The health care bill is complicated. Crazy, mind-numbing, eyes-bleeding-before-you-finish-it complicated. Cutting health care costs is a baffling process on its own. When you add expanding coverage to uninsured Americans and figuring out what that insurance will look like it's so impossibly daunting that even the best-meaning of experts have trouble figuring out what the hell is going on.
And -- quite frankly -- the notion that a layperson who hasn't spent days or weeks studying the proposed legislation -- as well as put in time reading up on medical ethics, medicine, medicare, medicaid, and a whole slew of other 'med'-prefixed words -- could understand what's on the table is absurd.
Instead, the bulk of us are charging into the debate with whatever tangential knowledge we have gleaned from the press. Those of us reading this site, including myself, tend to lean towards a public option or towards a fully government-run health care system. Those of us getting our news from Glenn Beck -- or from the CIA-implanted chips in our teeth that the alien governments are broadcasting to -- tend to think that health care is a thin veneer protecting the true liberal agenda of (how like liberals) killing old people in their sleep. Or maybe promoting mandatory abortions for preteens. Or -- why not? -- building a secret zombie army for unnamed purposes. Glenn Beck is crazy is what I'm saying.
The fact that the 'debate' over health care has turned into a platform for overzealous crackpots who want to get on the news is only surprising if you have never lived in this country. But it is beginning to overshadow the issue at hand. Again: not a surprise.
According to James Surweicki in the New Yorker a couple weeks ago, the percentage of Americans who now feel that our health care system is good or excellent has increased to 48% from 29% during the election. Surweicki attributes this to a fundamental human fear of change now that health care reform is on the horizon. And it probably is. But when you combine that with fears of an abortionist old-people-killing zombie army, it's easy to see why some people are hesitant to abandon the current system. Sure, my insurance covers nothing, I fear going to the doctor, I know that there's huge chance that my health care could drive me into bankruptcy (according to the National Coalition on Healthcare 62% of all bankruptcies in this country were linked to health care costs), and I am almost certain to be brushed off by my health care company should I try to get something (according to the same site nearly 80% of those filing for bankruptcy already had health insurance) -- like, say, my eyes or teeth -- covered, but hey at least I don't have to fight off the undead with a shotgun.
So let's get back to the experience of health care. And maybe remind ourselves why we hated it so much in the first place.
Here's my own story: I don't have health insurance. I am an actor and a writer in New York. My union would cover a policy if I made more money. But I don't. So I don't have health insurance. Or, at least, not useful health insurance. My parents would presumably cover the costs if I were hospitalized with something truly horrible, so I bought a policy that pays for 80% of covered medical costs once my bill rises above $10,000. I have yet to have a health care bill above $10,000, so I have no real idea whether it would actually pay out or not. Presumably I can only use certain hospitals.
I grew up in Austria. When I was growing up I had health insurance. Because I was in Austria. Where you just get health insurance. Because the Austrians -- countrymen of Hitler, starters of the first world war -- believe that only a barbaric society wouldn't take care of its citizens. So there's that.
I've been hospitalized three times in my life. Twice in the US and once in Austria. In Austria, I had a disease called Peridcarditis. It's essentially an inflammation of the sack that contains the heart and, as childhood diseases go, it's one of the ones you want to worry about. I was diagnosed by a local doctor, checked into the Algameine Krankenhause (hospital) in Vienna and spent two weeks receiving various intravenous treatments and occasional visits from classmates. Pericarditis is one of those diseases that you simply can't predict. Nor did anyone ever discover where it came from. I got unlucky when I got it. I was admitted to the hospital the same afternoon I was diagnosed. I didn't wait for a bed or a doctor or anything of that sort. My bill was $0. Or, really, 0 Austrian Schillings. Dad worked for the US government at the time, so we ended up insisting on a bill, which we paid. And I lived. Score one for socialist medicine.
My sisters have both been hospitalized in Europe as well. One for an artichoke spine that caught in her throat in Italy. She paid 0 Lire for the ensuing surgery. The other for food-poisoning in the UK. She had to pay the National Health Service there in pounds, which is a notoriously strong currency. Fortunately the conversion rate from 0 dollars to 0 pounds was very reasonable.
In the US, I have been hospitalized once for a broken wrist and once for food poisoning. In both cases I went to North General hospital in Manhattan (I live nearby). I spent an hour in the waiting room before being processed for the broken wrist. With imaging charges, the bill came to roughly $4,000.
As for food poisoning, that merely cost me $800. My insurance didn't cover either incident (and why should it). My parents did. For those of you without parents who will cover your health care costs: good luck!
These socialized nations, by the way, spend less than we do. In 2004, Britain spent 8.1% of its GDP on health care. We spent 15.3% of ours.
Health care isn't, I readily admit, a black-and-white argument. But it seems to me that we really ought to remember that so-called 'socialized' health care systems sometimes work pretty well. And, however complicated the details of this bill, the simple fact is that our health care could be much better than it is.