancer” in it, no insurance company will touch him and he isn’t even 40 yet.
We aren’t even in the “we chose not to have health insurance” camp. We didn’t choose not to have insurance. My husband got laid off from a big company and the COBRA payments were about 1/3 of our monthly income. Then he got a nice contracting job but the insurance won’t cover him. Instead, we have a policy which covers me and my children in the catastrophic-health sort of way.
Which leads me to say this: I’m not sure that government should be there for anything but catastrophic health things anyway. Covering doctor’s visits is absurd because it encourages people to go to the doctor for allergies instead of just taking over-the-counter meds. And then there’s the whole thing about prescriptions (our monthly bill is $300-$400 & I don’t even take anything).
Insurance is a scam, pure and simple. It’s designed for you to pay without ever needing it. If you do need it, the company has to find a reason not to pay or to pay less than the doctor is asking. This is why doctor’s charge $150 for an office visit when, as you have found out, they could charge $20. And it’s also why when I recently had to have a sonogram of my gallbladder, they charged me $500. Someone doesn’t have to pay that, so I get to make up the difference.
I’m not as doctrinaire as Dana, but my experience with socialized medicine is that you still might not have gotten the treatment you needed had we had universal health care. Perhaps it would have been considered too costly or your weren’t sick enough before having it. Or maybe you would have been the wrong age (universal healthcare is slanted in favor of children and against the elderly) or they thought chewing on a stick would be just as effective. who knows?
October 13th, 2007 at 12:52 pm
A very bad idea whose time has come…
The liberals are right, and I have been wrong all along. I’ve finally been convinced: we do have to drop our great system of private-paid care and private insurance, and adopt a government-run, probably single-payer health care system.
……
October 13th, 2007 at 2:03 pm
Sharon> When you say you were declined for health care coverage, were you speaking of a stand-alone policy or an employer co-pay plan?
October 13th, 2007 at 3:51 pm
Jeromy, I am very sorry to hear about this. I wish you a speedy recovery. My prayers are with you. If I can help, please let me know, you have my email now of course. I at least can relate to being on death’s door as I was there, the no pulse and no breathing kind of thing.
October 13th, 2007 at 6:11 pm
Thanks for some of the encouraging words, folks. I can assure all of you that the worst is already long behind me.
Sharon, I’m just going to accept that you’ve moved about as far on the issue as you possibly can, until you one day get automatic free coverage passed by Democrats and you and your husband can freely visit the doctor again. You can believe I’d get delayed care, etc. through any kind of socialized plan, as if the United States couldn’t match or beat France if it wanted to. But you must also know that neither of us would ever fear debt or bankruptcy from medical debts again. I’m lucky my operation is a mere $4K. You know full well that’s pennies compared to what medical expenses can mutate into.
We need to maintain our high quality of health care for those who actually receive it, but spread the burden of cost more equitably. Our health care system as it is bankrupts normal Americans every day.
I believe with our priorities in the right place and a degree of creativity, financial incentives for innovation and excellence can still abound. We’ve got the world’s most advanced military technology, paid for with taxpayer dollars. Private companies can still compete for big dollar contracts to research drugs and new techniques. So much of our medical research and development is already linked to government dollars and incentives.
What we have to do is stop finding horror stories from Canada about somebody who waited two years for a knee operation and ignoring our own very regular horror stories. That won’t win with Americans, because too many are familiar with them already. And Dana can only get so far calling them all lazy and irresponsible. Too many people know they’re no such thing.
October 14th, 2007 at 10:49 am
Sharon> I ask because it would seem to me that you could get insurance through your employer.
October 14th, 2007 at 5:33 pm
JB wrote:
While I have, very regretfully, conceded on the idea of universal coverage, it is clear that going to any form of government-run health care will decrease the quality of medical care available.
October 14th, 2007 at 5:45 pm
JB also wrote:
The link posted on my site is not of a particular horror story, but the Fraser Institute’s determination of the average wait for an appointment in Canada.
You were using the Frosts as an example of a poor, poor pitiful family who could not afford health insurance. Well, as it happens, I have job diaries for every year since 1986 on hand. In 1992, when my wife was a stay-at-home mother with no income, I earned $27,672.92 — and paid $1,104.00 in health care premiums through my employer. We had a mortgage, two small children, and all of the other bills normal people had, and I still paid for health insurance. My house had been purchased for much more than the Frosts’ $55,000 at purchase price, so I assume that my mortgage payments were higher.
Things were tight as hell, but we met our obligations. the Frosts, on the other hand, with income somewhere between $45,000 and $50,000, with a house that has either a small mortgage or is paid off, with a business and additional property, somehow couldn’t afford health insurance. Perhaps this will tell you why I have rather little sympathy for people who neglect their children by refusing to buy health insurance, when I was certainly able to do so on a much lower salary.
October 14th, 2007 at 7:17 pm
Dana, need it really be mentioned that health care costs today are much, much larger than they were in 1992?
Your premium cited in 1992 amounts to less than a hundred bucks a month. Even two hundred bucks a month today would be a wonderful rate, and still wouldn’t get you jack shit.
Am I missing something here?
BTW, how do you think you know so much about the Frost’s life? Didn’t you learn the first time all the rightwinger “research” into their life turned out to be a crock of shit? The business the father ran shut down in 1999.
And at some goddamn point, one must be reminded that the Frosts are an anecdote. Even so, I’m still waiting for you to tell me why I oughtta keep paying taxes just in case you have a stroke and blow through your savings in a couple years. Have you truly been responsible, Dana?
October 15th, 2007 at 10:47 am
The Frosts may be an anecdote, but they are the ones chosen by the Democrats to attack President Bush’s veto of SCHIP.
Thing is, I don’t have to know that much about the Frosts’ life; all I need to know is that they took personal choices which left them neglecting their children when it came to health care.
October 15th, 2007 at 6:46 pm
Just like Sharon!
October 16th, 2007 at 6:57 pm
Well, that’s vague enough, Dana. Of course, under your philosophy there’s almost no way any parents could be responsible and make good choices and still need help with health care, despite skyrocketing costs and shrinking coverage, because you did it, so anybody else should be able to. The Frosts are in the same boat as millions of other ordinary Americans, they work and don’t make much money. If they really could have afforded coverage (and let’s note here that you expected me to have paid $500 a month when I earn $1500 living in San Diego, so your notion of what is affordable is suspect), it certainly never would have covered the incredible costs of their children’s medical treatment. They’d have gone into debt trying to buy insurance, and they’d have been left in debt afterwards.
Or there’s this great program called S-CHIP. Sounds neat! Let’s cover more kids, instead of believing the objections of people who suddenly got fiscal conservatism religion after 7 years of Bushist fiscal insanity when it came to a measly $35 billion for some children’s health care.
It sure is neat seeing what gets you guys up in arms.