[Alumni-chat] Re: Alumni-chat Digest, Vol 7, Issue 1

[Pam Olsen]

> 
> You're wrong. But don't worry in a few short months, you'll have Hillarycare
> and we can all relax and enjoy the benefits of that. Between now and then
> you're welcome to use Canada's socialized healthcare system since it's so
> muich better than ours. I feel sorry for the thousands of Canadians who are
> "simply uninformed" and come to the United States for "the worst health care
> in the world." Gosh, maybe their Surgeon General needs to put up a sign at
> the border: 


David,  As for HIllary care,  of course, we don't know what would have been
if she had been able to do what she wanted to do, instead of finally caving
in to insurance companies and creating "managed care".

As for Canadians coming to this country, I have dear friends who live in
Quebec, who came to help me work on my house in February.  I asked them
about their healthcare.  They said it is excellent.  The only surgery they
have to wait for is elective surgery.   I live only 100 miles from the
Canadian border.  I have friends at church who drive up there every six
months to get her Tamoxifin.  Here, it would be $100 a month.  THere, it is
$24 for six months!  It is worth the trip!

i lived in Switzerland as an exchange student in high school.  I was from
what might be called a lower middle class family.  I'd not have been able to
go without my grandmother paying the $600 for the year--upfront (same for
Antioch).  My Swiss family was very poor, even by Swiss standards.  All four
of the children became professionals:  two engineers, one physician and one
architect.  They all now have beautiful homes, take long vacations every
year, have travelled the world, have excellent health care, are in good
health in their 50s and 60s (except for some sports accidents--they're all
avid sportspeople), and look forward to secure retirements.   They don't
have to worry about losing everything they have to a medical crisis, unlike
this uninsured cancer survivor.  I've been cancer free for 7.5 years.  I
still can't get insurance without it costing me a fortune, and thanks to
Managed Care, I can't afford it.  So I just do my best to stay healthy.

Surgery is not the only health care issue.   And, of course, even
life-saving surgeries are denied if people can't pay for them.  It blows my
mind that people will get on TV and try and raise money for life-saving
treatments because they don't have insurance or insurance won't cover a new
"unproven" treatment.  We just let them die.

Are you aware that the most recent dietary quidelines put out by the FDA
were essentially dictated by the sugar and meat industries, rather than by
nutritional research?  Read The China Study, esp. the appendices.

Face it, David, your philosophy is a theory.  I have been billing insurance
companies for 24 years.  I live with the results of such a theory every day
of my life.  I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that our health care system
is not there to serve the people.  Patients are not getting good care,
providers who try and be available to everyone, not only the rich, are not
getting fair payment.  While the CEOs and employees of the insurance
companies are making it big, and bigger all the time.   Health care for
profit was a dumb idea.

We all know what Big Business has done for the environment.  And look at
what it's doing to our democracy.

It has been in the news a lot lately that the rich in our country are
getting much, much richer, while the middle class is getting smaller.  This
is not the case in European countries, where the middle class is increasing
in size.  

In my opinion, the data is in.  Your theory hasn't worked, except to make a
small percentage of the population a whole lot richer.

Pam