Recently President Obama has had the opportunity to give his speech to congress stating that his health care plan would be more like the one that was being amended in the Senate. Magically they would be able to trim of $100 billion dollars of the initial costs of the bill (taking that money from Medicare) and recover the money from the fraud they haven’t been able to find all these years. The rest of the costs would be shifted on to the insurance companies and not into taxes. It’s funny because regardless of how they try to shift the costs on paper, any basic economic student can tell you that the cost will be shifted to the consumer.
Anyways, it doesn't matter if they think that people should need this, we don't.
When I lived in Ipswich England, I went to the emergency room because I was in shock after being hit by a car. I was placed in a room, alone, for four hours. Thankfully, I came out of it on my own prior to the doctor or orderly even seeing me but while I was unable to move, it was the most frightening experience of my life, and I've been to three different campaigns with the military (one of these multiple times). We do not want this type of health care. Even those "uninsured" are guaranteed life saving care, something that other countries health care services do not.
I don’t agree with the health care bill and unlike most of those in congress, I have actually read the 1000+ pages of it. The things I don’t like about it are plain and simple: it limits choice, warehouses information, drives up taxes and cost for all while reducing the amount of care that is provided and most of all, it will be run by the government. You see, the last statement is the worst. Everything that has been run by the government with few exceptions has been disastrous.
The government is already running three separate health care systems and all are constantly criticized for the care that they provide. As a wounded soldier who is now medically retired, I have had the displeasure of dealing with all three systems, the military medical hospitals, the Veterans Administration, and Medicare. Between the three, there are enough problems that make you wonder if the government cannot run these systems correctly, how on earth does it plan to run a monster of a system that would encompass the whole nation. The answer is simple of course, the people who are trying to pass the bill have never had to deal with any of these systems and are not planning on dealing with the new system either. Welcome to the revolution, comrade. All men are created equal, but some are just more equal than others.
For those of you who have never experienced any of them, I’ll briefly give an account of three years of mine. I have a traumatic brain injury, with seizures and migraines, memory loss and vision impairment from an injury I suffered while serving as a gunner in a convoy in Iraq. To make matters worse, I have seven herniated discs in my neck and back, so bad that I had lost the use of my right leg and had diminished capacity in my right hand and arm. The military which first dealt with me gave me muscle relaxers for the seizures, and when they found the herniated discs, stated that they wouldn’t do anything about them until I couldn’t feel both my legs. This is the care of the military hospitals, it is better to do nothing then to mess up. When I tore the front ligament out of my ankle, the hospital took an x-ray, called it good and now wonders why I still walk with a limp.
The VA on the other hand, is similar to what I witnessed in the UK. Overloaded hospitals, 30 minute maximum appointments and you have to wait at least a month to get an appointment to begin with. It’s not that all of them are incompetent, although some are; it’s just that it’s easier to send you someplace else. When I went to the VA neurologists, I was having 10-12 seizures a day and they sent me to a psychiatrist saying its Post Traumatic Stress Disorder because I just came back from Iraq regardless of the head injury. The psychiatry department sent me back to neurology claiming that it was definitely neurological all the while my wife and kids have to watch as I suffer through all this. Thankfully my commanding officer took pity on us and got a requisition to have a civilian neurologist take a look. After one appointment, I was diagnosed and treated with medication that reduced the seizures to 1 per day. Increases in the medication reduced them further.
After I retired from the military, I was put on social security and Medicare. How people strive to live on this is beyond me as I am trying my hardest to get where I can get off this crap. Medicare is a joke, with benefits being cut by this congress after they claim to be champions of medical reform. Well, reform the medical systems you are already in charge of. Make that your first priority. Listen to the horror stories of the Veterans or as Janet Napolitano calls us “Potential Terrorist Threats.” Listen to the people on Medicare who spend most of their social security buying the drugs that Medicare won’t pay for because we need them in order to stay somewhat human–like. Until you do so, people like me will protest against you. We are unpaid although I’d like to find out how to be paid by insurance companies to say what I think about congress and the president (Ms. Pelosi if you can perhaps give me a contact number since you seem to know about this stuff) regardless if Pelosi feels that protesting against wasteful spending and government intrusion is “un-American.” As far as Obama is concerned, he is wrong, and has been wrong on everything he’s done since he’s taken office from insulting Poland by snubbing them on the 70th anniversary of the start of WWII to destroying our bankruptcy laws when dealing with GM. If criticizing him makes me racist, Charley Rangel or Ms. Dowd, so be it.
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