IN MY SHOES: “I Am Willing To Pay To Make My Own Medical Treatment Choices”
The Stiletto’s brush with socialized medicine in Norway (second item) convinced her that the only healthcare system worse than ours - the majority of people get mediocre to excellent medical treatment - is government-provided healthcare - all the people get mediocre to no medical treatment.
Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson recently stabbed himself with a fork while pitting an avocado, which caused a nasty infection that required hospitalization so he could be treated with “industrial-strength antibiotics and painkillers” and hand surgery. His “up-close-and-personal investigation of the American health-care system” - the outcome of his treatment would have had a profound effect on his life and livelihood - got him to re-examine some of his assumptions about socialized medicine:
The last thing the surgeon said to me before they rolled me into the operating room was, "You know, if you and Obama had your way with health care, it wouldn't be me doing this operation. It would just be some guy." …
The wisecracking surgeon who operated on me specializes in hand and elbow surgery; I'm grateful that he was doing the slicing and not "some guy" who might not have been as adept or experienced at working around all the nerves and blood vessels that fingers need to function.
Did the experience change my thinking about the health-care debate? Probably.
I have good insurance, which I obtain through my employer, and haven't paid a dime out of pocket for my treatment. … The way we ration health care now - according to the individual's ability to pay - is immoral, and if higher taxes are needed to ensure that no one has to choose between health and bankruptcy, I'll pay. That was my position all along, but now it's personal.
What's changed is that I also feel more strongly about the ability to make my own choices. I decided where I would be treated and, ultimately, what would or wouldn't be done. I'm willing to pay for that, too.
My thoughts exactly. My insurance is excellent. So when my daughter developed a staph infection in her collarbone and needed an open biopsy (two surgeons) and heavy duty penicillin (2-3 thousand dollars) and a drug pump for 28 days at $95/day it was no big deal. The health insurance offered by my company to us sales clerks is laughable. It caps benefits at $1,000 per year. My daughter being treated under that policy? Yeah, right.
I would gladly pay taxes so someone else's family gets the first policy and not the second.
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