Democratic healthcare has always been an illusion in America. An illusion, yes, but it is also true that a fair system has always been an expectation. Consider the history of organ transplants. Who gets the available organs, the rich and famous or the poor and expendable? The long held medical assumption is that we all have one vote, it doesn’t matter how well endowed our bank account may be, what matters is our level of need. Practically speaking this democratic assumption was and is full of holes but never more so than today.
In the ever newer America with an ever expanding dollar sign ethic, the democratic ideal in the realm of healthcare has now become a joke. Life and death is largely determined by the size of one’s bank account. How do I know? If you have had to sit around the waiting room of an HMO doctor’s office and talk to the folks, you would know. The disparity between the have’s and have not’s has, indeed, become a laughing matter, only because it is so frightening. One patient quipped, “six of my friends were declared healthy as a horse, only to drop dead in a matter of months”. Was such a joke merely over 65 anxiety?
Please allow me to share my conclusions from accessing both systems and I shall attempt to be brief. The HMO system promises good healthcare with little or no cost to the patient beyond the monthly fee taken out of our Social Security benefits each month. The other system is those providers who, for an additional monthly fee, provide a superior level of care and more importantly a democratic choice of doctors and places of service. The gulf between the two, for a few hundred dollars a month, is horrendous. Quoting a doctor friend, “ the HMO is not designed for the sick, it is designed to give mass produced medicine to the healthy at the lowest possible cost to the provider”.
As William Shakespeare used to say, “and therein lies the rub”. If you have to join an HMO for lack of retirement income or pure greed, don’t get sick!
G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca.
