[AngryGerbil]

When I think of the current health care system in this country I see it as a giant pyramid. At the bottom of the pyramid are the uninsured and underinsured who, when they get sick, have little if any choice and few resources. They go to free clinics or emergency rooms and, if they are desperate, they call ambulances. Or they get Medicaid. Sometimes their healthcare bills are paid; frequently they are not. The next level up on the pyramid are the working insured - you and me. Their insurance companies generally do OK - paying their bills, sometimes restricting their access, sometimes charging them huge copays or deductibles. Sometimes denying their care and forcing their providers to fight tooth and nail for their money.

Above them are the rich - rich corporations and rich insurance companies and rich individuals. They have insurance and get what they want, including adequate to excellent healthcare all the time. What they also have, however, is huge political clout. They can always blame someone else when healthcare costs spiral out of control or someone dies for lack of care (“We didn’t deny care; we only denied coverage.”) At the point of the pyramid are the providers; docs, dentists, nursing homes, hospitals, freestanding specialty centers, ambulance providers. They have to make enough money to sustain their investors, pay their bills, insure against malpractice and, above all, provide high quality patient care.

Do you see the pyramid? OK, now, flip it over. That is how our “system” works. The whole thing rests on the point, the providers. Government won’t pay? Commercial insurance won’t pay? Who pays? Who is mandated by law and public opinion to provide certain levels of care? Who gets bad publicity if they deny care to someone with no insurance or takes a deadbeat to court for their unpaid emergency care - oh boo hoo, the poor patient? Who makes it possible for President Junior and Governor Skippy to seriously consider that cutting Medicaid will solve anything? The providers, upon whom the whole pyramid rests, are the payers of last resort. How long can it go on?

The truth is that it doesn't matter how deadbeat or poor or how much of a crack-whore-baby-daddy you are, you WILL get medical care. The question is, who pays for it? I am of the opinion that we should all chip in a little. That's that. Oh, I can hear Peenix now...."Blwekfewe! But I work hard for my money and I don't want a crack-whore to get it!". Ok, fine, fair enough. Now let's examine who WILL get your money....

The crack whore will get her medical care, period. A provider cannot refuse her lest the provider be crucified by everyone. So, the provider ends up essentially giving away a free product. Now, this is a fact of life for Amercian healthcare providers...you will have to provide alot of free service, period. It is a cost of doing business. Medicaid, in it's current form, doesn't cut it trust me. Medicaid benefits need to be increased, not cut. The current Medicaid system actually takes it one step further by allowing for a sort of "shield" for the patient in which the providers cannot even BILL the patient by penalty of law, even if the service was denied.

So we have free services. How does a provider of healthcare cope with that kind of shit? The provider, having no other choice must make up for the lost money somehow. How, you ask? By charging YOU more. Who are you? You are the normal, non-crack-whore productive member of society who has working commercial insurance who can pay their bills. If a provider performs 10 services in which he must make $100 each in order to stay operable and 8 of them can't pay, guess who gets a $500 bill?

And it goes up and up every year. The cost of healthcare is going up, the Medicare/Medicad allowables are going down. So now, we'll have a situation in which the providers are sending huge bills to your insurance company. What is the private insurance company to do? Well, they either lower their benefits and stick you with a large chunk of the bill, or they raise premiums in order to keep pace with rise in healthcare. But here's the kicker, every time they do that, they cut off more and more people from being able to actually afford health insurance. So now, you have even MORE people who can't pay their bills and who are bleeding the providers dry. Now, instead of 8 people not being able to pay, now 9 people can't. If you ride that spiral to it's end, you'll have Bill Gates being the only person able to afford the monthly premiums.

I can hear the advocates of privatized healthcare now. And the thing is, they are right to a degree. A privatized healthcare system will do exactly what the advocates of it want it to do, it will prevent said advocates from having to pay for someone else's healthcare......on one condition......that they never ever get sick. Because yes, you will not be paying taxes into a social medicine program. So assuming you never ever get sick, you will never ever pay a dime for some crack-whores medicine. But, the moment you DO get sick, all those crackwhores whose medical provisions have not been paid for by anybody are going to catch up to you. The provider of your services, when you do get sick, is going to be forced to gouge the ever living shit out of you because you're the only kid on the block who can actually pay for your medical bills. How does this help? The way I see it, if you are a relatively well-to-do member of society who votes for privatized healthcare, you are shooting yourself in the foot. It's just going to take about 40-50 years for the bullet to actually hit your foot. But when it does hit, it's going to hurt a hell of alot more than being slapped on the wrist every April 15th.

The bottom line is this. Providers need to be reimbursed for the services they provide or else this shit is going to get out of control. The only way they can be reimbursed for providing medical care to a crackwhore, is through a social medical program. We all need to chip in to pay for the crackwhores medicine, or else Donald Trump is going to be the only person who can afford any medicine.

And a quick reminder: This is about Medicine only. I'm not talking about Social Security or Socialism in general. Just medicine. Because it is one area in which we all have a stake, it is one service in which we all will use. Medicine is not like Plasma TVs. I agree with the capitalist view that only the hard working decent well-to-do members of society should be able to afford the luxury of a Plasma TV. I do not agree that they should also be the only ones who can afford healthcare.

Thoughts?


*edit: dotted an i