This is Alpha, the first-born, when he was 2YO.
This is Beta, the second-born, when he was about 2YO.
This is Gamma, the third-born, when he was about 18MO.
Health Not-Care
Jun
17
2009
I had my first experience with government-run health care, and I am very unimpressed. No, worse than that – I am worried that anyone wants to expand this level of service.
Our oldest child will be starting kindergarten this fall. One of the state’s requirements for children starting school is that they have a vision test on record with the school.
“Not to worry,” says the local county government, “we provide free vision screenings for any county resident.” I thought that was fine, so my wife called the county to schedule an appointment.
A little background information first:
This was last week, in the first half of June. We registered our child for kindergarten back in April or so. The school district said that he was penciled in but would not be officially registered until we provided the results of the vision screening. The students are assigned to teachers in mid August, and school starts right after Labor Day, in early September.
So the county health division was glad to sign up our child for a free vision screening, but the first opening they had was August 24th, only two weeks before school started. What good is that, if I want my child to be registered before the classes are setup?
I didn’t want to wait that long. I wanted to get everything set and out of the way. And I’m sure the school district wouldn’t want us to wait that long. They need to plan the classroom sizes and move teachers around if there are too few or too many students. They don’t want kids registering at the very last minute, after they have setup all the classrooms.
We called the doctor’s office. “Yes,” they said, “we offer vision screening. It should be covered by insurance, so it should be free to you.” Oh, and they could get us an appointment next week, while it is still June.
So we setup an appointment with the privately-run doctor’s office and will pay for it with our private insurance. I’m glad we have the private insurance and don’t need to use the free already-paid-for-by-my-taxes government services.
The government health department might be fine for those who really need it, but if you do use them, you need to be very prepared and schedule your appointments well before you normally would since they are so slow.
For a non-emergency situation like a vision test, it’s not that big a deal. What if there were an medical problem that needed attention? I would hope that the government service could act quickly enough to help. But so far, in both this country and others, government is big and slow. That’s fine for regulations and taxes and stuff, but not good for medical care.
“We waited for peace, but no good came;For a time of healing, but behold, terror!”
– Jeremiah 8:15
This little article thingy was written by Some Guy sometime around 6:44 am and has been carefully placed in the Life category.
June 17th, 2009 at 7:06 am
Don’t even get me going on our country’s trend toward “universal health care.” They say they want health care to be affordable for everyone, but one of the reasons private health insurance is so expensive right now is due to the part of insurance that our govt. already runs. Hospitals who treat those on govt. paid insurance only recoup such a tiny fraction of their expenses because that’s all the govt. will pay. Thus those of us that pay for our own insurance find our rates hiked higher each year in order to “pick up the tab.” If the govt. runs all health care, who knows how much the medical field will be paid, thus diminishing the quality of doctors and healthcare providers out there. And like you said, the wait for appointments will be something we are totally not used to in this instant-gotta-have-it-now society. As a mother of 2 daughters who are currently seeing specialists, one concerning the heart and one the brain (not exactly organs you can live without), I am gravely concerned about this.
June 17th, 2009 at 10:15 am
Well, I just read an article detailing some examples on how a few individuals from Canada have come to the US to get the care they needed because they only had a few months to live and couldn’t get appointments in their own system. I guess we’ll just have to go to Mexico.
June 17th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
I can’t tell you how angry I get when I see people talk about “free” health care. It’s astounding to see how many people have bought into that lie. I don’t think people realize how much of their paychecks will be redirected to Washington to pay for a poorly-run health care system. Despite the wishful thinking that’s shockingly rampant right now, no service actually gets cheaper when it’s run by the government.
June 17th, 2009 at 9:49 pm
Charity’s point is the one I haven’t really seen addressed compellingly by any proponent of government-run medicine: how do we figure out how to price all this stuff? (Maybe we should build a time machine so we can ask the USSR its methods.) The crisis is all about the “rising cost of health care”, so I presume the national government will lower prices when it assumes power. Lower prices means something is going to have to give. Maybe the national government will make it cheaper to become a doctor – so the new ones will have less training. Or maybe there won’t be as much availability. Or maybe the equipment won’t be updated as often as it is now. Or maybe the net loss will be covered by taxes, in which case it’s just a fancy way of saying rich and upper-middle class people will be paying for poor people’s medical care. If the goal is to make medicine more efficient, I’m with Gouda – governments are good at some things, but efficiency is not one of those. And if the goal is some form of wealth redistribution, it would be better done by raising high-income bracket people’s rates, and giving more refundable tax credits for poor people (a dumb idea, but a good way to redistribute wealth).
Here’s one entertaining thing I could see happening. Right now, the national government doesn’t want to limit liability for doctors (which is disheartening it’s even an option, given tort law always used to be a state thing). But if the government takes over medicine, and doctors become government employees, I would be surprised to see the national government completely get rid of its sovereign immunity – it will not open itself to unlimited tort damages. Right now, if I am injured or killed by the negligence of the government doctors I see, I (or my estate) has no recourse against the doctor or government. He could make the dumbest, most careless mistake that kills me, and there is no liability. So when tort liability is favored by political groups favorable to the current administration, tort liability is good. But once the government takes over, sovereign immunity is good. I guess that’s one way to make medicine cheaper.