Friday, September 28, 2007

Universal Healthcare - neat idea...but

This is in response to a post by K on her blog MN Clampits. In her post, she discusses why she believes we need universal heathcare. While I like the idea of never worrying about medical decisions in finiancial free bubble, I just don't believe it could ever work.

Should someone be making a profit off of us as human beings and our health?


My question is, why shouldn't they? You think it's hard finding a nurse now, wait until you tell them they need to do it for free. I realize you don't mean the staff in a hospital should be volunteers, but essentially, you'd be making the government employees. Competition would leave the workplace and mandated pay scales would be left behind. You you really want to give up 10 years of your life to medical training to be a doctor knowing that your salary is $X and it won't change but with a fixed schedule?

We don't see a problem with paying for food. It too is essential to our well being. Farmers get paid and hopefully make a profit.

Would you be willing to wait 4-8 weeks longer to see a specialist for a
non-life-threatening issue so that the 47 million other citizens of our "great"
country could be covered?

Is that really the only downside to Universal Healthcare? Canada and much of Europe have these systems. It can take an extra 4-8 weeks to see a doctor for ANY non-life-threatening issue...like depression, cancer or a progressive disease. Do you know why there is an extra long wait to see the doctor? No one wants to be doctors or nurses. They don't get paid much for the hard work they do.

The state of Minnesota recently started looking at all the uninsured people in the state. Are you aware of the primary demographic descriptions of these people? Mostly single males in their 20's...people that never go to the doctor anyways. They are a burden to the system for a reason other than health care is not available. The believe they can live forever, but when they go the hospital, the have no money to pay, which causes the rates to rise at the hospital because the hospital is then forced to eat the cost.

The healthcare problems in this country would never be solved by just creating universal healthcare coverage. We have a serious problem in this country...we love seeing out doctors. Got the emergency room and hang out for a while...discover why people are there. Many have colds, or an ache and most are on public assistance. We also believe that if throw enough treatments at a problem...we could live forever. There is a great deal of waste in the medical industry and much of it comes from us. If we could solve our addiction to seeing the doctor for everything...we could easily lower costs and make healthcare more affordable.

My 2 cents...have a great weekend!

0 comments: