Health Care Rant
Posted by Sam at July 8th, 2007
I have about 4 drafts sitting here of long diatribes about the health care industry in this country. I decided to publish none of them and spare my blog from the sheer length of these rants, I’m not sure my server is capable of handling the anger and frustration I have doled out.
Instead of the long diatribe, I will lay out the key points here:
- Nobody in the health care industry could give two sh!ts about you. If they do happen to give a sh!t, they are not in a position to do anything to help you.
- Health care providers have very creative billing systems. Sometimes you won’t know about the bill from some obscure person you looked at in a hospital once until it has already gone to collections or worse. Make sure that you pay your janitor bill in addition to any doctors you have seen. There might be an extra, separate bill if you happened to use the drinking fountain. You don’t get to know about these until it’s too late.
- Insurance companies are in the business of telling you things are covered beforehand, and then denying claims on those things later. This is called a bait and switch, and it’s illegal in other areas of business. The health care industry gets a pass on legality.
- The health care industry is interested in one thing: the almighty dollar. I do not have any illusions about how insurance companies work. No, they don’t care if you die. If the money they have to spend fixing you is more then the money you will give them by paying insurance the rest of your life, they have no reason to care for you.
- Illegal immigrants get free health care. Confidentiality means they can’t even get turned in to INS.
- Health care often gives you one of two choice: die or let them ruin your life with insane amounts of debt. That’s called a lose, lose situation.
- Most doctors will see you but will only listen for an opportunity to prescribe you whatever drug is currently being pushed.
Yes, I’m bitter.
Caveat: I do not believe in socialist health care systems. However, anything it better than what we have now. Our current system is socialist for the poor, accessible to the rich, and oppressive to the majority of people who happen to be in-between.
The people behind our current system - health care providers, medical directors, pharmaceutical companies, and especially insurance companies - I’m talking about the specific people who designed these systems - should be taken into the street and shot.
Better yet, they should be injected with easily treatable but deadly diseases, and then everyone in the country who cares to should get to write them a denial letter for receiving care. The letters should be read every waking hour to these people while they slowly die.
This is how i feel.
