Back to blogland / a commercial break

I'll get back to a continuation of my saga eventually, now that all my people have left and I can actually sit at my own computer for five minutes. For now a few thoughts on the topic of health care.

With people fired up on both ends of the spectrum, pros and cons and propagandist statements, I'm pretty much lost as to what the plan they are debating over is anymore. Like any committee based creation, you are almost guaranteed to have a hodgepodge of extra sticky notes upon sticky notes with people's special interest addendums and some interesting experimental guesses to work from. I tried to read the thing, but wow, there is a reason I never went into law or politics. I wonder if the people responsible for voting on the bill made it past the table of contents?

Of course after I watched Michael Moore's Sicko, I was all for a universal healthcare plan, or moving to Canada if it came down to it. That is until I reminded myself that using only a few examples can skew the results. (More appropriately one of SO's friends' link made the actual reminder:)


Likelihood is the actual bill will get stomped down before it clears the system, and not much really will change, which isn't really a great thing. Change is needed for a majority of people, I'd think, few people are happy with their current care. What we really need is to find a single supergenius and give them the chore to come up with a perfect plan.

Universal health might not be the correct direction (and yes I realize that isn't really on the table right now). The best opposition for it was the fact that when people are given things for free, they take advantage of it. Free becomes Cheap.

Makes me wonder, despite the extrapolating a small data set part of it, whether the people using the ANCSA started non-profits (like KANA) as their primary healthcare provider are happy with the service they receive as a mini-universal system - or whether they run into the same nightmares of waitlisting services, and delayed surgeries that they mention happen in England and Canada.

It would be utopian if we could follow in a path of medical service where you don't get charged 15000 for a small procedure... if we received free preventative health care, and free preventative dental. For example: I don't mind paying for the fault of my own neglect, but I could have gotten that cavity filled and gotten a decent flouride treatment if I wasn't capped on my family dental plan and couldn't afford the visit at the time. Now I have to shell out $800 out of pocket just for the crown. My own fault, my own neglect... if the money hadn't been on the table, I'd have dragged myself in there.

Well back to my regular non-programming....