(Image by Michael Ramirez)
I hate that I have virtually no time to post on this blog, but I am busy getting ready to help in getting our country back! I need a good education to do this, and that generally means less and less time for anything not school related. I recently told a classmate that I think I'm losing the battle with the 24 hour day....I think I assumed that I could take on a gigantic load and somehow convince the day to give me a few more hours. Well, 12 more, to be exact. Unfortunately, I'm not God, and I'm not Joshua fighting a war against Israel's enemies. You know....the day the sun stood still. Well, enough with the symbolic speech....and on with the blog post!
I felt that I really do need to post about this topic despite my lack of time (and despite the fact that I'm supposed to be studying topographical maps right now) as I feel that it paints a dismal picture of what is to come if the democrats bent on the government "option" (and i say "option" tentatively as I do not believe this idea of "choosing" it will always be the case) get their way.
My mother-in-law Ruth recently had surgery for a horrible accident she had in which she completely broke the bones in her ankle to the point of internal appendage detachment. In other words, she broke her foot off internally. This surgery took place yesterday; and while her foot is now connected once again with the rest of her leg, she will probably be physically handicapped for the rest of her life. Why is this, one might ask? Rewind to one week ago, and you will soon see.
Ruth broke her foot LAST WEEK. Wednesday, to be exact. How is it that she just had surgery last night, one might ask? Why, I have an answer for you! Socialized medicine! National Health Care! Mexico currently "enjoys" a system quite similar to the government option that is currently being proposed by our Dear Leader and his minions. Let me enlighten you as to exactly how IMSS (their government-run health system) works, as I ponder my mother-in-law's experience as well as my own unpleasant encounters with that system during my time in Mexico. Picture a room full of patients waiting to be seen, each with injuries or illnesses meriting immediate attention. The room is dingy, poorly kept up, and the crowd within feels much more like a herd of cattle than they do patients. Each has a so-called "number" assigned to their turn with the doctors. Ruth sat a full 24 hours in a waiting area before even being given a room. She was told not to eat anything (adding to her discomfort) as they hoped to get her into surgery ASAP. That hope quickly faded, as the hours and hours passed and it became clear that she would not be seeing a surgeon ANYTIME soon. Upon hearing this, my grandmother wondered "Well, if they are having her wait it must mean that they don't think that the case is too dangerous or something." No no no. It has nothing to do with severity. Someone could come in bleeding profusely and it would still take some time to get a doctor. The fact of the matter is simply this: Mexico put a system in place that would grant (via tax payer dollars) FREE health care for everyone. What they failed to realize is that by doing this, the patient count per hospital increased by the thousands while the number of doctors stayed relatively the same. Costs and ethical concerns aside, one could oppose the current health reform on this basis alone!! Rather than simply reform a system to make a run more smoothly, the Mexican government took it upon themselves to be the so-called benafactors of the nation, while taxing them into oblivion and providing shoddy health care in return. By the way, I do not want to forget to mention this- the only reason that Ruth even got into surgery a week after the incident (quite soon, by most counts) was that her personal doctor just happens to be "high up" in the government system. He was therefore able to have some influence. A friend of Ruth's told her a story of a family member who was not so fortunate- he waited for two weeks before receiving treatment for his broken bone. He now suffers the consequences.
There are those who would criticize my comparison of Congress' reform plan with Mexico's system. They might simply say- "Mexico is a third world country. No wonder it didn't work there!" Fair enough, Mexico's government is a corrupt, poor, and underdeveloped system. However, may I direct people's attention to nations such as Canada or Great Britain (who, by all counts are considered FIRST WORLD NATIONS) in which the case I described above is not uncommon. I can remember watching stories on the news of people in the exact same predicament. In particular, there was a young man who now has a permanent handicap due to what was originally a fairly common rugby injury, simply because HE COULD NOT BE SEEN by a doctor. There simply weren't enough, and the system was simply bogged down. Now, I ask you to look at the population of the United States, which reaches numbers far beyond that of Mexico, Canada, and Great Britain. I cannot name a single government program that has worked totally successfully on specific numbers of the population (i.e. the VA, Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security, etc.), and to imagine that the government could somehow take on the entire population is absolutely ludicris.
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