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Sunday, August 2. 2009
The Best Health Care Anywhere
For five days now I’ve been sick. This horrible “cold,” as the doctor put it, with a sore throat so painfully nasty, swallowing anything, including water, is an act of bravery. Or foolishness if I give in to my addiction to potato chips.Luckily for me I was able to see a doctor at the Veterans Administration Hospital in La Jolla on Friday, although getting there was an ordeal. My buddy John was going to give me a ride in the morning, but I wasn’t ready and ended up taking the bus and Trusty Trek downtown to do some banking and get my bus pass from the Transit Store. At about 2 p.m. the pain was substantial and swallowing was nearly impossible so I jumped on the #30 bus to the V.A.
On a normal day the bus ride from Downtown to the V.A. in La Jolla would take just about 45 minutes, but this was Friday, traffic was insane and of course, being summer, the #30 makes several stops along the various beaches: Mission, Pacific, Tourmaline, Bird Rock, Windansea, Downtown La Jolla (The Cove), and a few stops along La Jolla Shores.
If you’ve ever tried exiting La Jolla after 2:30 p.m., well, let’s just suggest you don’t. It took nearly an hour to get from Pearl and La Jolla Blvd to the first stop on La Jolla Shores Dr. By that point my bladder was about to explode. The bus driver, a kind young man, stopped in front of the Starbucks and let me out. I didn’t even lock up the Trusty Trek, just leaned it into the bushes in front of the door, ran inside and evacuated my bladder. And the Trek was still there.
And so was the same bus, sort of. In a testament to how bad La Jolla traffic is during rush hour, it was only five blocks ahead of where it let me off, so kicking the Trusty Trek into those high gears, I pursued that bus up the climb that is La Jolla Shores Dr., going 20 mph! Damn, I was proud! But, when the bus finally hit that bend and it was out of sight, I turned around and headed to the nearest stop.
Surprisingly, the wait for the next #30 wasn’t long at all, but the traffic, plus my bladder stop, made the trip from Downtown San Diego to the V.A. Medical Center nearly two hours long. Time in the V.A. Urgent Care was less than 90 minutes, but I left with no medications and have been suffering this illness all weekend. Monday Morning, if this infection continues, I will be ready for John to drop my off at that same Urgent Care.
Still, I’m one of the lucky people. Unable to afford the for profit health care foisted upon the majority of Americans, I have access to a single-payer system, one of four available to certain segments of the American population. Accept for the co-pays for medications, that urgent care visit cost nothing.Medicare is another single-payer system and despite the reports of its imminent demise, the program for U.S. seniors is robust and working fine. In fact, you can’t find any Americans in Medicare who would trade it for the for profit system the majority of their fellow citizens are forced to accept.
In Medicare, you can opt for the original plan, or choose Medicare Health Plans, a system that allows the users to pick for profit insurance plans. The downside, and the government tells you this right there in the website, they have all the restrictions of for profit health insurance companies: certain conditions not covered, they have networks and you are forced to choose one network and hope you like all the doctors; all require referrals for specialists and of course the for profit insurers can deny care and services at any time.
So it’s no surprise most people, the vast majority, choose the original plan, because along with that the Medicare recipient can also get Medigap that takes care of most, if not all, out of pocket costs not covered by Medicare. Recently the talking point from Republicans against health care reform and Medicare was the once people reach a certain age they can’t have private insurance and must take the “dreaded” original Medicare plan. Next time you hear a Republican make that claim, now you know he or she is lying.
The third single-payer system, one rarely spoken of but universally loved by all those who use it, the one our legislators in the two houses of Congress use. Yes, while Republicans John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Orrin Hatch, Virginia Foxx, Mitch McConnell, et al. are railing against any public option in the health care reform package, let alone a single-payer option, slop at the trough of publicly funded health care that costs then not one penny.
Some people, like Democrat Russ Feingold, do bring up the hypocrisy of railing against a single-payer system while sucking on the tit of a single-payer system, but in most of the coverage this little factoid is rarely mentioned.
It’s really sad the Democrats caved in this health care reform debate. They could have pushed it out of the various committees before the Congressional summer break, but they didn’t, in large part because several key Democrats are just as beholding to the health insurance and big pharma industries as any Republicans.
While the members of Congress screw around on their month off, nearly 450,000 people will lose their health care coverage, adding to the 50 million who didn’t have health care in the first place. Creating a single-payer plan based on the Veteran Administration Health System would not only bring the best care to people who choose it, but also the most cost-efficient.
“What,” you ask? According to three independent organizations, the VHA System out performs all other health care systems, including Medicare in every category measured, from preventative care, treatment, after care and cost efficiency. These three independent groups: New England Journal of Medicine, the Annals if Internal Medicine and the National Committee for Quality Assurance.The Institute of Medicine concurs, the V.A. has the best health care of any in America. Republicans would like to deny all other Americans this level of care. On The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, neocon master William Kristol admitted that not only do our military people get better health care than all other Americans, the rest of the U.S. citizenry doesn’t deserve that level of health care.
As of today I’m still sick, the virus affecting my ear, but Monday I can go see a doctor once again and maybe get some antibiotics and fix this thing. And the beauty is there won’t be any for profit health insurance bureaucracy that gets between my doctors and I. Don’t you wish you had the same health care?
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