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Jun. 24th, 2007 09:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jebbypalNYTimes coverage of Sicko...
This quote I found especially funny:
Ummm, Health Care America, do any of you actually go to a doctor??? Granted, to see a gp or an internist in most places, you don't wait in line....except when you do because there aren't enough doctors in your area and they are refusing to take more patients (especially if you don't have insurance or are on medicaid/medicare). Or if you need to see a specialist, like a dermatologist, and the limits put in place by THE US GOVERNMENT have made it so that there aren't enough practitioners in that specialty, especially since those quotas are made several years in advance and so there's little room to change if demand changes. Like how right now if you find a bad freckle or mole, you get to wait 3-4 months to see anyone because of the botox boom.
Our current system has lines. Some of us are lucky enough to have an insurance plan that gives us freedom of choice for doctors, but the vast majority don't.
Now, that's not to say that I think our constitution actually prescribes a right to "all medicines available". But right now there's a huge problem when even having insurance doesn't guarantee you the treatment you need.....worse, if get sick and take advantage of your insurance, you pay the price in premiums the rest of your life. There's no easy answer, but hopefully Sicko will generate discussion and a better system can be found.
This quote I found especially funny:
Health Care America, a group that is financed in part by pharmaceuticaland hospital companies, placed an advertisement in a Capitol Hillnewspaper stating: “In America, you wait in line to see a movie. In government-run health care systems, you wait to see a doctor.”
Ummm, Health Care America, do any of you actually go to a doctor??? Granted, to see a gp or an internist in most places, you don't wait in line....except when you do because there aren't enough doctors in your area and they are refusing to take more patients (especially if you don't have insurance or are on medicaid/medicare). Or if you need to see a specialist, like a dermatologist, and the limits put in place by THE US GOVERNMENT have made it so that there aren't enough practitioners in that specialty, especially since those quotas are made several years in advance and so there's little room to change if demand changes. Like how right now if you find a bad freckle or mole, you get to wait 3-4 months to see anyone because of the botox boom.
Our current system has lines. Some of us are lucky enough to have an insurance plan that gives us freedom of choice for doctors, but the vast majority don't.
Now, that's not to say that I think our constitution actually prescribes a right to "all medicines available". But right now there's a huge problem when even having insurance doesn't guarantee you the treatment you need.....worse, if get sick and take advantage of your insurance, you pay the price in premiums the rest of your life. There's no easy answer, but hopefully Sicko will generate discussion and a better system can be found.