I am afraid of health insurance. Socialized medicine scares me. Privatized health care scares me .... HMO's Scary ..... deductibles ..... scary .... new and expensive drugs .... scary yet helpful.
The whole thing is scary. I feel like I am walking on an old attic floor and I might fall through at any moment. I have these scenarios that runs through my head .... like,
"miss that medicine that allows you to walk, yeah, it's been recalled, it causes stomach cancer and you can't have it anymore. Maybe you should get a scooter?"
"We don't cover that medicine anymore, so you'll have to pay the entire $1,200 every month, oh you can't afford that? Sorry!" Spend all of your savings, maybe spend all of your parents savings too? Why don't y'a just go into credit card debt .... everybody's doing it. There's a lot of equity in that house of yours .... "
OR
"So, now that the government has taken over, you can't see your rheumatologist that you have a five year relationship with .... sorry you have to travel to Charlotte and wait in a line for 4 hours to see a rheumatologist, and you'll see a different on every time that you go."
"Before you see your doctor, you have to fill out 20 pages of paperwork that will be reviewed by the feds who will make sure that you are properly diagnosed, and that process will probably take six months. During that time you will have to pay for your own medicine and health care, but that will be paid back if the feds decide that you are sick enough --that process may take up to two years."
Bureaucracies always have to make sure that you are sick enough ..... poor enough ..... And most importantly, that your condition is permanent .... "I don't know!!!!!!" But, if I want help then I have to mark yes. "I am very pathetic .... and I am poor poor poor, and I am pathetic and sick ... there are you happy now?" It is all very degrading.
I am not impressed with the current privatized health care system (mainly expensive prescription drugs) and I am very wary of the federal government acting like (Obama, who I normally agree with) the federal government's magic wand will fix all the ills of the "health care crisis" that rarely gets reported on anymore since the economy is such a mess.
Maybe I will follow up in this post with another one with stats about the financial problems that people face who have chronic illnesses. Because, it's a mess and I am worried that it will be a mess for many years to come.
It kind of reminds me of how people could not really wrap their minds around the industrial revolution .... it was a wonderful advancement for human civilization, but then it caused all of these problems too .... like pollution ... "robber barons" (love that phrase), and crowding diseases. But it was such a beautiful thing too .... My great great grandparents may not have moved from their peasant status in Sicily and Slovakia to the "land of plenty" ... the United States and moved up into the pleasantries of the middle class.
The technological advancements of medicine have contributed to a population explosion, decreased infant mortality rates and increased life expectancy .... just to name a few.
However, everything is so damn expensive and people are still drinking nasty water in some parts of the world and dying from something as simple as diarrhea. Society has not been able to wrap it's mind around medical advancements, as a result sick people are suffereing ....
If only I had some of that robber baron money, damn.
If you get sick, I sure hope that you have a lot in your savings account.
It's just NUTS!
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