[Publib] Now you've asked

Thu Aug 6 09:50:32 EDT 2009

[I apologize in advance for the length of this post.]

Hi, Mike - now you've lured me out of the shadows to reply to your message. I'm glad your experience with military health care was a good one. I had a different experience.

You wrote: "Show me an opponent of health care reform and I'll show you somebody with paid-up insurance and a spouse with a good job.  Half my friends can't afford health insurance, and they aren't bums."

I'm an opponent of the reforms now being proposed by the Obama Administration. Yes, my insurance is paid up, but I do without the heck of a lot of things to keep it that way.

I'm also the mother of four, and have been a single parent since 1997, two months into my library career. One of those four kids was born in a military hospital. Every time I went for OB appointments, I saw a different doctor. The attending who helped me deliver that child was a doctor I'd never met, and I never saw her again. For the other three - same doctor all the way through, and that doctor was also the attending at delivery, and in follow-up care.

I'm also a vet. You want to talk about assembly-line medicine? Join the Army and get a really bad cold that lingers for a couple of weeks. Go on sick call, wait 2 hours to see a PA, and get handed a packet of Sudafed and be told to report back to duty. It's only when your platoon sergeant notices that you can barely breathe, and he calls the clinic and talks to the head NCO over there, that you get sent back for X-rays and find out you've got bronchitis bordering on walking pneumonia.

I could tell you stories of waiting in the ER at the military hospital in the middle of the night with a kid who had woken with such a severe case of otitis that the infection burst open and fluid leaked out of his ear for over an hour before he was seen by staff. This was after we'd already waited 2 hours. I could tell you stories about trying to make a dentist's appointment (sorry - we only do cleanings on Tuesday mornings, and we're short tow dental hygienists), or a dermatologist's appointment, to treat a severe case of psoriasis - call the appointment line at Central Appointments on the THIRD Wednesday of the MONTH, AFTER 12:30, for the next month's appointments. You'd start dialing at 12:25, get a recorded message that the switchboard didn't open until 12:30, then keep dialing. If you got in after 12:40 - FORGET IT - all the appointments for the NEXT MONTH had already been booked up.

This is to say NOTHING of those who abused the system, running to the clinic or the ER at the first sniffle, clogging the system for those who really needed medical help.

I've had kidney stones twice. First time, in the military. Waited about 2 hours in the ER, in excruciating pain (ever had a kidney stone? Labor and delivery is easier), offered nothing for the pain (because it might interfere with a diagnostic exam), and finally saw a doctor, who, within TWO MINUTES said, "Congratulations - you've got kidney stones." He gave me Percocet and a little contraption that looked like a tea strainer and sent me home. I should call if I caught anything in the tea strainer. Second time, in civilian life. Went to the ER - waited about the same 2 hours - got a referral for the NEXT DAY to a urologist - and underwent lithotripsy within 10 days. Was given the same kind of strainer, but also a follow-up appointment with the urologist for 5 days later. Oh, and the group that did the litho - they set up a payment plan so I could spread out paying for my portion of the bill over six months.

I'm also the former wife of a decorated Gulf War vet who was forced to accept a medical discharge, after 17 years of service, for a service-related injury (that, if it had happened last year instead of in 1995, would not have been a barrier to his continued service). The Medical Review Board rated his injury at 15% - well below the threshold of any but the most minimal retraining benefits. We got six months' coverage under military medical following his discharge date; by then we'd separated and I picked up BC/BS through the library.

I also happen to be the daughter of somebody who was an Air Force flight surgeon. He resigned his commission as soon as his obligation was up - not to go off and make boodles of money (never did that!), but because he wanted to be able to practice real family medicine and not just damage control. He was under standing orders not to spend more that 15 minutes with any patient for any reason, and the chief of the hospital explained to him that their mission wasn't to "take care" of people, but to ensure that the airmen were flight-ready. Period. Everything came second to that.

So. Health-care reform the way this Administration is talking about? The fig leaf of a public option, with every intention in the world of a gradual transition to single-payer within 15 or 20 years (the President's words, not mine)? No thanks. Been there, done that.

Not all opponents of this plan are members of "the Brooks Brothers Brigade." I'd venture to say most of us aren't.

Nora Armstrong, Information Services Manager
Cumberland County Public Library & Information Center
300 Maiden Lane
Fayetteville, NC 28301-5000
Phone (910) 483-7727 x204 / Fax (910) 486-6661
narmstro at cumberland.lib.nc.us

Check out our Reader's Corner Blog: http://ccpl-readerscorner.blogspot.com <http://ccpl-readerscorner.blogspot.com/>  

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From: publib-bounces at webjunction.org on behalf of Backwage at aol.com
Sent: Wed 8/5/2009 7:59 PM
To: publib at webjunction.org
Subject: [Publib] Now you've asked

But now you've asked, you might consider a very important place where absolutely socialized medicine prevails, right here in this country.

I write about the military.  When I was in the naval service of your country, we didn't have any insurance or forms to fill out, or anything like the world outside the base fence.

When we got sick we went to the doctor.  Or the dentist.  For that matter, we had to go for regular checkups twice a year just to see what if anything was wrong with us.  I got new eyeglasses every six months--best prescriptions and frames I've ever had.  Saw specialists on a few hours' notice.  

No charge for prescriptions or equipment or anything.  A short wait for service, perhaps a half hour in busy times.  They only did one thing wrong--saved my life when I got blood poisoning, but you can't do everything right.  Oh, and I had a world-class plastic surgeon put my face together when it got rearranged in a mugging.  

On the ship we had hospital corpsmen to take care of minor problems and first aid.  They were simply excellent for hangovers.  And for those inconvenient social diseases one picks up in foreign ports.  Me, I stuck to hangovers.

Many navy guys I knew stayed in because they had children or spouses with medical problems that would have bankrupted them otherwise; they seemed very happy with the "limited choice" of world-class medicine for their dependents.  

Today, a lady where I work came in looking bedraggled.  I mentioned that her hair was getting a bit long and she said, "I can either get my hair cut or pay for my prescriptions."  Mind you, we are supposed to have a very good health plan here, but it has a cutoff for services at a certain dollar amount.  She can choose to pay her rent or take her medicine, but not both.  That's freedom of choice, you know.

Show me an opponent of health care reform and I'll show you somebody with paid-up insurance and a spouse with a good job.  Half my friends can't afford health insurance, and they aren't bums.  Nor are they socialists--though I am, and know that what Obama is proposing isn't anything like socialism.  Which is just too bad.  Socialism is what happens when ignorance fades away.  The library is socialism in its finest form.  But some of us don't get that, and will die not getting it.

Michael McGrorty

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