I disagree, I will admit there are cracks in it, but to say it is broken is to have a better standard to weight it against. There are problems, but those are caused by too much government in it, the solution isn't to add more government solutions (the cause of the problem in the first place.)
Problems don't equal broken. If you believe it is broken, what standard do you weight it against. What is a real world example of a better system that doesn't have problems?
Maybe you just see cracks where I see gaping holes.
Someone mentioned it before...the military is a system I’m actually trying to get back into...I also worked within it and never had, or witnessed serious problems.
But that’s me, and not everyone can be in the military.
I think we need a free marke capitalist hybrid of some sort, with catastrophic coverage separate from routine healthcare and a way to chose tiers an levels of coverage. And some way to actually get the medicines you need without being denied.
Another cute trick the insurance companies do is deny payment for let’s say a lab bill. When you ask why, they say it’s because the doctor wrote down the wrong diagnosis. I always ak and how is that MY fault, and why shoud I be obligated to do his work properly...
but again, I might as well be asking a person at the car wash to address this problem for all the good it’s done me!
The insurance companies now are horrible and all too often penalize decent people for the idiots that leech off of us. Such is the nature of the beast.
Maybe the poor can have a universal system of their own...while the rest of us have the our own system? Who knows the answer...but after 2 decades of working within it and having the misfortune of serious problems personally, it’s BROKEN! Period.
Permanently? I don’t know but I fear for the future because the knee jerk reacion will be universal coverage.
The plans we’ve had over the years dictate which doc you can see anyway, which meds they’ll pay for anyway...and do a schizo, no rhyme or reason psychotic job all too often at that.
Being a hospice nurse for some 15 years...as well as home health, nursing homes...AND talking with nurses and doctors etc. within the business, it’s CLEARLY broken.
Just from the aspect of medicare fraud and medicaid fraud ALONE it’s broken.
Pharmaceuticals and insurance companies are a large part of the problem.
Granted universal care is worse, but ignoring the problems we now have will bring about such a nightmare that much quicker IMO.
And as I pointed out, I’m already afraid it’s too late. I’m watching this thing slip away from within and it’s ... sad.
Like so much of all our society, public schools, etc.
Last fall we had a guy on hospice with end-stage liver disease...drug addict and alcoholic destroyed his life...mid-40’s. Unfortunately he was miserable and had to get “tapped”: remove the fluid build-up in his belly. VERY simple and inexpensive procedure; IT’s the humane things to do, but because he was indigent, he only got “one tap on the house”.
The issue was transporting him over to get it done, not the cost of the procedure itself...so he died a miserable death.
I know he did this to himself for the most part, and at least it wasn’t an AGONIZING death since he got (cheap) morphine, but what if he was a middle class person that spent down all his assets, and ended up losing out on the liver transplant list with liver failure from, let’s say liver cancer through “no fault” of his own?
We deal with that pretty routinely with people spending down their life’s savings on cancer...or AIDS.
There will be no perfect system, but there are too many capitalist hating liberals to take the time to do this right, I’m afraid.