Healthcare

Monday, May 11, 2009
Healthcare





The Way I See It















Monday, May 11, 2009

Healthcare.

I have had my share of problems with the healthcare system. There is nothing about the current system that works for the majority of the people in this country. Most of us have to scrape up the money that we need for healthcare or go deep in debt everytime we need it.
At the present I don't have a job and I don't qualify for any aid. If I have to go to the doctor I have to pay full price for the service. If the charges went through an insurance carrier they would only have to pay the doctor a small fraction of what my charge would be, because the insurance only pays what the national average is for that service. Where a doctor may charge me $100 for a service they will only charge a provider what they negotiate which might be $25. Why should I have to pay $75 more just because it's out of my pocket instead of the providers pocket. My last visit to my cardiologist was about a 15 minute consultation for him to tell me that he thought I might have a blockage in an artery on the bottom of my heart and he wanted to schedule me for a stint; but he wasn't sure that I would need one. That 15 minutes costed me $190. I had no insurance at the time to cover that.
Two and a half years ago I had open-heart surgery. After the dust settled I was still over $3000 in debt; and thats with me paying a provider about $400 per month for coverage. Now I am out of work and I have no coverage. If I were to have another heart attack I would be stuck with the entire bill for services rendered. Because of my history it would be hard for me to get the coverage that i need to take care of me.
Insurance companies get to set thier own rules for the coverage you receive and if they think you are a risk you are just out of luck. They can put you through a mountain of paperwork just to see if they want to cover you and that can take weeks or months to get an answer from them on what they will do and what they refuse to do. I know that many people say that too much government is not good, but there are some things that the government need to help control. Healthcare is one of those that desperatly need to be controled. The previous administration opened the door for insurance companies to do what ever they want without any regulation.
This is where Universal Healthcare comes into play. It works great in Canada. If you don't believe me just ask someone from Canada... You hear polititions and ney sayers in our country say that is is to costly and will never work. That's only because they don't want to take the money out of the pockets of the people that support them and lobby for the deregulation of the insurance industry. I have heard the testimony of many Canadians about how good the coverage is that they have and i have never heard one of them say one word against it.
The people that make our laws don't have to worry about anything like that ever happening to them because we pay for their coverage; even after they are out of office. They make enough that we shouldnt have to pay for theirs but I guess since they make the laws they are going to see that they are taken care of. But what about the rest of us? Do we not deserve the same care? We are just as much a part of this country as they are. Without us they would not be where they are to make those laws that take care of them for the rest of their lives. Why should a life long United States Senator be allowed to use Medicare and other benifits paid by our government when his household income is in the millions. It seems to me that it wouldnt hurt his pocket one bit to use his own money.
People die every day because they don't have the coverage or the money to take care of an illness. People whon have always had everything they need would never understand that. Come live my life for a year and survive on my income and see how long it will take them to change their minds about the current healthcare system.