On the right is a chart from last year (click on it and click again to enlarge to be able to see it better) showing how the U.S. compares to other countries on healthcare. On average we spend twice what other industrialized countries spend per capita. The closest any of the countries listed here comes to our spending is Switzerland and theirs is only 2/3rds of ours. That's not even taking in to account the millions of people in this country that don't have any healthcare coverage. Now if we are spending twice as much and getting a helluva lot less, doesn't that strike you as a BAD DEAL???? We have a lower life expectancy and a higher infant mortality rate, so we do lead in something, but it's not a good thing. Seems to me someone is getting fucked on this deal and I would say it's all of us!!!
Now why would anyone fight to keep such a PISS-POOR system??? I can see the rich bastards being for it as they are for anything that makes them money by fucking over everybody else. But why would Joe-Sixpack or Joe the Plumber be for this??? Would the Wal-Mart shoppers be happy if they were told, "You have to pay twice as much for this stuff as the rest of the world!!" Hell No, they wouldn't, there'd be riots. So why do these same people want to keep the old fucked-up system in place???? Is it because they have been sold a bill of goods, "We have the best healthcare in the world." Fifteen years ago whenever some "DittoHead" would repeat that line of BULLSHIT, I'd say, "No, we have the most expensive healthcare in the world!!!" While I like to say "I'm smarter than the average bear", I'm no fucking genius, and I figured it out a long time ago. So why doesn't the rest of the country???
Could it be that most people that have insurance aren't paying the full fare??? Those that get insurance thru their jobs usually only pay part of the premium while the employer pays most of it. And those without insurance believe the bullshit about how they can always go to the ER when truly sick or hurt. The apartment manager here where I live told me he pays $800 a month for his medical insurance and another $800 for his adult daughter. That's $9600 a year each. Unless they have some kind of medical catastrophe, there is no way someone would get that much medical treatment in a year.
Example: The Old Lady knew a couple who lived in Sweden. The woman got breast cancer which metastasized and finally killed her. My cousin got breast cancer which metastasized and finally killed her. The difference; the woman in Sweden never had to worry about how to pay for her treatment, whereas my cousin had to ask friends and relatives to hold spaghetti dinners to try to pay for things like drugs for chemo and she had what some consider good medical insurance.
Example: The Old Lady knew a couple who lived in Sweden. The woman got breast cancer which metastasized and finally killed her. My cousin got breast cancer which metastasized and finally killed her. The difference; the woman in Sweden never had to worry about how to pay for her treatment, whereas my cousin had to ask friends and relatives to hold spaghetti dinners to try to pay for things like drugs for chemo and she had what some consider good medical insurance.
While I am definitely not happy that we have been hoodwinked into thinking our health care system is the best, our health as a nation is not necessarily tied to what we pay. Our lifestyle, eating habits, and lack of exercise as a nation play a more dramatic role in our health than the cost. What I hate is that we get less while paying more. If ever there was a place for the profit motive to be regulated, it is in health care.
ReplyDeleteSo yeah I am really pissed and wish more of us were even half as pissed as I am.
While lifestyle, eating habits and lack of exercise do have an impact on the health of the nation, whether or not they play a more dramatic role than cost or the lack of insurance is debatable.
ReplyDeleteHave you noticed that everytime some group (be they scientists, doctors or whatever) cautions or warns us about how there is too much salt, sugar, grease, trans fat, what have you in our processed food and/or restaurant or fast food meals, immediately other groups start bitching about how these "Pinhead Educated Elites" are being "Food Police"
and telling us how to live!!! Look at all the shit directed at Michelle Obama because she has the nerve to tell people to eat healthy foods and get more exercise!!
IMHO, for too long the insurance companies and the medical industry have had a cozy arrangement feeding off each other and raking in the bucks at the expense of the public!! I'm beginning to think maybe the Conservatards may have the right idea, have everyone pay for their own medical insurance in full either by paying the whole premium themselves or pay taxes on insurance they get thru their employers. That would wake up people and maybe they would rebel against the system as it is now.
One thing that's always driven me more than slightly nuts about the health care debate (such as it is) in this country is the "blame the victim" thread running through it. If someone gets cancer, it's automatically "she must have smoked/eaten the wrong things/not exercised enough/exercised too much/had kids too young/had kids too late/never had kids/had an abortion/screwed around/didn't screw around/whatever." It has to be the victim's fault, because if it happened for no reason, that means it could happen to anyone -- and, holy fuck, that means it could happen to ME.
ReplyDeleteWhy Aren't More People Pissed????
ReplyDeleteThey put a lot of distractions and other things out there to keep everyone confused.
Actually, why keep trying to save everyone when there are so many worthless fucks on this rock and in this country?
Sharon has just discovered that she has cancer, she's working with people in the medical field that are helping her with the paper work and such to provide her with treatment for it because she has no insurance at all.
I know that it may sound like a mean thing to say but Sharon has lived her whole life off of money from Alaska because she is a native and has spent most of that money in bars drinking and gambling and has never done anything to help and support humanity.
She has never done one single act of service to others in society, like volunteer work, I'm not feeling beneficial to people like her and I know quite a few of them.
She's never even worked much to put much in the tax system so why should the rest of the rest of you taxpayers help save her when she has never cared about you?
She's always been worthless, I say to just let her die, or do you support saving all the worthless freeloaders on this rock?
While I am definitely not happy that we have been hoodwinked into thinking our health care system is the best
ReplyDeleteOh come on, in my whole life I've never seen that our system is all that great, interesting that it saves worthless fucks though.
You can get decent health care here as long as you are willing to give everything up and be poor, there are people in the profession that will help you with all that.
I know lots of worthless fucks that we are keeping alive, what a weird system.
BBC, it's people with attitudes like yours that keeps this fucked up system from being improved. While most don't come right out and say like you do that we shouldn't be keeping worthless fucks alive, they do say things like "Why should I pay for someone else's medical care??" All the while not realizing that they are paying for it, as in your case in point, who if not all the taxpayers are paying??
ReplyDeleteWhat really pisses me off is that you can have someone who works hard, thinks they have good insurance and something happens where the medical bills take all they have and leave them sick and hopelessly in debt and maybe homeless. That shouldn't happen in this the supposed "Greatest Country in the World"!!
BBC, there are always going to be some worthless fucks who try to game the system and live their lives in their own selfish little bubbles, but most people aren't like that. The vast majority of people spend their lives working hard and trying to do the right thing -- if we focus on the handful of losers who figure out ways to slide by on other people's sweat, we end punishing all the good people who truly deserve help.
ReplyDeleteTerms like "redistribution of wealth" are popping up a lot lately too - like W didn't redistribute our budget surplus to Darth Cheney and other minions of evil.
ReplyDeletePeople would be pissed it they weren't so brainwashed.
ReplyDeleteevery time something like this comes up that would piss people off, Snooky or Charlie Sheen or some other Hollywood low life does something stupid and they get sidetracked..I think it's done on purpose.
ReplyDeleteWhen you look at the cost of health care benefits paid by American companies as opposed to those same benefits being provided to foreign companies' employees by the state, you have to wonder why the wheels of industry don't side with the commoners on this issue. They used to tell us where I worked that our health, vision, dental, and life insurance benefits were costing the company $10 per hour per employee. If that's the case, can you see why a foreign company would have an advantage if they didn't have to pony up for those benefits?
ReplyDeleteWe let propaganda rule the day, slam docs like "Sicko" as liberal lies, and the public buys it hook, line, and sinker.
Good post.
Nan, maybe it's because of the wide circles I travel in but I just happen to know a lot of worthless fucks that we keep alive. Not just a few but a lot, and that's just in my own little space here.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure it's the same everywhere if you dig into it.
For every person that I know that has good health insurance I know at least four that don't have good health insurance, or none at all. But they are still trying to keep them alive.
ReplyDeleteAt who's expense? At the expense of those that do. If you have good insurance and some wealth they'll take it all away from you to help keep worthless fucks alive.
Isn't this a great country?