Government Run Health Care

About to get political on my blog. I hate politics, avoid them, avoid talking about them, don't follow them much at all. I do have a lot of examples of why government run health care is a VERY BAD idea. This doesn't mean I have the solution, just that I can pretty much prove that our government should not be in control of our health care. I have been in a discussion on Facebook with someone over this issue. I thought I should post my reasons here.

Military dependent here - for my entire life. My Dad is a vet too. Military health care stinks, veteran health care is pretty much the same. Great if you don't have anything wrong with you. My husband has over 20 years in the military. About 9 years ago, we stopped using the military part of health care and went with their "PPO" option. WAY better. I also go to a chiropractor (and so do my children) and it is not covered at all by military health care. So we pay 100% out of pocket for that (I have 5 kids, so we aren't talking about a couple people). I would SO rather pay for my own health care than have the gov't involved AT ALL. When my chiropractor started to accept private insurance she had to raise her rates for everyone - even cash paying customers. She could no longer offer the discounts she had previously. It became more expensive for everyone. If she could get by without accepting insurance, she would charge less!!! Oh, and part of our "military benefits" (which means my husband makes less pay than he would if he had the same job in the civilian world) is health care. It is sub par many times. The stories I could share. No one wants that kind of medical "treatment".

Oh, forgot to mention - my husband is not allowed to be seen at a doctor off base. He has had abysmal care.

Couple reasons why I didn't give examples. First, way too many to give, how do I choose? :-) The second reason is that I really am not politically motivated, really don't like political debates and am completely ignorant about the whole health care debate. And I do not feel eloquent, so I try to avoid all this. I just can't seem to stay out of it though when people bring up the military health care or the veteran's health care.

One of your questions was about access to a doctor. Well, let me give you a couple examples. If my child is sick and I need to take her in, I would start calling the appointment line around the time they open. Typically you could call for a couple hours before getting to speak to someone. At that point you are told there are NO acute care appointments available for the next 3 days. So what do you do with your sick kid? Oh, and I rarely take kids to the doctor unless they are REALLY sick. Which I think is appropriate - I suppose gov't controlled health care would fix that. No one would try to go unless they were close to needing antibiotics or about to die. :-) Now, that is just a scenario - one that I have encountered and my friends have encountered hundreds/thousands of times. No lie, no exaggeration.

Now, a true story. My husband hurt his leg playing flag football. What, might you ask, is a 40+ year old man doing playing flag football? Required physical fitness that day for the military. He tried to deal with it for about a week. At that point he decides he really should see a doctor. He calls. They question him thoroughly. They ask him if it is getting ANY better. He replies that yes, it is. OH, well then this isn't acute, we can schedule you to see a dr in a month. What? He is required to stay physically fit and he can NOT work out. He ended up missing his appointment, due to having to go to a drug pee test (you get tagged to do this and have 2 hours to get it done - he couldn't get to both, so arrived 15 minutes late to his app't). Shows up 15 minutes late and the dr won't see him. Classified as a "no show". His boss gets called, he gets lectured. (By the way, my husband will pin on Colonel in another month - this happened about a year ago, so we aren't talking about an airman being called on the carpet by a high ranking officer - he IS a high ranking officer.) Long story short, he was finally seen a couple months later. Oh, a few months later he hurt his knee during PT. Went to his annual physical, mentions to the dr his knee is having severe pain. The dr looks at his medical charts - does not examine his knee AT ALL and says that he's just getting old ... That would be the equivalent of me going to the dr, saying my stomach hurts, having them look at my chart and say that based on my chart I'm pregnant. WHAT? Long story short on the knee? Well, it took them a few months to get him seen by another dr, get an x-ray taken, have a follow up and he is told he has arthritis and can continue working out. All this time his physical fitness has dropped off. Very hard to regain for a 43 year old man who works 50+ hour weeks....

Phew, I have more stories, but think this is sufficient for now. Just so you know, I have stories like these from all my friends. One had a daughter diagnosed with a brain tumor - they wouldn't treat it or pay for treatment because the likelihood of her being cured wasn't high enough. ARGH. That is NOT what we want!! The gov't is NO better than a crappy health insurance company.

I'm on roll here, so will continue. :-) I just reread what you said. I have chosen to pay out of pocket rather than go the military route - doesn't that say something? As Chris says, I am free to choose and I love that. I guess I feel that, as a rule, if people are required to figure out a way to pay for their own health care, it would lower costs of health care! Right? Of course, that means insurance companies should butt out too. If you have a service that is unaffordable by the general public, you have to lower your costs or you don't make any money. Many of my friends go to the dr WAY too much (civilian friends, my military friends avoid it as much as possible). Their kid coughs and they're there. If they had to pay every time they went, they would evaluate it better. I'm getting off on a tangent I'm incapable of following up on, so I should shut up on this one (getting out of my league!).

I was early in a pregnancy. I started spotting and cramping. We lived on a base that only had a clinic, not a hospital. I called to get an appointment. "You aren't bleeding or cramping hard enough for us to see you. Besides, this is why we don't see people until after 8 weeks of pregnancy, to weed these things out." No kidding, WEED THESE THINGS OUT. My baby is a weed? I was finally spotting/bleeding hard enough on a Friday morning that they scheduled an appointment for 3 o'clock that afternoon to see me. Why? So they could give me a referral to see an OB off base - they had no u/s equipment to check on the baby, nothing. I was going to get permission to see an OB off base at 3 on a Friday. And the appointments are notoriously behind schedule, so reality would be me getting out of there by 4:30 or 5. What OB is open on a Friday at 4:30 or 5? You can bleed to death from a miscarriage (this was my 2nd pregnancy, 1st miscarriage, so I was scared and unsure of what to do - if this happened to me now, I'd stay home). I canceled my appointment and went to the ER on Saturday morning (off base - we could do that if the clinic wasn't open). Wonderful treatment at the ER. Wonderful. I had completely miscarried on my own - which is fine, but really not safe or good or comforting. Horrible treatment at the military facility.

I had a daughter with double ear infections. She had been having horrible ear infections for a few months. Took her in to the clinic - was yelled at by the dr because she was behind on her immunizations. I said that you aren't supposed to get kids immunized if they are sick and she had been sick almost nonstop for months. He yelled at me that that was old school, stupid info and you can get them immunized any time. Last time I read an immunization fact sheet (a few weeks ago), it said to not get an immunization if the kid was sick.... See More

And my husband was required to get the swine flu shot this year - he had no choice, it was required by the gov't. Aren't we all about being "pro-choice"? Yet, with what I've seen, having gov't controlled health care gives us no choice or fewer choices.

OH! One more thing I remembered. I started having headaches when I was 8 years old. Bad, severe, debilitating headaches. Want to know what the military dr's gave me? Ibuprofen. No tests done - well, I think they checked my eyes to see if they showed signs of a tumor or something. That's it. Thankfully I figured out why I have severe migraines when I was like 22 - and still working on keeping them at bay at 37. The military never did anything to find out why. Would you want your 8 year old daughter, who is having severe headaches, to just be given meds? I think not.

Ha ha ha, Chris. I don't really rule on this subject, I just have WAY too much experience dealing with gov't run health care to think that they will do a good job of this in any way, shape or form. And please don't think I don't appreciate the military doctors. For the most part, they are trying to do a good job. They are very limited in what they are allowed to do, what they are funded for, etc. I think things are better somewhat since I bailed, but how long has the gov't run military health care? Eric, my husband, is currently assigned to a base that has ONE physician assigned there - and he/she is part time. There are a few thousand active duty members at this base. ONE physician? How can that be? The gov't hasn't approved the base to have any more at this point in time. What will happen to our small towns when they are only assigned ONE physician? Seriously?