Imagine you are at a restaurant and the menu doesn't have any prices. You ask one of the waitstaff how much a particular dish costs. It sounds like a reasonable question, but the waiter is dumbfounded. It's like no one ever asked him that question before. He tells you that he has to check with the cook. A few minutes later, he comes back and tells you that the cook has to check with another person. Finally, after what seems like an hour, you are told the price of the dish you were thinking about ordering. It's a little high, but not too bad and you have been sitting at this restaurant now for over an hour. You get the food, eat it, and ask for your bill. Here's the kicker. The price on the bill is three times higher than what you thought it would be. A new waiter shows up explaining that whoever told you the original price didn't know what they were talking about and that this is actually the price. Plus, you have to pay to use the plate that the food was on and that is an extra cost that wasn't part of the price you were originally quoted. You ate the food and you can't un-eat it. Now you have to pay for it even though it costs much more than your thought it would cost. This is our healthcare system.
Anyone who has spent hours on the phone being bounced around from automated system to automated system, and then to an occasional person before being transferred back to an automated system, again and again, understands that our healthcare system is horrible. The fact that it is so hard to find out the cost of a procedure, before actually having it done and getting billed for it, is extremely concerning. Fighting with insurance companies and medical billing companies over who pays what and how much you are getting screwed over is so frustrating that I can't understand why anyone would not want to fix this system.
Forget about the huge costs of prescriptions and the large co-pays and deductibles; I would do almost anything to no longer have the headache of fighting with the various healthcare entities, trying to get procedure codes, referral numbers, etc. and relating them to back and forth from doctor's offices and billing companies to insurance companies.
I guess most people just get whatever they need done and then get a bill for whatever it is. If you have a lot of money, then I guess it is easy to pay that and you don't have to bend over backwards to find out the costs before a procedure. But my family doesn't have a lot of money and so we are forced to spend time arguing with these various for-profit entities trying to find out costs and then trying to find out why the costs weren't what we were told they were.
Of course, there is a very simple solution to all of this, and that is a single-payer, government-run healthcare system. Anyone who has ever had to spend more than 15 minutes on the phone fighting with insurance companies and medical billing companies should be voting for Bernie Sanders.
It's that simple. If you like the system we have now then vote for whoever you like, but if you think as I do, that the system is broken and you fantasize about moving to a country with government-run health care, then there is only one real choice for president and that is Bernie Sanders.
Bernie Sanders is the only one running for president who understands that healthcare is a right that every American deserves and needs to have. It is time for hard working Americans to rise up and tell the establishment that this system isn't working for us anymore and that it is time for a change. Other nations around the world have government healthcare systems. People in these other countries don't have to spend hours on the phone trying to find out how much a medical procedure will cost. They just get it done and that's it. No hassle, no arguing with insurance companies or medical billing companies, and no surprise costs.
The healthcare industry in this country is so frustrating to deal with that I have to think that people are ready for BernieCare.
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