What is interesting is that this debate is based on personal experience. Those who have had negative experiences and experienced the flaws and disasters of the present system rant and foam at the mouth because they have been victimized.
Those who at present are secure in their employment and have had no problems trumpet the satisfaction simply because they themselves have never been impacted and they do not see or care about the plight of others less fortunate than themselves.
Hey, I would have trumpeted for the "anti-change bandwagon" too at one time. It took the final year of my Mother's life and the horrific experiences I encountered with a Medicare Conversion HMO to change my opinion.
The current system sadly is pricing people out of the health care system completely. Try and go out and get any kind of coverage at all if you are a transplant patient and you change jobs or are laid off. Try and get coverage if you have ever had a cancer diagnosis and were successfully treated. In spite of the fact that one is now OK, the insurance companies will not touch a former internal cancer patient.
My Mother had served people as an RN and surgical nurse for a good portion of her life. She was initially covered under Blue Cross/Blue Shield. As she aged they began to raise her premiums until they would have been over $1,000 per month. This was my friends for a Medicare Supplemental Policy. She simply could not afford that. It would have taken over 1/2 of her retirement income. She changed over to what initially was a very good program under a company called FHP. FHP was bought out by Pacificare which is commonly known in some parts of the Country as "Secure Horizons". It was Secure Horizons and their brainless wonders at Oasis IPA which routinely denied care to a then 75 year old woman. After a heart attack she was denied CCU and was under orders of "Secure Horizons" placed into a residential care facility without even a cardiac monitor. She was discharged from that establishment in horrible condition one week later unable to breathe and having chest pains. The attempt to re-admit her to the hospital failed because Secure Horizons would not cover the costs. She died of a burst abdominal aortic aneurysm 24 hours later with incredibly high blood pressure which had never been monitored.
I investigated a lawsuit and what was done was so blatant that it would have been a "slam-dunbk". But, in order to collect a settlement I would have had to agree to a "gag order" after 5 years of time in and out of court and no amount of money would have brought my Mother back.
The Los Angeles based law firm had at that time 52 other cases of this kind of abuse under litigation by this same company. There were many other companies doing exactly the same thing. How about a 52 year old man losing a leg because the hospital did not want to pay for testing for necrotizing staff. The abuses go on and on.
What we have in this health care bill stinks pure and simple. But, it is a beginning and it will give people a vehicle to modify and fix the problems over time. Medicare started in exactly the same way in the mid 1960's.
Currently people are being denied any private insurance for the following conditions: Hypertension, diabetes, HIV, previous cancer diagnosis, COPD, Emphysema, Athsma, Crohn's Disease, Fibromyalgia, Lyme Disease, and scores of others.
It is easy to deny care to others, but when it happens to you or someone you love, those who deny that change is needed will attend a funeral and realize what they have supported. It will be a bitter pill to swallow. I know, I was one who had to swallow it personally with the death of my Mother in 2001.
