Anyone who knows me knows I am a flaming liberal slash socialist slash bit of a dictator, it’s my way or the highway. So I am in favor of socialized medicine and if you aren’t, you are wrong. (Kinda like bacon. You either like bacon or you are wrong.) And don’t tell me how poor the national health system is in other countries. I have lived under both systems, with a handicapped child mind you, so I know what I am talking about. But we don’t have it in the USA and that will not change in my lifetime so I am stuck with it. But the cost is inexcusable. Blue Cross and United Healthcare and all the rest of them are raking in the money and you the subscriber are getting inferior care. I spent from 12 to 5 sitting at my mother’s recently waiting for some home healthcare visitor to show up. They are like the cable company, they don’t give you a time, they give you a range. Because you have nothing better to do. Now my mother is not sick. They send someone out once a year to check her medications, according to them – this was the first and trust me, the last time. She takes no medication. She is 87 and healthy as a horse. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of her mind. So she is the perfect target. Her best friend gets a call from her provider saying they are coming out and she tells them to stop wasting her money, she has an excellent doctor, good bye, and she hangs up. My mother says, oh, okay. They could have told her we are your neighborhood serial killer and we are coming over to behead you and she would have said, okay. Sometimes I intercept the letter that precedes the phone call and I put a stop to it. But this time I didn’t. But my mother mentioned it to me on the phone the day before the visit. I made her read me the letter and I called them. She has Medicare who contracts to United Healthcare who contracts to AARP. So we have multiple levels of people stealing money. And make no mistake, that is what they are doing. This person who came is a nurse. She was very nice if completely unneeded. Since I knew the day before, I could have stopped this needless visit. But I have an agenda. Scare them on the local level. I am a scary person when I am angry. See, the provider has my mother’s medical directive on file and my power of attorney. They know they are to call me not her. But they are miles away, lord only knows where. They are not afraid of me. So I plan to scare them on a local level. You can rest assured the local outfit they contract to will NEVER go to my mother’s again.
In the USA we spend more on healthcare per capita than any other country in the world and in return we have the poorest standard of healthcare in the world. Let’s look at this little transaction with my mother. They tell my mother this is free. Ha! First you have the nurse. Above her is the local company that sends her out. They get paid by AARP and after paying her they take the cut from AARP who gets their money from United Healthcare taking their cut, then United gets their cut after they get the money from Medicare who gets their money from…. Come on, you know the answer to this… YOU! What I want to say is you, you moron who doesn’t believe in socialized medicine. No you believe in this crooked system. So my mother’s totally unnecessary visit cost you the taxpayer hundreds of dollars. PLUS they gave her a shopping bag and a fleece blanket. But this is the system you think is better than socialized medicine.
For less money we could have a national health system where everyone is covered (I have not had health insurance since 2009 and fine me Mr. President, I will not get it under your crappy compromise system – hey NSA, did you get that? I want the president to know.) and when people are sick they could go to their doctor and get well and they could have their preventative visits with their doctor so they might avoid getting sick. They have my mother, who unlike her best friend doesn’t know any better, going to a clinic. Because they shell out less to a clinic. So she sees someone different every time and no one person has a really comprehensive medical history on her. Which suits these providers just fine. Well that is all changing, because I, the dictator, am in charge now.
Kate Eileen Shannon 