Health Care Satire

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I love this cartoon by Matt Bors. Saw it in Sunday's LA Times. Sorry if you don't appreciate it.

In this kind of public "debate," I think we gloss over our points of agreement in order to jump to the things we hate about each other. Sarcasm seems to be the typical weapon of the left. Anger the tool du jour of the right. The truth is, we all realize that everyone needs affordable health care. Who would argue with that?! The question is how we will reform the system and how transparent that process will be.

Julie and I lived in Europe for the better part of a decade. People talk about how America doesn't want "socialized" medicine, as if that was somehow the Bogey man. But it wasn't really that bad. Like everywhere, you can end up with good doctors or bad doctors. If you have connections, you can always get better treatment. Isn't that how it already works in the US?

One quick story. Once we were traveling in Germany southeast of Munich when Jericho was about 5. He had a freak accident where his head collided with a dinner plate being carried by a waitress. He was moving too quickly through the restaurant, and she spun away from a table holding a plate in her hand. The plate caught him right in the middle of his forehead. We bandaged him up and put him to bed. About midnight, he woke up and started vomiting. Knowing that he probably had a concussion, we knew he needed to get to an ER. The nearest hospital was 30 minutes away in a town called Traunstein. I drove him, leaving my worried wife in the hotel with a sleeping Jacob.

To make a long story short, the hospital in Traunstein was phenomenal. They admitted Jericho for observation, wanting to watch him until 24 hours after the accident. This was an immediate difference from the US where they would simply do a CAT-scan and send him home. Of course, CAT scans cost $2000 or more! And they expose a person's body to supposedly harmless radiation. The German way, however, was to keep him until the next afternoon in a great hospital room with very friendly nurses and staff. Mind you, it's never fun being in hospital. But this was a good situation considering. Our total bill for everything, including a clean bill of health? $700, which was reimbursed to us by our expatriate insurance.

Next time, I'll tell you about our birthing stories in the Czech health care system. (I should probably let Julie tell that one!)

Like it or not, folks, we already have socialized medicine! My insurance premium is already paying for others who have no insurance. So I really wish people would cut through the doomsday rhetoric about this and actually work to figure this thing out. Health care costs are killing our country. We've got to do something!

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