Health Care Reform Support Group

I'm speaking to you now as a former middle-income child whose parents wouldn't let her go to the doctor when she was sick, because they couldn't afford health coverage: If every kid in the country is covered without McCain's approval, so be it.

I'm sort of hoping for every person in the country to have health coverage.

Absolutely!

So what do we do with people who have so called health coverage when doctors refuse to accept their insurance? When I had a fractured pelvic bone in 2005 I called every orthopedic doctor in the Yellow Pages and they wantrd $100.00 in advance before they would see me. They might as well have asked me for a million dollars. The insurance I had was medicare. And in my area of the country (Idaho) more and more doctors are refusing to accept new medicare patients.

I sympathize with you "suzannecol". I have to travel over 60 miles everytime I need to see a primary physician. Most of the doctors in the town I live closest to (which is not that small or rural)will not take my state subsidized health insurance and the ones that will are not taking any new patients (endlessly it seems).

-- This is why I am for a single payor sytem of some sort along with insurance for everyone. Should this not happen (and it probably won't) we will have to bombard our representatives etc. regarding the discriminatory practices of physicians.

On a side note -- I find it kind of amusing that attorneys have such a bad rap when as part of their ethical code in nearly every state(the one they must swear to abide by when they receive their license to practice) includes the committment to do "pro bono" work -- e.g. work for which they will not receive a fee (and yes I know alot of them do not actually do it),yet there is no such commitment in published physician's ethical code. Instead the AMA has voiced the concern that doctor's will not be able to make a "reasonable income", or "people will not be able to pick their own doctor" should the current sytem be changed. Well I haven't done alot of research on it but I don't think to many doctors take on patients "without a fee" --except maybe some who volunteer at free clinics or travel to other countries to do charitable medical work. I also don't think many doctors are struggling in terms of their income. And the way things work now days -- people don't really get to pick their doctors, doctors and insurance plans are picking their patients.

There are so many people losing their insurance now that free and nearly-free clinics are springing up everywhere. Having known quite a few doctors in my time, whenn they whine about losing their incomes they are mostly whining about dropping from $300K to $150K yearly. They have been running between the raindrops without getting wet for far too long already.

Misinformation continues:
Mccain voted against the reauthorization of SCHIP because the democrat version expanded it well beyond covering poor children to covering middle class adults who already have insurance with employers.

Our health care system has it's faults but it's the best we got.
I have a friend in Canada who has a friend there with asthma. She went to a clinic to get treatment for an asthma attack and the doctor said she wasn't sick enough to treat her or prescribe medication. So she resorted to going home and taking some of her dog's expired prednosone (sp).
That's what happens with socialized healthcare: the government will decide who gets treated or who lives or dies.

The original discussion post by neutron does cite the congressional record where John McCain claimed the program had been expanded beyond what Congress intended -- Out of curiosity after reading the last post I pulled up the bill as it read when McCain voted nay --- but failed to find the part where it was expanded "to covering middle class adults who already have insurance with employers" --Did I just miss it? Can anyone tell me where to find it?
Not that I would have minded that expansion, but just didn't think even the democrats had progressed so far as to try to pull that off.

I guess I prefer to see everyone covered by "socialized healthcare" rather than have 47 million Americans without coverage.

Oh -- Here's my own personal American healthcare horror story (and I could tell several more)-- My doctors failed to run some diagnostic tests for several years(because they had incentives from the health insurance company --one of my doctors actually admitted this--not to run these expensive tests although all my symptoms indicated they should be run) and as a result something that could have been treated at an earlier stage was not discovered until it was irreversible and has left me nearly disabled. I have lost my employer based health insurance as I can no longer work full-time and I can not get health insurance privately due to my health problems. Fortuantately my state does sponsor a subsidized health care for adults under certain income levels and I have been able to qualify for that -- it is not the best insurance but it is better than nothing. I guess that is why I trust the government to do the right thing (at least we can protest or elect new leadership if we don't like it)more than I trust "profit based" insurance companies.
There was a nice link in one the discussions (can't seem to find it now)that looks at the Canadian Health Care System from someone has used both. The Canadian System is also not the only "socialized healthcare" system out there -- England, France,... in fact most industralized countries are doing it...Why do we think our system is so grand we can't replace it?

I'd love to see some of the OHIP folks weigh in here. OHIP is the Ontario Health Insurance Plan. It is socialized medicine....free to all, BUT, if it is such a good thing, why do so many elderly Canadians flock to the states for their routine maintenance-type healthcare? They do so because to get something to maintain your health in a "free" state program, the providers are so overwhelmed, it may take 2 years to get a scheduled appointment.

I agree that there are huge flaws in our system, but, free isn't the answer. Look at your ERs now. They are routinely slow-moving during the daytime, but come night when all offices are closed they are filled to the brim with people who have no real emergency, but couldn't get in to the over-booked physician's office.

I prefer AFFORDABLE healthcare. NOT FREE. I want to purchase my own coverage, exclude care and charges for it I'll NEVER use, like maternity. I want to pick and choose my coverage, my providers, and my medications. I want my doctor to order a medication that the insurance company can't deny.

When Insurance is free, we will all suffer. All of us except Congress and the Senate...they'll have no issues. But for middle-America, where we work and pay taxes...all of us will find it much harder to get care, even when it may save our lives.

PS - I am a nurse. In the interest of full dislosure, I have worked in physician's offices for many years. My most recent physician, is going bankrupt. Not from poor choices, but from Government regulation of fees and services. Physician's cannot, not have they since 1983, been able to charge what they choose for services. They charge what they are "Allowed" and they collect a portion of that. The government imposed DRGs in 1983. That refers to Diagnosis Related Groups, and it disallows the physician from ordering certain tests and surgical remedies for the care of their patients.....Corporate types decide if what we look like on paper is good enough for the care the physician who performed a hands-on exam determined would be best.

This ain't looking good. Free sounds great. Coverage for all sounds great. But, none of it is free, someone will pay for it. I only hope that for those who pay, the cost can be calculated in dollars and cents, and not caskets and flowers.

Found the previous post *mythbusting* about canadian healthcare system that has a link to an article written by a person who uses both canadian and US healthcare.
Here it is again: healthcarehttp://www.pnhp.org/news/2008/february/10_myths_about_canad.php.

According to this article I think that doctors who are nearly "bankrupt" from the current system might benefit from a "socialized" healthcare system.

The important issue is that healthcare should be available to all --that a person (including children) should not be excluded from medical treatment for financial reasons. I would gladly pay a little more in taxs (although I think that if a sound plan is started that it may not cost more) or wait a little longer for an appointment to see that all Americans received healthcare. It really bothers my sense of peacefulness to know that others are out there suffering (possibly dying) because medical treatment is not available to them.