I am for something that improves health care and makes it more affordable/accessible to all. Unfortunately those 2 goals are very difficult to reconcile. My dad has always had his own business, and when you walked into his shop he had a sign hanging there that read
This applies to the health care conundrum. We have access to the best health care in the world, but it isn't cheap. If we want it to be cheap, it will be difficult to keep it as good as it is.
I have made good use of health care. My treatment cost near a half million dollars. Luckily I had decent insurance, but we still ended up near bankruptcy due to medical bills. But our insurance allowed us to seek top-notch medical care (Hunstman Cancer Institute, Loma Linda University Medical Center Proton Therapy, experimental drugs, etc.) and is probably why I am still here today.
I am hopeful we can find a solution, but I am not holding my breath either.
Just keep taking a breath every few seconds for a good long while, please.
The reason I don't know much about it is I've been fortunate overall. I almost lost my wife and the two kids all at once. She was about due with twins, I was out of town and got an impulse to just go home. I drove all night, and woke her up and told her to get ready to go to the hospital. She's a labor/delivery nurse knowitall and she laughed at me and said she's fine, but got up anyway and took a shower. Shortly afterward, with her bags packed and ready to go, she started to think it was time, and called the hospital to say she was coming in. Long story short, as soon as she got there and got hooked up to the monitors, she was rushed to the OR. Fortuitously, the doctors had just arrived too, and they were a team with long experience working together, and they worked with unbelievable speed. It was a case of abruption that could have easily cost her life and the lives of the twins
if she hadn't been there already.
When I was one of those early twenties immortals, I got sick. It was a years-long primary issue the doctors couldn't do anything about. I was expected to be totally blind and paralyzed for life. The doctors were incredulous when I actually started getting better. Then when I could read again, I had my wife take me to the Eccles Health Sciences library at the U of U, and spent my days there for about a year just reading everything that had ever been written about it. And began to just not push my limits and just eat good and take care of myself. A lot of people who learn to do that when they are young will live a long long time.
A few years ago I got sick in a different sort of way. I thought I was gonna die. We didn't have health coverage at the time. Finally I got a notion to call a relative who "owed" me something, who could write prescriptions, and told him what I needed. It was about fifty bucks, a strong dose at that, and it cleared everything up. I found out later that the well at the ranch had developed some problems and the water wasn't good, and I was the only one ever there to be affected. But it scared my wife into going back to her job and getting health and life insurance again. . . . though we haven't really needed it since. I did go in when the coverage became active and have a complete workup to see how I'm doing, and the doctors wanted to know what I was doing to keep in such good conditions. . . .
I worked in medical research for over ten years, and can sorta relate to the medical care culture. My wife can go on a tear listing burdensome mandates, government regulations and such, that are senseless except on the assumption that all medical care personnel are morons, which are driving up the costs. And the lawsuits that are lodged being another major force driving costs up. And the government mandates requiring hospitals to give urgent care to people who can't pay, such as illegals, which forces the hospitals to pass those expenses on to paying, as in insured, customers. . . .
I just look at the people in on the creation of our healthcare legislation. . . . . lobbyists for pharmaceuticals, the AMA, the care provider institutions, the lawyers, the doctors. . . . and guess who just doesn't have representation at the table?
you.
Your congressman and Senators pay more attention to the their institutional lobbyists than they do you, unless you're gonna go on a tear and make enough of a fuss they start remembering your name.