Health Care Reform
On a recent trip to visit her sisters in Australia my mother made an appointment to visit a Podiatrist. On arrival to the doctors office she was immediately ushered into the examination room with the doctor, compare that to the US, where an average wait of at least 30minutes on the minimum if we are lucky. Medical practices book as patients as they can in a single day to create maximum profit for themselves.
- Continuing on with my mother….
After the initial examination, she was then taken to the adjoining X Ray facility. Whereupon she was X Rayed. The doctor examined the X Ray and diagnosed her condition. The proper treatment was given and she left the office with in 2 hours of her arrival. Let’s now compare that to a similar visit in the US.
Hum… How long do we have to wait for authorization for an X Ray from our HMO???? We then have to go to a facility typically that only does X Rays and then told the X Ray will be sent to the doctors office after the lab processes the image and then send it to the doctor. We then need to wait for the HMO to approve the treatment and so on and so forth not to mention the large co-payments. This is American style health not care. The footnote to this entire event is that my mother had gone to several Doctors in the US. Her conditioned was even properly diagnosed, so much for the “superior quality” of health care in the US. Let’s look at at another way, a tight group of doctors can agree amongst themselves to pass their patients around to one another. How do we know they aren’t doing this?? Talk about moral hazard.
The best part of my mother Aussie medical story was the bill. The visit including x-ray, diagnosis, treatment was $200.00 Aussie dollars. It gets better, the doctor tells her she can get reimbursed from the government if she sends her bill to the government for the entire amount. All of this under 2 hours!
I do know something about health-care, I used to be in the business, it is a business for profit. It is time to end this nonsense. We need health care reform now. We need to take our country back from the Corporations.
To hear some of the gross distortions by the opponents of the Health Care reform is positively criminal. I think it is disgusting. We need to fight for ourselves now.
WAKE UP PEOPLE!!!
Filed under: Editorial