"socialized" medicine: not as bad as cons would have you believe.

[feuervogel]

In fact, it's a hundred, a thousand, times better than the system that killed Melissa Mia Hall, who had no insurance, as a freelance writer, and began suffering chest pains due to a heart attack and died in her home because she couldn't afford to go to the doctor, let alone the hospital.

To those of you who believe the free market can and should sort everything out, this is what you're advocating. If taxation is theft, free market health cover is murder.

Do you wonder why I, as a tenuously employed person with no health benefits of my own who aspires to be a freelance writer (as all novelists are) -- a job that almost never has health benefits -- would rather move 4400 miles, a 9-hour flight, and a 6 time-zone difference to a country that mandates health coverage and provides it for those who can't afford it themselves through taxation?

Germans aren't afraid of the social contract or of helping out those in need through vile governmental muggings in dark alleys taxation. Fucking American selfishness needs to die in a fire.

Comments

[feuervogel]

I don't mean to imply that the German system is perfect. There are problems, of course; no system is 100% perfect. But the US system is non-existent. It's a patchwork quilt, where half the patches are wearing thin and the other half are half-rotten, so it resembles a spiderweb more than anything.

When I was a student in Marburg, in 1996/97, I paid DM81/month to Barmer for medical cover. When I got bromine on my arm in chem lab and went to the clinic? Free. When I had a wart on the bottom of my foot and went to a podiatrist to get it taken care of? Free, except I had to pay for the bit of tape to hold the salicylic acid square to my foot. When I got new glasses? The lenses were free, and DM20 of the frames were covered. (I ended up paying about DM60 for them.) I remember my conversation at the Optiker's, where I kept asking him how much the lenses would cost, and he kept saying "the insurance will cover the basic price." I couldn't comprehend insurance paying for eyeglasses. It doesn't here.

Compare that to this summer/fall, when I was sick as hell, and I went to my doctor's office a dozen times, at $20 each, to multiple specialists, at $30 each, got a dozen different medications ranging from $10-$35 for a month's supply, was admitted to the hospital ($250), had a sinus CT ($250), and went to the ER ($150). And we're paying probably $1000/month (I don't know; it's included in my husband's benefit package) for it.

Appalling.

[yvi]

Lenses aren't free anymore, unfortunately :(

(Hearing aids, though are still covered for 500€ per ear - I have a hearing aid and no glasses)

[feuervogel]

Boo. Are the lenses covered in part? Because eyeglasses are pretty darn important.

I had LASIK a few years ago, and this is largely academic for me, until I get to the age when I need reading glasses.

[yvi]

They only pay if you are under 18 or are wrong-sighted to the point of it counting as a disability, if I recall correctly.

[feuervogel]

Right, because adults don't need glasses. That's quite wrong-headed.

What are they using to define disability, I wonder? Because I was worse than 20/400 without my glasses (-5.5 in both eyes, I couldn't see the big E), and that's pretty limiting! I wouldn't be able to drive without correction, let alone work.

[thady]

I didn't think you thought our system were perfect. I think my reaction just comes from watching the health debate and worry about whether we might slither into US-American waters.

And I truly can't imagine to pay $1000/month for health insurance. It boggles my mind.

[feuervogel]

That would be the worst idea ever. If stories of the horrors of the US system are required, I'm sure you could get plenty of them.

Are the free marketeers winning? *scary*

That Bismarck guy...he was such a leftist icon, amirite?